Quitting Smoking One Day at a Time...

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

12 weeks off cigarettes! Doc Ok'ed Refill

Hi all...It has been a super stressful busy week. I went back to work and shortly found out someone had stolen my identity! I am amazed that I did not smoke! I wanted one, I could almost taste one but knew:
1.) Even if I did smoke it was not going to change anything. I was still going to have to call credit card companies, change bank accounts and call up the credit bureaus.

2.) I was not going to feel better if I had a cigarette. In fact, I was probably going to feel worse, although it is really easy to get into magical thinking such as "A cigarette will calm me down so I can deal with this." No, the cigarette will take at least five minutes to suck down and then I would feel like I screwed up!


At that point, I called my doctor and left a message that I was under stress and was not ready to go off Chantix. He called me back and agreed to refill the prescription. I think I may taper down to one pill a day. I cannot believe it has been twelve weeks! I stopped smoking on 11/11/07 and now it is 1/11/08! Time really does fly!

I went back to the smoking support group (for the third time) just to give back to the new people who are struggling! It made a huge difference to see one guy who was sitting there who was successful. He was the one who told me about Chantix and that is when I started researching Chantix on the internet and I found "Maggie's Mind" my first Chantix blog that seemed to answer every single question I had and more. From there, I have been following many other Chantix bloggers journey to end the insanity of "sucking down poison" (as Maggie would say) to get a feeling of relief or courage.

I never thought I would say after 30 years of smoking,I would love life as a non-smoker! I really appreciate not being a slave to big tobacco companies and the nicotine demon! Don't get me wrong, I still want a cigarette someetimes. Sometimes I really need one! I just don't light up. I do other things: I blog, I walk around the block (not enough), I pet my cat or I watch a reality show (too many)! I also log on to "The GetQuit" Chantix support site and even called someone once when I was really going out of my mind. I have saved about $454.00 that I can use on a nice vacation or to whiten my teeth at the dentist. They are kind of dingy!! Thirty years of smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee will do that.

I will still continue to blog about my experiences and read all of yours. I really missed not being able to write anything this week. I was just too busy on the phone dealing with the indenty stuff. Hope all is well with everyone.
Peace,
Diva

4 comments:

lynda w said...

I am so sorry you have to deal with all of that! A friend of mine is dealing with something similar. Someone got her credit card number and started making huge purchases. Now she's dealing with the mess that's left by it. I hope that goes okay for you.

But, wow! You may have spoken for all of us when you explained why smoking to deal with stress would just make you feel worse. I myself have felt like that many times. Just one of the reasons that this quit is the real thing this time. I never let myself be honest about it before. That's something I had a hard time with in the past.

Congratulations on 12 weeks! Now I have to go see how long it's been for me. I started losing track after my 1 month milestone.

MamaFlo said...

Sorry about the identity stuff Diva - that sucks!!

CONGRATUALTIONS on not giving in and smoking! Everyone is going to have stress but not everyone smokes and now you are part of that everyone that doesn't smoke crowd. HURRAH!!

I believe it's 110 days for me today and it's the best I've felt yet! This can only get better!!

Author said...

Best of luck dealing with the identity stuff, that's gotta be a handful. CONGRATS on not using it as an excuse to smoke, and CONGRATS on your twelve week mark and CONGRATS on getting your prescription refilled.

You're doing awesome!!!

Anonymous said...

Ugh, on the ID theft thing. That's just so horrible to deal with I bet. Congrats to you on 12 weeks, though! That's really awesome!