This is probably the longest post I have done on Cure Zone, but I really wanted to give the people here some support and to share with you what worked for me. I wanted to do this because I really know what you people are going through right now and I admire your strength and will!

I stopped smoking over 5 years ago now and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, it was also one of the best. I really could not envisage my life as a none smoker, I felt that some how it was part of who I was, part of my identity. I smoked 30 cigarettes a day and for a long time seen it as one of my main enjoyments that I did not want to give up.

The first few weeks like many people here I wanted a cigarette so bad I was literally climbing the walls, I felt like I was going crazy. Most of the time I felt like I was on the edge of hysteria. I would be shouting and angry one minute and the next I would be sobbing my eyes out. The thing I realised after a while was that, I had used cigarettes to push down any strong feeling that I had. Any emotion that I had both good and bad was suppress and push down with cigarettes and now that I had stopped they were coming up and out and I had to let them or smoke a cigarette to push them down again, which gladly I wasn't going to do. THE WERE COMING UP AND OUT...and I felt for those around me at the time.

When I finally packed in I was 35 years of age and what I realised was this, that there had been a pattern to my attempts at packing in. I had first tried to stop when I was 25 and started again after 7 months, I had tried again at 30 and got to 7 months. Each time with a space of 5 years in between and each time getting as far as 7 months. Once I realised this I knew that seven months was a difficult point and I asked myself why. The reason for me was two folds, one was to do with weight, when I looked at it I had started to smoke like many young women at the age of 18 because I wanted to be thin and smoking suppressed my appetite. The other one was that 7 months was a long enough time to prove to myself that I could stop smoking, that I had will power and that I could live with out smoking. BUT then there was the decision...DID I REALLY WANT TO STOP FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE??? Both times before this the answer (although unconscious at the time) had been no. Now I was armed with some awareness and I was making an informed conscious choice. Also because I was coming from a more aware place of why I started smoking and what was holding me back from stopping I could look at the weight issue and say you know what I would rather put some weight on and be able to taste my food, then be addicted to this stuff and be choking myself to death.

One of the most useful tools I found as an aid to packing in was the book by Alan Carr, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I like many others found this really helpful in stopping. Basically he points out that after a couple of weeks the addiction as left your body and what you are really dealing with after this time is psychological. By no means is psychological any less powerful then physical in fact sometimes it's more powerful. The book shows you ways of dealing with this. I don't have the book now as I past it on many years ago but one of the things that I remember most from it is the following analogue that he gives.

He describes addiction as like having a really sore scab on say your arm and the only relief that you get from this scab is to but this really expensive cream on it. The cream gives immediate relief and the scab for a short amount of time starts to recede. Then it comes back with a vengeance, this time you need to put more cream on to get the same amount of relief. Ok so you then realise that actually it’s the cream that is causing the scab and that although it gives relief in the sort term, in the long term it feeds the scab. You leave the cream off and the scab gets so bad that you almost put the cream back on but you don't because you know that after awhile of becoming almost as bad as it can be it will start to recede. HAS LONG AS YOU USE THE CREAM YOU WILL HAVE THE SCAB THE ONLY WAY TO GET RID AND BE FREE FOR LIFE IS TO STOP PUTTING IT ON AND TO GO THROUH THE PAIN OF WITHDRAWRAL

Any step away from avoidance towards freedom involves pain, but I think the pain of letting go of something and the fear of facing something is far less then the pain of not living congruently.

Of all the benefits I have felt from the last 5 years there as been none greater then the actual freedom of the addiction. I remember the satisfaction the first night I felt this. I was drinking and chatting with friends till early hours of the morning and the smokers had run out of cigs. None of them could concentrate or relax, the nearest place that they could get cigs from was too far to walk to and they couldn't drive because they had been drinking. They were done for and I really felt for them because I really remembered that feeling... but you know what I was so glad it wasn't me there.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL ...KEEP IT UP BECAUSE ITS SOOOO WORTH IT!!