When you get a crave, do you put a lot of energy into trying to get your mind off of it?
I think many (if not most) of the problems we have around craves are the result of trying to get our minds off of them. We put all this effort into pushing the craves away, when it actually takes far less effort — and would be better for our quit in the long run — to face the crave in the moment that it’s happening, accept it, go through it, and come out free on the other side.
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If you’re having a challenge with those internal arguments that never seem to end or resolve (“have to quit smoking” / “scared to quit smoking”; “want to quit” / “don’t want to quit”; “ready to quit” / “not ready to quit”; etc…), it may help if you personify your addiction (I’ve always thought of it as my “inner junkie”); this way, you can put some distance between yourself and your addiction.
I think two things are key; time and repeated conscious choice.
By time, I mean our conception of time and the conventions we’ve built up around that concept; I don’t know how successful I was in presenting my ideas about this, but I wrote about this in a tale called “what time is it?” that you may want to read (it’s part of a larger collection of stories that I wrote during the first year of my quit that are posted at a site called “tales from the quit“).
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Are you still quit? If so, congratulations! Most quitters would probably agree that the first 3 days are the hardest to get through. And the last time I went through them I would have agreed: I remember going through some serious withdrawal symptoms in those first 3 days.
Whether you had it hard or easy, though, if you’re still free on January 3rd, you’re doing great! Every day should get a little easier from here on; every day, you should feel a little more “normal” as a non-smoker, a little more comfortable in your new role.
If you want to quit, and stay quit long-term, you have to get honest with yourself. As I’ve mentioned before (and will no doubt mention again), one of the things addicts are really good at is denial. In fact, we’re world champs at it. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s so easy to go back to feeding our addictions after we quit; there are so many things that we’ve been in denial about that we just can’t deal with them without the smokescreen in place.
First of all, you have to get honest about being an addict. It doesn’t help for you to continue to kid yourself about this by saying things like, “it’s just a bad habit,” and, “I can give it up any time I want to.” No it isn’t, and no you can’t. Studies have shown that over 90% of people who smoke regularly do so because they’re addicted. How likely do you think it is that you’re one of the few regular smokers who aren’t addicts?