Re: Repost: Week 1, Days 1-7
- From: "Stephanie" <sajesqnyc@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 30 Jun 2006 04:50:24 -0700
Kathleen,
You are a precious gift to all of us.
love
Steph
xoxo
Kathleen wrote:
(Originally posted by padders)
DAY 1
Welcome to the majority. Only 26 percent of adult Americans smoke, and
they nearly all wish they didn't. Public opinion holds smokers in low
esteem. When a person lights up a cigarette, others see a poor soul
lacking in self-control, a victim. To put it unkindly, a drug addict.
After all, precious few people smoke because they want to. They smoke
because they can't stop. Yet they are surrounded by people who could
stop and did. How does that make them feel?
Bad. As you did until today. No you have crossed to the other side.
You can hold up your head. You can sit in the non-smoking section. You
don't have to subject yourself to other people's whims by asking the
sniveling questions "Mind if I smoke?" Now you're as good as they
are.
Twenty minutes after your last cigarette, nicotine ceased to affect
your blood pressure, pulse, and body temperature. Within 8 hours, the
carbon monoxide level in your blood drastically fell, and increased
oxygen is now reaching all the tissues of your body.
By: Meditations for surviving without cigarettes
DAY 2
Don't feel sorry for yourself. People moan about the pain of quitting,
but what about the pleasure? Things are looking up already. You've
cleared out those vile ashtrays. You smell better. You don't have to
look for your cigarettes.
You probably don't feel your best today. You crave a cigarette,
naturally. You expected that. But you may also be bowed down by
headaches, nausea, sweatiness, aches, and digestive upsets. Not to
mention irritability, restlessness, anxiety, and difficulty
concentrating. These are normal nicotine withdrawal symptoms, and they
pass quickly. You can ignore them, or if you prefer, declare yourself
sick and go to bed. It's best to stay away from smokers; this is a
perfect time to haunt museums, movie theatres, parks, and mountain
trails. one woman spent the first two no-smoking days on her bicycle
miserable and depressed. On the third day she felt wonderful.
Withdrawal is a nasty business. Wouldn't care to repeat it, would you?
Even if you're on a nicotine patch, you're unlikely to be feeling
wholly yourself. Observe your feelings, as if they were a passing
parade. They will retreat, and so will the urge for a cigarette,
unless you smoke. Tomorrow will be different.
DAY 3
You have conferred tremendous benefits on yourself by quitting
smoking. You've added not just eight years (on average age) to your
expected life span, but eight much healthier years than you could look
forward to as a smoker. Put to good use, they will be happier years,
too. You are now in a position to get more out of life than you ever
could as a smoker. That cloud of smoke stood between you and life's
full experience.
At the moment you may be coughing or clearing your throat more than
ever before--so much that your chest may hurt. Be glad! You've
recovered the ability to clear out blocked airways, which were stuck
full of mucus. The clearing-out process lasts only a few days, and
your old smoker's cough (the body's attempt to protect itself from the
irritants in cigarette smoke) will be history in a few weeks.
Fatigue during the day and wakefulness at night are normal withdrawal
symptoms, not likely to last more than a few weeks. Intestinal upsets
can also last weeks, but most of your other symptoms will pass in a
day or two. The worst cigarette cravings should now be behind you.
DAY 4
Your worst physical withdrawal symptoms should have passed by now. if
the only reason you smoked was that you'd once had the bad luck of
becoming addicted to nicotine, you'd be home free.
But people are not such fools that they smoke out of addiction alone.
They smoke because smoking is rewarding. Chances are, you have a
number of hurdles still to cross in your metamorphosis into a
non-smoker. In the past, smoking has helped you to regulate your
moods, ignore pain, control excitement, ward off anxiety, and medicate
depression. But as smoking provides only a distraction, not a cure,
smokers tend to have a lot of unfinished business in their psyches.
When someone stops smoking, he or she is apt to suffer most from the
intensity of emotions. The uplifting ones can be as intimidating as
the anxious ones. Both scream "CIGARETTE"!!! The trick is to let these
feelings rush by without succumbing to them. In time, you will learn
to tend your emotions far more affectively without cigarettes than you
ever did with them.
DAY 5
As long as you smoked, your body operated under a tremendous
hindrance. It had to adapt not only to nicotine, but to the 4000 plus
other chemicals found in burning tobacco (over 40 of which are known
to be carcinogenic). That smoke you took in didn't just gum up your
lungs, but passed immediately into your bloodstream. The carbon
monoxide in the smoke displaced oxygen, making you tired and
breathless. Nicotine sped up your heart rate and raised your blood
pressure. When you lit a cigarette your body temperature also fell,
and less blood flowed to your arms, legs, and feet. If you're feeling
tingling now in your fingers and toes, it's because you're noticing
improved circulation.
If you still want a cigarette, try the 4 D's: Drink water, Delay,
Deep-breathe, Do something else. The craving will go away in a couple
of minutes -- If you don't smoke
DAY 6
You do exercise, don't you? Exercise lets you fully reap the sense of
well-being that comes from not smoking. Exercise does well what the
body does badly, which is to alleviate anxiety, depression, and
restlessness. Both smoking and exercise give the brain's
neurotransmitters a boost, but the effects of exercise are much longer
lasting. A cigarette produces only a few minutes' reprieve from
anxiety; a good workout creates genuine relaxation, lasting hours. For
those who worry about getting fat, exercise
is a critical part of the program.
It's necessary to find an exercise you can bring yourself to do
regularly. You can hate running and still like ice skating or
racquetball or weight lifting or bicycling or swimming or yoga. Good
old walking will do fine. An easy stroll is far better than nothing.
In your early weeks of not smoking, you should try to at least one
exercise break a day. The exertion cuts the craving for a cigarette,
and there is satisfaction in making the most of your body's growing
capabilities--now that it is no longer a smoking machine.
DAY 7
"Just for today" is a key slogan in Nicotine Anonymous. "Just for
today, I will not smoke." You may reassess the situation tomorrow,
whereupon you may decide to smoke again. Thus, your only problem is
getting through today. In the years to come, if you want to smoke, say
to yourself, "Well, maybe tomorrow." Tomorrow, one hopes, you will
decide you can get through tomorrow. This takes the chill off making a
lifetime decision. The thought of forever may be too much to
contemplate. And if tomorrow seems too close to forever, there's "just
for the next 7 minutes I will not smoke."
.
- References:
- Repost: Week 1, Days 1-7
- From: Kathleen
- Repost: Week 1, Days 1-7
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