I did it - everyone is capable of doing it.

I just got the following email

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Hey pebro,

We have missed you at iCanQuit! We would love to hear how you are going or you could catch up on how other quitters are going: {stories-link}

Good luck and look forward to hearing from you soon.

The iCanQuit Team

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and it made me realise I had not been on the site for some time.

When I went on today, "my journey" informed me that I am 267 days smoke free and based on what smokes cost when I stopped have now saved $6,675 - WOW.

The reason I haven't been on the site for a while is because I rarely if ever even think about cigarettes these days and when I do, usually at the pub or an airport, I am reminded of how good it is to be a non smoker.

I had smoked off an on for forty five years and got to the stage where my wallet was telling me I should stop, my body was telling me I had to stop and I finally convinced my brain that I was stopping.

I used Champix. Stopped smoking completely after 2 weeks and kept on the Champix for about two months.

I have found it incredibly easy to stay stopped. The hardest part of my journey was actually running down and out of cigarettes and actually stopping.

I think it has been easy to stay stopped (this time) because I re-trained my brain. I convinced my conscious and sub-conscious mind that I had, had, had to stop smoking. I also finally convinced myself that stopping smoking was different to giving up smoking. If you think of it as "giving up smoking" you will at times feel deprived of what you have given up. I now prefer to think I actually stopped doing something that I wished I had never started doing in the first place.

I'm convinced that nicotine addiction, strong as it is, is more psychological than physical. During the day, my brain told me I needed and I had a smoke every half hour. When I slept, I could go for 6-8 hours without one. For a couple of months after I stopped smoking, I got withdrawal symptoms but they were more by brain trying to convince me to start again than physical. I found there were few if any physical withdrawal symptoms.

Maybe it seems like I have been lucky. I prefer to think that for at least two years prior to stopping I had started the process of re-training my brain and that the re-training has finally paid off.

I think anyone can do it if they really want to and hope that unlike me, other smokers don't wait until they are 60 before deciding they really want to stop.