Broke over

[Jack Coleman]

I stop smoking on Jan. 1 and hadn't had a smoke until today. Bad day at work and I give in. I'm starting over again and plan on becoming a exsmoker. It been 11 days without a cigarette and that the longest I went without one in 30 years.

[David Hibling]

relapses are all over this site - don(t think there can be anuone here who hasn't???? Pick yourself up and start again day by day - you can do it!!!

[jonescarp]

relapses everywhere.

I quit one time and figured it out the first two weeks and never went back.

You have to figure out when you want to smoke why you do and relearn a new behavior.

I know its supposed to be tougher than heroin.

Statements like this are what make people give up.
Because they are looking for an excuse to smoke.

NO EXCUSES

S'DON'T SMOKE

[David Hibling]

I certainly would not want to give anyone an excuse to smoke but neither would I wish someone who relapsed felt so bad they carried on smoking and gave up the quit -I relapsed had some tough love messages and spme less so tough but support got me back on track -

[jonescarp]

I don't want anyone to give up.

I want everyone to succeed.

And I never try to make anyone feel guilty or bad about relapsing.

Relapses occur because people give themselves an excuse to smoke, nothing else.

Once you take all the excuses away, quitting for good is attainable

[hwc]

Make that two, jonescarp. Offhand, I think John Pugh quit on his first try, too. I quit the first time. It wasn't because it was easy. It was because I was NOT going to relapse. No way. No how. When you don't even try to quit for 30 years like me, you don't take it lightly when you get a few days into a successful quit.

I told my father I was quitting about five or six days into my quit. He had quit in his 40s and been watching me smoke for 38 years, quietly urging me to stop before it killed me.

So, I was telling him that I was five days into it and that I was done, I was never going to take another puff. He started in on a comforting speech about how it would be OK if I relapsed, just keep trying. I'm sure he meant well, but I was fighting tooth and nail to get through the first week and it felt like he was giving me permission to go ahead and smoke if it got too rough.

To be perfectly honest, his advice pissed me off. I think that's when I told him that I appreciated his comforting words about relapsing, but I felt like I might only have this one shot to quit smoking and that the only way to make it stick was to NOT smoke. I had made it five days by not allowing even a thought of smoking into my head. Not an option. Period. End of story. Permission to smoke was not what I wanted, or needed, to hear. That's when I told him that I had discovered the simple secret to quitting: just stop smoking.

It makes for a real conundrum in these forums. Of course, I feel for Jack. Of course, I wan't the message to Jack to be, "just get up, dust yourself off, and give it another go." But, there are probably 100 new quitters and soon to be quitters lurking on these threads. I don't want the message to them to be, "it's OK if you relapse, in fact, you'll get an outpouring of sympathy that almost makes quitting and relapsing seem like fun!" The message to the lurkers has to be, "Hell no, it's not OK if you smoke!" How on earth can anyone stop smoking if we tell them that it is OK to smoke? I obviously don't have the solution to this conundrum since 99% of the quitters here hate me. But, I still think the message can't be that's it's OK to start smoking again when the research is so clear that 9 out of every 10 relapsers go right back to full-time smoking.

[hwc]

Jack:

Can you come away from your relapse with any kind of lesson? Anything in particular that led you to smoke? Anything you could have done differently? I think it's really important to stay connected to your support mechanism as you start to move beyond the initial week. There's real vulnerability there for at least the first month, so some way of daily re-affirmation -- be it here or another site or a smoking cessation group or a stop-smoking book -- is good insurance.

[jonescarp]

"research is so clear that 9 out of every 10 relapsers go right back to full-time smoking"

I think that this is very true. Some people will try again, some will go right back.

The people who actually considered quitting will never be satisfied with taking those drags into their lungs again.

The people looking for excuses will go right back.

I am here to assure those people who are seriously considering quitting that it can be done.

And it may not be done the first time.

New Quitters: You have to get the concept in your mind of what quitting is really about in order to succeed.

Don't listen to how hard it is. Listen to how easy it is once you understand why you do it and how to change your thinking.

[butterflybp]

That is what I am relying on jonescarp. Your advice and my other friends. You go and keep them coming, we all are in this together and need each other. Good or bad or toughlove just need to do it....Had some tough love from someone already and not even a friend on my page. Well this is what we are all here for.