Yuku free message boards

Great thread and thanks to Gitte (Starshinegrl-Gold) for pointin me to it. I have posted most of my history on the 1st post board so a brief summary will do here. I began smoking when I was 14 or 15, because that is what young rural kids did to be cool. I know I was smoking regularly, and openly at age 16; this would have been 1952, got my drivers licence that year too. I switched to the pipe after mayby 10-12 years, with some cigarettes and cigars throwen in now and then. About 1985 I decided I should quit smoking for a number of reasons, most of them wrong, and the craving and desire never went away. After about 5 years, sitting in a hotel room one day, I said to heck with this and went out to buy cigarettes. One funny thing, looking back now, is that my best information at the time suggested I needed to overcome the addiction as well as the physical habit of smoking. Too accomplish this, my idea was to chew tobacco while I got used to not smoking physically, then stop chewing. Well is kind of worked but when I tried the same idea about 1991 to stop again, I never stopped chewing - so I have chewed for the past 14 years or so. Just a couple of years ago, I decided to try the nicotine replacement route so purchased the gum. After about 3 months I was "hooked" on the gum, so went back to tobacco; at least it was cheaper.

For some reason I kept thinking about quitting, and off and on, I would surf the web looking for ideas. Most of what I found did very little for me (mostly they were so-called professional advisors, you know the ones who help you plan your quit rather than tell you to quit). But I eventually found a link to Whyquit and started reading Joel's library; this gave me a very positive feeling, direct information about addiction, advise on how to go about quitting, and hard nosed, no hugging advice on what I had to do to stay quit. I found a second site that talked a lot about handling feelings during the quit which helped fortify my desire.

So thank you Freedom, NTAP, and all the support.

Graham
Free from nicotine for 12 days after 50+ not

Hi everyone in 40+.

I just made it to my 2 month birthday and feel confident about joining this illustrious group of ex-smokers. I smoked cigarettes off and on, smoked a pipe for 20 years, cigars when available, and ended my nicotine career chewing tobacco (about 15 years). I think I started cigarettes when I was 14 or 15 so I say I was not free of nicotine for 50+ years (I will be 70 in about 6 weeks). I did quit once about 20 years ago for nearly 5 years but it was a struggle all the way and I finally said to heck with it. I understand now that I did not have a plan, nor did I bother to look for support. Which brings me to the story I would like to offer, partly to free myself of the issue.

I am a recovering alcoholic; I have not tasted an type of alcoholic beverage for a little over 23 years. I achieved this success through membership in a support group where I learned about alcohol, addiction, and how to change my thinking and life style to become free of alcohol. I refer to myself as a "grateful" alcoholic because the program changed my life to dramatically that I would never have known what a great life could be like if I had not become an alcoholic. Now for the really difficult part. I have spent 23 years learning about alcohol addiction, to some extent helping other overcome their dependency, and yet I found it impossible to apply the same principles and ideas to tobacco. I was convinced I was so addicted to nicotine it was impossible for me to quit. I had to find WhyQuit.com (and one other good site for me) to learn about nicotine addiction, and a possible program to free myself of this dependency. My only explanation is "addiction," its power, its cunning, its ability to keep ones mind right where addiction wants it, preventing the addict from applying anything resembling common sense and reason to the issue. I had learned that one symptom of addiction is denial, denial of the nature of addiction, denial of the effects of the addiction. I can say with regard to nicotine, I was motivated not to quit by continuing medical evidence that I had not suffered any "notable" effects - I have had chest X-rays, my carotid arteries checked, etc. etc. Of course all this means is I was one of the very lucky ones who, up to this point at least, had managed to escape by chance the great adversities that should have befallen me.

Maybe this story adds to someones understanding of how impossible it is for most of us to free ourselves of an addiction without solid help from others. I do not know why WhyQuit.com works so well, and I am not going to try to analyze it - take for a fact, reading the material, following the advice, going 72 hours, and then having the courage to apply for admission to Freedom will give one the greatest chance of success, bar none. At first I was put off a little by the "one chance only on Freedom" then I realized there were many problems with letting repeaters post, but also that taking the chance of joining (having the courage I think) adds to the commitment and motivation for a strong and lasting attitude toward NTAP.

Thanks again, everyone. Will be looking back regularly.

Graham
Free for 62 days (2 months) after 50+ years not.