Hello Kate,
You didn't say whether you were nicotine free now or just contemplating nicotine free life. Regardless, there are many points I would like to make about what you wrote, number one being this: "I know it is probably as simple as never take another puff but that advice overwhelms me and depresses me." What about living a life free of an addictive substance through a delivery method that has a 50/50 chance of killing you or at a minimum significantly reducing the quality of your life is depressing? You are under the impression that when you are out with friends and family that you are enjoying yourself because you are smoking? You enjoy your family and friends only because they are smoking with you or is it that you can smoke amongst them with no sense of having to hide the habit that you find so repulsive. (In your own words "disgusting and embarassing")
You don't love smoking Kate - You smoke to avoid withdrawl from nicotine. When you drink alcohol, it lowers you blood serum nicotine level more rapidly, that is why you smoke more when you are drinking with your family and friends. You don't start smoking again either because you don't understand the law of addiction because it is obvious that you do understand it. Your choice to smoke after 3 or 4 months is simply irrational knowing what you know about addiction and what smoking tobacco can do to you.
There are some here who have had a more difficult time than others in the first few months but having struggled through it have no desire to go through it 9 times more. They know that once the struggle is done, they will never again have to face down those types of cravings and triggers as long as they never take another puff. You need to have faith in what we say. It does get better. It is not a goal that is beyond your reach or your ability to attain. It is real and it is attainable for anyone who is willing to stay committed to their comittment to remain nicotine free.
You may be of the impression that it will be forever difficult and so you give up trying to fight off what seems like non stop urges to light up. That is not what being nicotine free is like unless you make it that way. If you are constantly pining after the so called joy of smoking thinking how good it would be to have just one then you have not read enough to understand your addiction. Nor have you made up your mind to quit. You can't wish the time away and wake up one morning with one year gone by. You must live each of those 365 days one day at a time to learn how wonderful it is to be nicotine free. We measure our success one day at a time, not in years, because just like you, we can decide one day to pick up a cigarette and light it and it won't matter how many years we had behind us. What have we learned if after 1 year, 5 years, or 10, we put a toxic waste dump in a paper tube to our lips light the end and take a deep breath only to find that the Ahhhh we were looking for and that the tobacco companies promise us is not there?
The only way to quit smoking is to quit smoking. If you want to quit, then you already understand that nothing, no circumstance, nobody can ever make you take another puff. The decision is always yours. You can do it. Yes you can.
Joseph
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