I hear desperation in your post Angie, but I don't hear committment.  I can have the same conversation with any person I meet on the street who smokes cigarettes.  Most will tell me that they want to quit, that they tried to quit, that they need to quit but when offered an opportunity to have a real discussion about quitting, in general they stick to their own theories about smoking, addiction and quitting.  It usually equates to denial and fear.  They also smoke a lot of cigarettes during the conversation.

 

  You proclaimed that reading on www.whyquit.com transformed your thoughts of quitting into determination.  You were so emboldened by what you learned that your quit was easy.  But then you lose me with your "nicotine addict logic."  You claim that you did not need food to replace cigarettes and prove that by starting to smoke cigarettes again?  Your temporary solution to not smoking is to smoke.  Completely logical to a nicotine addict and you are comforted by knowing that you know you are lieing to yourself.   You go on to say that you can't bare the thought of what smoking cigarettes is doing to your husband's health.  How is it that you are so empathetic to the plight of your husbands addiction but have no sympathy for your own?  We can only help others after we learn to help ourselves.  Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy husbands eye ... ?

 

  You have already proven your ability to live without nicotine having gone twenty days without.  But in your own words "It was too easy ..."  So if it were more difficult you would have remained nicotine free to this day?  No one who quits smoking ever smokes again for any reason other than this, they chose to pick up a cigarette, light it and smoke it for the nicotine it contains.  If there were no nicotine in a cigarette, what would be the attraction to inhaling burning tobacco.  It hurts, it tastes horrible, it smells horrible, even worse on others, it is filthy with the flying ashes, cigarette butts, and the film of tars and chemicals that it leaves on every surface.  Where is the pay off?  To the unintiated, it is an unearned dopamine rush - to the old addicted smoker, it is maintenance otherwise known as withdrawl prevention.

 

  My words may not be considered compassionate but perhaps they will shake you up enough to realize how illogical are your arguments for smoking.  Read your own words again and replace the word cigarette with heroin, cocaine or alcohol or nicotine.  Does it change the way you view your addiction?  Whatever illogical thought permitted you to pick up that first cigarette after 20 days may have given you what you were seeking - The next time that you quit may not be "too easy", maybe it will be too difficult.  Perhaps, after four or five tries you will find the perfect quit.  Preferably you will put them down again now and take it one day at a time.  You will take what you learned about your addiction from experience and from reading on www.whyquit.com and use it as a tool to live without nicotine and not as an excuse to smoke again.

 

  If you choose freedom over addiction Angie, you will never regret it.  Read everything that Joel posted in reply to your questions.  What have you got to lose?

 

Joseph