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General : Email from a person planning on quitting December 15 View All Messages
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From: Joel  (Original Message)Sent: 12/6/2005 9:14 PM
Joel
I have made the decision to get out from under the smokes. I am 46 years old and have smoked since early teens. I am currently a 30 cigarette a day smoker. I have chosen a quit date of December the 15th 2005. The date was selected because I have scheduled to be off work that Thursday and Friday. That along with the weekend, I will have four days to start my Quit without being in the normal routine. Will this be a good way to start, or should one start just any ole day?
Thanks
Bill
 
 

Setting quit dates

Conventional wisdom in smoking cessation circles says that people should make plans and preparations for some unspecified future time to quit. Most people think that when others quit smoking that they must have put a lot of time into preparations and planning, setting quit dates and following stringent protocols until the magic day arrives.

When it comes down to it, this kind of action plan is rarely seen in real world quitters. I emphasize the term real world quitters as opposed to people quitting in the virtual world of the Internet. People who seek out and participate in Internet sites do at times spend an inordinate amount of time reading and planning about their quits before taking the plunge. Even at our site we see people say they were reading here for weeks or months before finally quitting and joining up. Although I suspect there are a fair number of people who had already decided to quit right away and searched us out after their quit had begun, and some people who may not have actually decided to quit but who when finding WhyQuit.com and seeing cigarettes for what they are decided then and there to start their quits.

Getting back to real world experience though, the best people to talk to when it comes to quitting smoking is those who have successfully quit and have successfully stayed off for a significant period of time. These are people who have proven that their technique in quitting was viable considering they have quit and they are still smoke free. Talk to everyone you know who is off all nicotine for a year or longer and find out how they initially quit smoking. You will be amazed at the consistency of the answer you get if you perform that little survey.

People are going to pretty much fall into one of three categories of stories. They are:

  1. People who woke up one day and were suddenly sick and tired of smoking. They tossed them that day and never looked back.
  2. People who get sick. Not smoking sick, meaning some kind of catastrophic smoking induced illness. Just people who get a cold or a flu and feel miserable. The feel too sick to smoke, they may feel too sick to eat. They are down with the infection for two or three days, start to get better and then realize that they have a few days down without smoking and decide to try to keep it going. Again, they never look back and stuck with their new commitment.
  3. People who leave a doctors office given an ultimatum. Quit smoking or drop dead--it's your choice. These are people who some sort of problem has been identified by their doctors who lays out in no uncertain terms that the person's life is at risk now if they do not quit smoking.

All of these story share one thing in common--the technique that people use to quit. They simply quit smoking one day. The reason they quit had varied but the technique they used was basically the same. If you examine each of the three scenarios you will also see that none of them lend themselves to long-term planning--they are spur of the moment decisions elicited by some external circumstance.

I really do encourage all people to talk to do this survey, talking to long-term ex-smokers in their real world. People who they knew when they were smokers, who they knew when they quit and who they still know as ex-smokers. The more people do this the more obvious it will become how people quit smoking and how people stay off of smoking. Again, people quit smoking by simply quitting smoking and people stay off of smoking by simply knowing that to stay smoke free that they must never take another puff!

Joel



Replies to This Message The number of members that recommended this message.    
     re: Email from a person planning on quitting December 15   MSN NicknameRickrob53_Gold  12/6/2005 10:23 PM
     re: Email from a person planning on quitting December 15   John  12/6/2005 10:27 PM
     re: Email from a person planning on quitting December 15   MSN NicknameJoeJFree-Gold-  12/6/2005 10:32 PM
     re: Email from a person planning on quitting December 15   Joel  1/27/2006 9:40 PM
     re: Email from a person planning on quitting December 15   Joel  5/22/2007 11:34 PM