“Quit by Choice” is not just the name of this site; it’s a statement of my quit philosophy, which can be summed up in 4 words:
It’s all about choice.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been smoking, it doesn’t matter how addicted you believe you are, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve tried to quit or how many times you’ve failed; all that matters is the choice you make in the moment that you feel a crave.
You see, there’s only this moment: the future is a dream and the past is just a memory. The only time you get to choose is in each moment as it happens. And the only moment that really matters to your success as a quitter is the moment you feel the urge to feed your addiction.
Because that’s the moment of truth.
That’s the moment of choice.
That’s the moment you get to make the most important choice you can make as a quitter: you can either choose to feed your addiction (thereby reinforcing the addiction and strengthening its grip on you) or you can choose not to feed your addiction (thereby reinforcing your freedom and weakening the addiction’s grip on you).
It seems fairly obvious that, if your goal is to quit smoking, you should choose not to smoke every time you get the craving to smoke. What isn’t as obvious to most of us when we attempt to quit is exactly how we’re supposed to do that: we’ve spent an enormous amount of time programming ourselves to light a cigarette every time we get a crave; how do we reverse that programming now?
That’s what “Quit by Choice” is all about: showing you how to reverse that programming. Without going crazy. Without gaining a lot of weight. And without expensive pills, patches, or potions.
I smoked for over 35 years and tried countless times to quit. I tried just about every quit method known to man: from cold turkey to hypnosis to prescription drugs and pretty much everything in between. Yet somehow, I always ended up smoking again.
Until this time.
I quit for the last time on November 19th, 2001, and as I write this, I’ve just passed my 10th anniversary of being a free man again. I don’t miss smoking a bit. I rarely even think about it, and I can’t even tell you the last time I had what you could call a crave.
If this seems like an impossible dream to you right now, I understand; if you’d told me in September of 2001 that I’d not only be quitting in a little more than a month, and that I’d still be free 10 years later, I would have thought it an impossible dream, too.
But it’s not. The only difference between you and me is time and repeated conscious choice.
Join me.