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emwell · Oct 29, 2015, 06:57 PM

I did move my quit date up by 1 week.

Addiction is tricky enough on its own. Add a mental health issue and who knows where it will take you.

I've smoked for over 30 years. I have been following this program for 1 week.
Today I had 2 goals.

smoke only 7 cigarettes
Ride each craving wave to the shore

this is the third day riding the wave was a goal. The first 2 days I purposely did not attempt to meet that goal. In my head that meant not getting to smoke at all. In my head I was still allowed to smoke for another week.

When I saw that I again had the same goal, I decided to go for it. I figured if today becomes my quit day, that cannot be a bad thing. I did pretty well with it most of the day. I rode each craving to the end.

Then came the craving that seemed to not end. Finally, I gave in and smoked half a cigarette.

My head immediately started screaming "You failed....You did not meet your goal....You suck.... You cannot do this....Give Up"
Luckily I have been working very hard the last few years. Although those were my immediate thoughts, I knew/realized/remembered/became aware that I did not need to feed them.
Then I had new thoughts. "You have smoked 10-20 butts every day for over 30 years. After 1 week of becoming truly aware of what smoking means to you, you smoked a half of one. Not even a whole one. How can that be called failing?" and "by smoking that half you reinforced how much smoking really does suck." "just because you smoked does not mean you get to give up and smoke again"

I just finished suppah. A big trigger for smoking. I had a choice. Listen to and feed my original thoughts and probably smoke a lot more. Or ride this new craving and don't smoke. I choose to ride already planning to smoke the other half sometime before bed.