My motivation for quitting was being unable to breathe. I would choke and cough until I blacked out. I would cough all night long. I couldn't enjoy anything. Not the cigs but that cough was my constant companion.
Since I quit, the cough is gone completely and I have thoughts that since it's gone, I'm cured and can smoke again. So the cough is not my main motivation for staying quit. My main motivation for staying quit is greed. Once I bought myself something with the quit money, I was hooked, I have spent my quit money many times over. It will take years to get all my quit goals. I'm getting one tomorrow, a brand new powerful ultra quiet cordless clipper! If I had not quit, I wouldn't be able to do that. That's even affordable considering the money spent on the NRT! When I think about buying a pack, I look at the $5.00 bill and see it not as a pack of cigs but as something I could put toward a more tanglible goal. And, it wasn't a mere five bucks, I'd plop down ten or fifteen at a time. Sometimes I'd look at that money going to a cashier and think even then about what I could get if I didn't smoke! I look at the wildly expensive shears I got, something I wanted for years, and could not afford until I quit. That means something to me. Sometimes when a craving is really bad, I'll hold them. Please don't think I'm crazy or maybe I am. But I'll hold them and think that if I hadn't quit, I would never have them.
I used to kid myself and think that no one notices those few dollars going away. It could be a coffee, or a cheap lunch, spent anyway. But it wasn't and it was a huge expense. Really huge. Between my husband and myself we are talking over $400 a month! That's a car payment!
That's part of what keeps me quit.
