Not as hard as it's made out to be! Inspiration for a new year?

Happiness has requested that I share some more of my story and for the sake of giving back to this community that has inspired me, I will try to return inspiration in kind.

I started smoing when I was 14. I am now 32 and I have been tobacco free for 7 months and I refuse to go back. I found this website as I was preparing to begin what is now shaping up to be my final quit. I had tried and failed a few times before, which is par for the course, I suppose.

Got married. Now I'll quit! Failure.

First child born! Now I'll quit! Failure.

Second child born! I didn't even try to quit.

And those are only the most recent failures over the past 6 years!

Every time I had tried to quit, I used NRT. Patches, gum, vape, whatever I thought might help. Nothing did. So I just kept on smoking, telling myself it wasn't a big deal. It didn't really bother my wife and I was generally pretty good about keeping my kids smoke free. Life was....smoky. My oldest is now 5 and even though I thought I was hiding it, I would see her "smoking" her colored pencils, crayons, and other vaguely cig shaped toys. I knew something had to change, but it still took a while to make it happen.

At the beginning of this year, my wife and I decided that she would quit her part time job to stay at home full time. It seemed a good idea (and ultimately it was!). We had some money in the bank, my full time job is decent, and it has definitely been good for the kids. By April or May, money had gotten tight. I had been spending about $12 USD every single day. $8 for a pack of cigs, $4 for 2 energy drinks (I kicked that habit, too!). One payday, after taking care of the bills, I looked at what was left and came to a realization:

I could smoke cigarettes, or I could feed my family.

It was an easy choice. I stopped smoking that very weekend. Maybe I'm lucky. I have read a lot of stories on here and elsewhere about people getting a much harder wake up call much later in life.

I started with the patch as I had found some success with it before, and earnestly dove in to learning what I could about what it takes to quit smoking. I found an ebook (unfortunately, I do not remember the title will edit if I can find it) that told about the damage smoking causes, like we've never heard that before! And the truth about nicotine addiction, which I honestly hadn't really confronted before. I also found this website and began reading your experiences, difficulties, fears, milestones, relapses, and many successes! It is also here where I learned of a secret weapon. A light to drive fears out of the shadows and into the full view of the day! A stake to plunge into the heart of nicotine monsters everywhere! Ok...it's a book. But it's those other things, too!

Alan Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

The weekend I quit, I stocked up on sunflower seeds, lollipops, patches, and...other things. Ok, I like cannabis and part of my quit plan was that when I was having a strong craving for a cig, I would smoke a joint instead. It helped! I nibbled seeds, sucked lollipops, smoked fatties, and read Alan Carr.

Once I learned the truth about nicotine addiction, which is that ultimately every time I craved a cig, I was already in just about the worst parts of nicotine withdrawal! I was doing long term damage to my health and wealth in order to keep the mild (yes, mild, face it, if you haven't!) effects of nicotine withdrawal at bay. Six days after I put on the patch and quit the cigs, I quit the patch and I haven't looked back. I have read of people that have been unsuccesful despite reading Alan Carr, but it was a total game changer for me, and the reason is that it fixes your mindset. No cessation drugs, no willpower, no risk. Just a healthy dose of reality. Once I learned the truth, quitting was as easy as I wanted to make it, and the easiest way to do it is, like Happiness says, "Smart Turkey"!

If you use NRT to help you quit, you are still feeding the addiction to nicotine, and perpetuating the cycle of withdrawal. If you wear the patch for as long as the patch manufacturer recommends, 2 months? 4? More?! You will be in perpetual nicotine withdrawal for that entire time! And we all know how irrational we would get without a cig for 30 minutes! We're told it's hard to stop. We're told it's best to take it slow and take baby steps. NRT just makes it harder and take longer.

It is so much easier to stop than most smokers believe!

Quitting smoking has been a huge catalyst for positive change in my life. In order to quit, I had to be honest with myself. I had to seek out truths that I didn't necessarily want to confront.

I thought I would never quit. I thought I would never want to. I thought that smoking was a part of who I was.

I ended up being able to separate what I do from who I am. Now that I've been successful at that, my whole outlook on the future of my life and my family has become much brighter.

My wallet is a lot fatter, too and that's just the icing on the cake.