Cold Turkey: Quitting the Old Fashioned Way
As a smoker for 12 years, I know what it's like to be addicted to something
you'd prefer to quit. I felt helpless for years, wishing I could take time out
of my life and make it through the withdrawals. It turns out that life doesn't
stop for recovery. Sometimes you've got to take it in the gut and get started
before it's too late.
It's safe to say that most of us have known
someone who died as a direct result of smoking cigarettes for a couple decades
or more. For me, it was my grandmother on my father's side of the family. She
died when I was just a kid, so unfortunately I didn't get to know her really
well. I did understand the pain of my family as they dealt with her lung cancer
and had to watch her go a bit earlier than she should have. Sadly, she was the
first one in my lifetime to go because of smoking, but not the last. People have
passed because of various cancers, heart problems and fires. Somehow none of
this led to me turning down my first cigarette, and wasn't really an inspiration
for me to stop.
When I finally laid down my last cigarette, it was for
me. I started having heart pains because of being overweight and smoking at the
same time berry
mix vape juice. I've studied nicotine's effects and learned that the risk of
heart attack rises dramatically during the 45 or so minutes that nicotine is
acting as a stimulant. This led me to the conclusion that I could immediately
cut back my risk of early death by dropping the cigarettes. I didn't play
around. I stopped cold turkey.
Quitting smoking cold turkey has a certain
allure to it. You feel tough for doing it the 'hard way'. You crush your
cigarettes, or even give them to someone else. Dump the ashtray so you don't
fiddle about like a crack head making a pipe to smoke the leftovers from your
cigarette butts best
mint tobacco flavored e juice. Believe me, sometimes the cravings are strong
enough to make you sink far lower than you've ever imagined.
The withdrawal
symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are both physical and mental. You'll be
irritable, that is a given. Many people have headaches, likely because of the
blood vessels returning to their normal state. The lungs burn, especially in the
morning, because of the healing process and the new flow of oxygen.
Unfortunately, most of this is constant and isn't nearly as bad as the moment
when you have a craving. The true secret is to keep your mind busy and avoid
triggers.
As a webmaster, working for sixteen hours a day, I developed a
lot of bad habits. Chain smoking and chugging coffee were among the worst. When
I stopped smoking, I had to stop working on my web authoring for a couple weeks.
I turned my spare time to what I now call crack TV. College in the daytime,
crack TV at night. DVRs can be a big help. I'll credit shows like Rock of Love
Charm School, Jerry Springer and Cops to helping me keep my mind off of
cigarette withdrawal.
Only when the withdrawal had faded to a background
noise in my daily routine did I try to ease myself back into the things that I
once enjoyed but associated with smoking cigarettes. Now I can type again
without getting too irritated, but the cravings still come. Two weeks is a nice
accomplishment, and at this stage I won't go back.
Nicotine doesn't have
a hold on me any longer, because I feel blissful moments when I stop thinking
about it. Even if it seems like a few minutes, I taste a freedom that I long to
experience on a daily basis. Waking up one day without a single craving will be
pure joy.
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