I have quit smoking for 3 months and I am trying to stay motivated to stay quit

@Sugarshack Great you kept this up for three months already. Such is greatest!

( @Moose123 Not sure if you still come past at times my dear friend, but i thought this might be relevant for you to know in your battles as well.)

When i stopped smoking i celebrated each time the need for a smoke came up instead of tried to fight it. For thankfulness for ALL the benefits not smoking by FAR outweighed that F..g demand burning inside me all the time demanding i do what i hated to do. (couldn't wait till it died in me)

Honest my friend, if you build your tobacco free life like that, you will feel sorry for your friends smoking and witness the benefit rather than envy them.

Best of luck feeling happy and thankful and have so much more BREATH!

By the way years later, (after many depressive days down the dumps,) i learned that nicotine is good for us depressed people and NOT addictive if taken through a patch.

So now whenever i feel really down or drained i put a patch on in the morning and take it off after dinner for they keep me awake otherwise. They work really good! But only because i use them sparingly for if used all the time the benefit seems to go down a lot after a week or so. And it takes awhile before the benefit comes back again then as well. So max 3 days and then at least as many days without so they keep working well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFx_PSy_Y3g&list=RDKFx_PSy_Y3g&start_radio=1

Thankyou @DownMoreThanUp I appreciate your message very much!! Also the nicotine connection is a very powerful one, when I quit I used nicotine patches for about two months until I started getting severe anxiety from them.

Now I think, I will put on a patch for a few hours and test if that stops the cravings for smoking. I forgot all about Nicotine by itself, and I reckon if I put on a patch that will dismiss the cravings and also retrain my brain AWAY from putting bungas in my mouth. Which when I watch other people doing it, I can see the futility of their behaviour on a logical level, on an emotional level I think "they are relaxing and having a good time". I wonder if I can change my thoughts to think, "they are consuming lung poison and I can relax by doing other things".

@Sugarshack Yes my friewnd that is how it went me as well. Because SO much of the GOOD time we had we smoked, now each time we have a good time where we smoked we have to die wanting to do that. As if the smoke was the good time, so dumb really. But bloody hard at times when we fight our urges rather than begin to think differently and await the urge to perish its demand.

Don't you hate that? Always craving? Now i can use nicotine when i want the benefit, but not use it otherwise, without any demander inside telling me to do so, such is true freedom in my books.

Life addicted to cigarettes is merely water under the bridge friend it is the good in life that we're after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MibW8t5DbI&list=RD7MibW8t5DbI&start_radio=1

Heck yes mate thanks thats a great answer, that the body/memory equates smoking with a good time but, i can have nicotine and a good time, without smoking!! Hooray thankyou as using NRT today made a big difference.

3 months is AMAZING! If this your first time? It sounds like you're really winning this so I'm guessing it's not your first go? It took me years and many attempts. I think the worst relapses I had were at about this three month stage when the actual addiction was easier to deal with but I picked it up just out of boredom. But I haven't had a cigarette in must be more than twenty years now and it's the BEST thing I've ever done. Please believe that one day (and it's not soon, it might take a year or more) you will actually forget about smoking. You've already gone three months so you know that the people you're watching aren't relaxed from smoking. In fact it's speeding up their heart rate and making it harder to breathe. Not to mention the waste of money. I guess you've got an abundance of free time which will increase the boredom feeling but there are better hobbies than smoking. If you're still having cravings I'd suggest hobbies that keep your hands free. I was addicted to crossword puzzles when I quit. If you're not the sit still type then go for walks and...whatever people do when they go outside. I'm impressed that you can still hang out with your smoking friends as I wasn't able to do that for a year or so. Congrats again on the three months; and I'll say just one more time, I promise that you'll forget all about the smokes one day. You got this!

@Sugarshack I think @Chantarelle's post above is for you!

I also want to express my support and give you massive kudos!! 😊💯

Thankyou @Chantarelle yep I have been trying to quit for 10+ years, it is really hard because my parents encouraged smoking it feels ingrained into my life from birth, let alone being encouraged by the parents to smoke and discouraged for quitting, my mum has sabotaged attempts to quit nearly 15 years ago which made it "right behaviour" in my mind, more than ever.

But having had two very abusive parents trying to ruin my life I decided that quitting smoking was the ultimate way to regain my freedom from abuse which was to stop living in denial about escapism and self abuse.

So every time I have quit for a short period of time it bought up massive psychological issues but it was slowly filling all those holes which has led me to quit for a much longer time because my life without smoking, is better than it was with smoking.

Thankyou for reflecting your own experience about quitting and eventually forgetting, because I had a chat with Quitline recently and they said a similar thing, that it's this period is quite hard as I still have emotional and lifestyle fixing to due but my brain is screaming for addiction to come back.

When I write that I can see it as a disruption of comfort zone, that my life is evolving in the three months of not smong (true) but my brain is trying to say NOOOOOO YOUR COMFORT ZONE IS INHALING TOXIC SMOKE EVERY DAY!!

So yes I will stick with NRT and make it a goal to get to one year, and to understand that rewiring my entire life after 20+ years of smoking is very difficult but the benefits definitely outweight the costs of quitting so I have to lean into the discomfort of cravings without going back down a dark tunnel of wasting time and money and slowly killing myself too.

Thankyou everyone for contributing as the urge to smoke has been high but, I will ride out the stress and hope that things get better in time as I rewire my brain, body and lifestyle.

@Sugarshack Smoking becomes a part of absolutely everything doesn't it? My parents and grandparents all smoked. I remember my grandparents quitting when I was a teenager but my parents kept chain smoking - smoking in the car, around children, all the things that kind of horrify me now. But it was all so normal then. I felt like I wasn't just quitting a habit, but an entire lifestyle. I think maybe my parents judged me for that. But I've been estranged from them for quite some time now and don't really care what they think. But sometimes the nagging voice in my head gets really loud telling me how useless I am and occasionally I think but I quit smoking. That's HUGE. And even though I've pretty much forgotten what smoking was like (though I also smoked for nearly twenty years) I try to never forget what an achievement that is. My only advice is to keep busy and remember that you deserve to feel good about healthy choices.

I quit many years ago, but I remember it well. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

I am curious to know if you see yourself as a smoker or non-smoker?

There can be so many layers to an addiction like nicotine, it can really screw with your head.

One thing I got lots of pleasure in when I was battling the smokes was to when I got to tell medical people that I had quit (gp's, nurses, etc). They were obliged to make a big deal out of it, which made me feel really good.

Good luck with your efforts, and have a fantastic 2026!

xoSW

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