Hello everyone! I stumbled on this site during a crave while looking for tips on how to get through each crave. I'm glad I found this. I have a lot to learn about the site and need to keep poking around but the main jist of me being here is I am 20 days into a quit.
Welcome to the site! 20 days of solo quit is an awesome accomplishment. Check out the
Welcome Center for information on how the site works.
Worst 20 days of my life and it doesn't seem to be getting easier, AT ALL.
Be careful with this line of thinking. It sounds like you've set a predefined level of suffering that makes it OK to cave, and you're working your way toward it. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I've been where you are and I know the mind games. Give it some honest thought and see what you come up with.
I chewed for 25 years and loved every minute of it. All day, everyday. You've all heard if before and somehow I think I'm different. What I'm glad to see is that I'm not different and many of you felt the same pain in quitting that I am going through.
A few points on this one:
1. I bet you really didn't love it. You may have thought you loved it in the beginning, but didn't notice when everything you thought you loved gradually slipped away. Near the end I bet you really just hated dipping a little less than you hated the withdrawals.
2. The sense of loss happens to everyone who quits. It is an illusion and it will go away.
3. Make every effort to break through the illusion that you enjoyed dipping. Never never never allow yourself to romanticize dipping. If you keep telling yourself that you loved dipping, you will continue to believe it and you will continue to suffer.
I am suffering emotional swings including breakdowns. So here I am, not wanting to give in and cave. Although I'm doing this for me, I am also doing it for my wife and 3 kids. So caving isn't an option but during a breakdown it seems like the right thing to do (the herbal stuff helps but it sure isn't a complete fix).
You will be uncomfortable during your quit. That is OK. The key to getting through this aspect is to give yourself permission to experience the discomfort. That really made a huge difference for me; once I accepted that it was just going to be uncomfortable for a while, it became easy to dismiss it and go on about my day.
So I'll post here and hopefully learn the rules and get some valued tips from folks who have been where I am. I look forward to chatting with you....
There is so much more than valued tips and chatting here. Quitters on this site go to their quit groups each day, first thing, and give a promise to stay clear of nicotine for the day. Then they keep their promises and come back the next day and do it again. The level of accountability that you create by giving a daily promise to other quitters who are going through exactly what you are going through will almost certainly save your quit. It saved mine many many times; without that promise each day I would not be clean of nicotine for 393 consecutive days now. It works.
If I'm counting correctly, 20 days puts your quit date on the 19th of January, which puts you in the April-2010 quit group (because you'll reach 100 days in April). Read the welcome center links and then go post roll.
You can do this!
