Hi Lisa! For what it’s worth, I smoked for some 20 years. I came down with GD and the eye disease a few years AFTER I quit. (This is NOT telling you it won’t do any good to quit!!)
There’s a news group called alt.support.stop-smoking that I highly recommend. I wish it had been there when I quit. How does one manage to quit? I guarantee you, if I could do it, then ANYBODY can! I could write a very long message about the change in mind-set that is necessary, but that’s for another support group.
Suffice it to say that one can not continue to smoke, and still be a non-smoker. It’s a choice you make, and with practice, that choice gets easier. When you first quit, you make that choice very often, and you face some temporary discomfort every time you decide not to have the smoke. But, whether you smoke or don’t smoke, the urge goes away. If you think you can’t handle life’s stress without cigarettes, you’re using the lie I told myself that kept me smoking for a lot of years. Of course you can!! People do it every day. You can too!
I broke my promise and rambled on!
Dianne N
Anonymous
Post count: 93172