Hi to all! I wanted to address what Plover said about basically not wanting to hear about previous relapses. I view this board much as I would an AA or other 12-step recovery meeting. I am not an alcoholic but I have many friends and family who are and have been to "open" AA meetings as well as having spent a number of years in Al-Anon.
In AA (and I presume other dependency recovery programs as well) one of the things they talk about is how to stay quit. They share their experience strength and hope with one another. For many people that experience is going to include some relapses. They talk about it so they can learn rom it.
We do the same thing here at Freedom. I share the fat that I have had numerous failed quits because I want to remind myself just how easy it is to blow it and because that is my experience. My strength in this quit comes from having successfully completed 92 days smoke and nicotine free by not taking another puff one day at a time. My hope in this quit is that I and smokers the world over will "get it" and remember to never take another puff.
I don't try to glamorize my relapses--in fact I am ashamed of them, especially the last one since the quit was something I really wanted (so I thought) and actually was the result of a "healing ceremony" in a local church, so my failure felt like I let God down! I bring up the fact that I relapsed that time because we were trying to move and our dog died of mysterious causes and my wife "shut down" and I couldn't handle the stress because that shows how easy it is to revert to our addiction when we don't want to face reality!
Today I am happier than I have been in a long time, far happier than I was as a smoker, and I don't want to go back! If that means I have to bring up previous quits from time to time to reinforce this quit then please accept my apologies now in advance. Unfortunately all that we have to share is not going to be pleasant, but we can't change the past and what we have done there, only strive to live better today and for the future.
Thanks for letting me share. As I posted in this string earlier I fully agree with the no relapse policy of this board. It has been a factor to keep me from relapsing more than once and probably will serve as a partial deterrent in the future as well!
yqb, David - Free and Healing for Three Months, Two Days and 28 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 5 Days and 19 Hours, by avoiding the use of 1674 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $126.06.