You've done a great job of willing yourself quit from cigarettes for over 3 weeks now. Your reasons to quit are solid but I wonder if a list of reasons for staying quit might help you strengthen your resolve for a longer time horizon. Reasons people want to quit smoking - add your list!
You wrote - I knew it was killing me, and I wanted to be a non-smoker, but I didn't want to not smoke. The cigarette was my accessory - part of my personality. I used it to punctuate the story I was telling, and used it as non-verbal expression - to be dismissive or aggressive or funny or sexy. It gave me an excuse to leave a room or a conversation - "excuse me, I'm stepping outside for a smoke" - or to end an argument - "I'm so angry at you that I have to leave this conversation to go smoke" - or just to get a few breaks in the middle of the workday. I thought smoking was so ingrained in everything that I did that it seemed implausible that I could ever stop.
What can I say - Me Too! What I found here and at Why Quit, what we all find out - there are no cures in that paper tube of tobacco any more. Never were.
The ONLY thing smoking tobacco cigarettes did for you was delay full withdrawal. They did not make you calmer, or smarter, or sexier, or stronger, or happier, or Invisible (Without a cigarette to hide behind I actually have to feel the feelings) or help you deal with life's issues. If you take a little more time and dig a little deeper into our shared addiction you'll find that all of us smoked more and more readily when we were under stress. Why? Because stress is an acid producing reaction to external stimuli and the acid neutralized the nicotine (a base chemical) in our blood serum. With the acid cancelling the nicotine our brain sent out signals to replace this 'essential ingredient' because our brains' reward pathways had been changed to believe nicotine was needed.
A rather long winded way of saying You NO LONGER NEED nicotine. You'll never NEED it again. Need ceased when you cleansed the foreign substance from your system in The 1st 72 Hours .
We all wrestle with Want quite a bit. Thinking vs. wanting It seems that is is more severe when we are not settled about if this quit is truly what we want or what we think we need to do for someone else's benefit.
Amy, we all reach the point of enough and somehow find our way here. There is No Magic Here - no 'Magic Bullet' but magical thiings happen here as we each become Smarter than our addiction. It's time to decide to believe that life is better living as a person clean of nicotine, free to decide what goes into your body and brain. A person free to choose how your money is spent, who you can associate with - whether they are a nicotine user or not. There is a joyful liberation in knowing you can go anywhere you want comfortably without the worry of how you'l I be able to sneak in a smoke - because when we're active addicts that thought was actually wondering how will I be able to keep my nicotine level at an acceptable level - so that I don't begin to feel the withdrawal anxiety alert that our brain sends out while we are maintaining addicts.
Here is an amazing truth I learned here. It changed my life.
There are no 'cigarette smokers' there are only cigarette users.
Cigarettes and the act of 'smoking' are simply the method of delivering nicotine to our addicted brain. Try replacing the word "cigarette" with "nicotine .
Quitting with a positive attitude was a key for me early in my journey back to a nicotine free me. Give it a read, it may help you change your base of thinking to that of a person who has decided to take control of their life and treat their addiction to nicotine, no longer a smoker who is 'trying to quit'.
Reach for your dreams of a future where you are in control, you call the shots, you are again Amy living nicotine free as you were meant to be.
Get rid of any and all old self-image of Amy the smoker and start seeing yourself as Amy who is living her life as a person free to be whatever you CHOOSE to be.
Stay strong, enjoy this wonderful Journey of re-adjustment to "you".
JoeJ Free - NicotineFree and Living as I was meant to be for One Year, Two Months, Twenty Five Days, 7 Hours and 21 Minutes, while reclaiming 39 Days, image by choosing not to use 11233 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $2,271.36. NTAP!