image Hi Dennis and congratulations to you for taking the biggest step and getting yourself clean of nicotine & free. At Two weeks your body is pretty much clean of all nicotine and the residual chemicals, gases and other killer crud that rode along in the tobacco smoke we inhaled for far too long in order to service our addiction. The rest of the personal journey you have undertaken to return to the original issue you is essentially a period of recovery and adjustment. Not always easy but plainly simple. Don't worry, what you feel now is nothing like it feels like further along this road of recovery of our right minds.
One day at a time simply choose to Not take another puff for the rest of this day. The article titled Restoring volume control is a great resource to review and see what good changes lie ahead of you as you continue healing mentally, psychologically and physically from years of active addiciton.
Yeah, I can understand how you say what you feel now is missing smoking as addiction tends to create a false sense of normalcy. But is is a deadly price we pay to maintain that false feel good state we create with every mandatory dose delivered until we decide enough is enough. Took me a very long time to get free of nicotine too but I can assure you if you give yourself the time you need to heal you will feel better and more 'you' than you can ever remember. Neither side is perfect but if you stay true to you and make The Journey Home to the real you then you'll find Comfort too. You see this side of the bars is always free and gets better every day. There's no way to say that of staying trapped in our addiction.
When I initially read your note I thought of the character Red from the movie Shawshank Redemption when he was first released from prison after such a long time. He missed being imprisoned too but soon found a better life did exist outside of those familiar prison bars. As Andy told him so famously back in that prison yard - I guess it comes down to a simple choice really, you either get busy livin' or get busy dyin'.
I like our chances of living longer and a lot better by keeping the personal commitment to not take another puff - no matter what.
A fellow traveller on the Freedom Road, Joe J Free. I'm a life-long nicotine addict who stopped ingesting that killer chemical for 4 years, 5 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 41 seconds (1466 days) ago after 40 years of actively supporting this killer addiction. I had already tried smoking all of them and it darn near killed me. Now I've not had to ingest 39589 deadly doses and saved $10,097.46 in my 'Freedom Dividend' account.
I've reclaimed at least 274 days, 22 hours and 5 minutes of my life, the best part of this gift I give to myself each and every day I choose to NTAP!image