I found this article to be very helpful in telling me what to expect and what I needed to do. Hope it helps you too.
[quote]I quit smoking 7 months ago. I do feel better, and I don�t struggle all of the time now, but I still have days where I find myself missing my cigarettes and wishing I could have just one now and then. Sometimes the urge to smoke is intense, and it depresses me. I wonder if I�ll ever be free of this habit! Will I miss smoking forever?
Answer: Think for a moment of your life as a tightly woven piece of fabric. Each thread represents the events and experiences you�ve had. And running alongside all of the many "life" threads are threads of a finer gauge. So fine in fact, they�re impossible to see with the naked eye. Those threads are your smoking habit, and they�ve become so interwoven in the fabric of your life, you find you can�t do anything without thinking about how smoking will fit into it. The associations that we build up over a lifetime between the activities in our lives and smoking are very closely knit. Once you quit smoking, your job becomes one of unraveling those smoking threads, or associations, one by one. How does that happen? And how long does it take?
Practice Makes Perfect
Recovery from this addiction is a process of gradual release over time. Every smoke free day you complete is teaching you how to live your life without cigarettes.
Bit by bit, you�re reprogramming your responses to the daily events that trigger the urge to smoke. The more practice you get, the less urges will plague you. Over the course of your first smoke free year, you'll encounter most of the events and situations in your daily life that you associate with smoking.
Some smoking triggers are seasonal in nature and can create strong urges to smoke months into your quit. For instance, if you quit smoking during the winter and you're an avid gardener, you could find yourself craving a smoke break the first time you're out digging in the dirt the following Spring. It may hit you with an intensity you haven't felt in months. Don't worry! Once you make your way through the trigger smoke free, you'll move on with ease. The first year is all about firsts...experiencing the many daily events in your life smoke free for the first time. And, it's
-
Quit Meter
$54,742.80
Amount Saved
-
Quit Meter
Days: 5982
Hours: 11
Minutes: 43
Seconds: 55
Life Gained
-
Quit Meter
45619
Smoke Free Days
-
Quit Meter
136,857
Cigarettes Not Smoked