GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or thinking of quitting (or want to support quitters), please - join us! We kindly ask that politics be left out.
You can also click the GUS tag to view all diary posts, or access the GUS Library at dKosopedia for a great list of stop-smoking links. Check it out! Want to make sure you never miss us? Follow the GUS tag to keep GUS in your Stream.
A message to all quitters: you don't have to avoid GUS if your latest attempt to quit didn't work out. We won't give you a bad time and we consider the attempted quits as "practice" for the real quit.
Most of you who've read my diaries before know I'm a big believer in having a Plan B; that is, being prepared for cravings or stressful scenarios so you don't fall back on old scripting and habits and patterns of behavior. In simplest terms, I think it's a good idea to have some kind of go-to plan for when those cravings hit. You shouldn't even have to think about it, you should just be able to do whatever it is, right then, with very little effort. Stopping to think about something, or worse, having to concoct a plan on the fly when you're stressed-out is not ideal...those situations are just opportunities for a slip waiting to happen.
Some of this comes from experience, but some of it is simply the way I approach stuff. I'm a "get your ducks in a row" kind of gal. With rare exceptions, I think before I leap. In fact, I don't just think, I plan.
I stock up on supplies.
I putter around and make sure things are all squared away.
I gather copious materials for review, and not just for show: I actually review them! In fact, I often study them at length. I go over stuff so thoroughly that before I know it sometimes, the moment has passed, or I've given myself time to formulate an excuse as to why I can't (or won't) do something.
When I was toying with the idea of quitting, in a half-assed kind of way (about a year before I actually did quit), I remember trying to get all my ducks in a row for my supposed quit. I tested NRTs (and found, to my dismay, that I didn't tolerate any of them well). I read up. I tried to figure out what might be the least stressful time to quit, and mapped out a long program of cutting back. I even marked up a little calendar.
In short, I tried to create the most ideal conditions possible to ensure my quit was successful, and I told myself that when everything was just perfect, and I had all my little ducks lined up in a row, then it would be time and I could do it, and somehow, all that preparation and planning and creating the ideal "Quit Bubble" would somehow let me pull it off, like magic. (I also seem to have thought that the Perfect Quit Moment would announce itself to me, reveal itself in some blindingly obvious way that would allow me time to hit all my marks and check off my lists and do it all perfectly...but that's a story for a different diary, perhaps one called "Yet Another Thing I Was Sadly Mistaken About.")
Didn't work that way, of course. I never did manage to get every duck in a row to make the Perfect Quit Moment happen. When I did quit, the timing was bad, the work situation stressful, there were a hundred reasons why everything wasn't perfect, starting with the fact that I was completely unprepared, on quit day, to actually, y'know...QUIT SMOKING. And yet, that's exactly what I did. Quit, with little warning, and no real plan in place for that moment. So far, it's working out pretty well.
It's nice to have everything planned and everything in place. It's great to have support and encouragement (at home, at work, online), and a good NRT or medication plan. It's even better to have the magical combination of all of those things that is ideally suited to support your effort, plus a strong desire to quit.
But you know what? That last one -- wanting to quit -- is the one that really counts. That's the one that gets you through slips and missteps and backsliding and temptation and stressful moments and the million little things that can totally mess with your quit. The desire to quit can get you there whether your ducks are in a neat row or, like mine, in a haphazard pile in the corner, half-buried in a pile of stuff you haven't got around to doing yet.
The GUS team, we haz it:
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Had some experience with the effects of smoking?
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