Welcome CrimsonRyno and congratulations on taking back your mind, mouth, coins, health and life expectancy!  If not already, you should soon start to notice that you're a bit calmer during crisis as one of smoking's greatest myths is that it calms stress.  What it really calms is the onset of early withdrawal and nicotine's absence.   Nicotine is an alkaloid and any acid producing event (stress, alcohol or a significant intake of vitamin C) will cause the kidneys to accelerate elimination of nicotine from the bloodstream.   Picture adding the onset of early withdrawal to every stressful event life threw our way.  The greater the stress, the quicker nicotine's elimination rate.

The problem is that the fixation influence and tease of a rather large pile of old nicotine replenishment memories makes it a bit hard to notice a gradually increasing sense of calm during crisis, and a complete absence when the crave episode is in response to encountering an unextingusihed feeding cue.  

Keep in mind, CrimsonRyno, that those old replenishment memories, documenting the satisfaction of wanting for more nicotine, belonged to an actively feeding drug addict, not the healing and recovering brain you now call home.  Nothing is missing, and nothing in need of replenishment.

Except for remote, back-home, infrequent or seasonal triggers, the balance of recovery is in allowing the tease of those old memories to lose their punch.  It isn't unusual to at times feel like things have plateaued, that the rose bud has stopped opening.   It's why taking recovery just "one day at a time" is so important, as although we cannot see the rose bud opening, with each passing day the influence of those old drug use memories is weakening, with challenges growing shorter, further apart and generally less intense.

As for being around smoking co-workers in the shop, they're each actively feeding drug addicts, and nicotine's two hour half life in the bloodstream forces them to replenish.  They're not doing so to tease you but because they must, because the rising tide of anxities you just navigated begins to hurt when they don't.  Study them closely, CrimsonRyno.  Most of the cigs you'll watch them smoke are smoked while on auto-pilot.

This is likely the best gift you've ever allowed yourself.  Hold it close.   As Joel notes, quitting during a time of significant stress almost guarantees that stress will never be seized upon as a relapse excuse again.  You've been there, done that!  We're each with you in spirit.  There was always only one rule ... no nicotine today!

Breathe deep, hug hard, live long,

John (Gold x11)