soberSG's Journal

Wednesday April 23 was my final ‘quit’ day. Here it is Friday and I’m starting on my 3rd day to be nicotine FREE. I truly am grateful to have DS and the love & support that I get here. I’ve got all my friends that have hung in there with me through the good and the bad with my physical & mental health. Plus  now I’ve been hanging out at the Smoking Addiction community more this week and I’ve gotten a lot of support there. There’s a lot of good Smobriety there. 

I’ve been on the Chantix now for 2 weeks and I’m up to the 1mg in the morning and 1mg at supper, so far hardly any nausea. But like I said, I make sure I’ve got a full stomach and I drink 8 – 10 oz of water when I take it. I am dreaming a lot. But THANK GOD they are the kind I have with nightmares about my past.  Just weird ones and I don’t even remember their content. I can’t really tell if I’m having difficulty with my sleep because my sleep pattern is so screwed up anyway. Now I’m not saying these past 2 days have been a piece of cake. Yesterday seemed to get a little better. And by that I mean very little. In the evenings it seems to be harder. But I’ve found that at the first urge I’m starting to have, I drink at least ½ a glass of ice water. It makes me feel like I’m full and the urges passes more quickly. I am using a drinking straw the length of a cig and I’ve twisted the end real tight. During those behaviors that normally would trigger a craving I’m picking it up and using it just like a cig. I read that on a thread on the Smoking Addict boards last year. And it really does work. Takes care of the hand-to-mouth actions and the oral fixation at the same time.  Believe me I didn’t come up with any of these ideas myself. I’ve learned about so many good ideas from ppl on here that have been were I’m at and know what I’m going through; sharing tried and true things that have worked for them. I never could imagine I could get this far. I just could not say goodbye (completely) to my best friend. I always have struggled with ‘letting go’ of anything. I keep saying I’m going to write a goodbye letter, but I haven’t done so yet.  I know I’ve got a long, long way to go. I try not to get ahead of myself and into the future. Today is all I can deal with. Sometimes it’s just getting through the urge.