First of all, Welcome all new quitters! This place is great for helping you start your quit and to keep your quit! I found Blairsville when I prepared myself to begin my quit. I don't know about anyone else, but it was a big deal to make the decision to even attempt to quit. I don't know for sure why this time was different, but when I decided to quit, I didn't go into "panic mode" right away, I just got motivated to do it. I was certainly scared and wasn't sure how to go about it, but I went to my doctor and then I found this place!

I told my doctor I wanted everything he could give me! He put me on Wellbutrin and told me to take it for at least 10 days before I quit. That made my quit date for me. I then bought all the patches for 12 weeks worth. I even bought gum! I remember being mad at the pharmacist because they told me they could not fill my perscription until they knew what it was for, because the insurance companies would only pay for it if I had "depression". Well, I ended up paying for the pills myself, even though my doctor said he would "fudge" on the reason for the medication. I felt it was the principle of the thing! Anyway, I remember getting on this board and just venting! And that was all before I had even quit!

Then wanted to make sure I had anything I wanted at my fingertips to help me stop smoking, so I bought a BIG BOWL and placed it on my kitchen table and bought all kinds of candy and sweets and filled it up! I mean a BIG BOWL! I am an nico- addict, nothing small! It must of held a gallon! Anyway, that was just for home! I also took a gym bag and filled if with all kinds of items, candy, suckers, bottled water, straws, etc, anything I could think of that I might need in the car. That bag stayed in the car and was my "travel bag". That sure helped to stop some panic attacks during my quit!

My husband smokes too. He quit a week before me, I think to show me up, but a week into my quit, we had a huge fight. We rarely argue much less fight, but I couldn't believe my anger! I must have really covered it up with smoking! Needless to say, after that fight, my husband began smoking again, stating that we both weren't going to survive if he didn't start. I guess any excuse will do! I was too subborn to start, so the only reason I stayed not smoking that time was to show him up! Who says stubborness doesn't come in handy! Anyway, that first week was HELL! I used to work in my car, and it was so hard to not smoke there! Habits are so hard to break!

But then after 2 weeks, some amazing things started to happen. I started smelling things I hadn't smelled since I was a teenager. I could smell other smokers after they had a smoke and came back into the office. I smelled like that?! I used to smoke up a storm on my way to a client's home, have that last puff and shut off the car, then pop a mint in my mouth, thinking that all that time I was covering up the smell! They knew all along! I started to smell other wonderful smells and couldn't get enough. It was great! I shared with my mother my dicovery of smells and she told me a story about my smoking years ago. When my children were little and went to spend the night and 'grandma and grandpa's house', she would open up their suitcases with their clothes and all of them would reek of the smoke smell. I never realized how much it affected things........

I began to breathe deeper, I would just sit and breathe just to see how much I could fill my lungs with air! Deep breathing and drinking TONS of water was a great help to stop a craving!

My biggest problem was my anger. I didn't know I had so much of it! I was always considered the "level headed and calm one" when it came to my husband and I. I got mad at him all of the time because he didn't really support me much. But then my girlfriend told me to "quit looking for milk in the hardware store", which meant that he couldn't give me support on something he couldn't do himself, so with that, I leaned on the people here more! It would be like going to a bar and asking them to congradulate me for quitting drinking! I needed to go to a place that supported me and understood.

The anger did finally calm down and then depression and missing smoking set in, which I felt was very dangerous time for me, about 3 - 4 months into my quit. I had "stinking thinking" and stayed closed again to this board to help me through. All of the links were so very helpful! I think after about 6 months things started to calm down for me and I felt a little more in control of myself. My biggest support fan was my mother. When I had one month quit, she gave me a bracelet with a charm on it and told me she was going to give me a charm for every month I was smoke free. Do you know I wore that charm bracelete all the time and it was a good reminder to look and feel when I had a craving? I looked forward every month for a new charm. I got my last one tonight! It has 12 charms on it now.

My other reward was that my 23 year old son quit in December. My husband and daughter still smoke, but there is still hope! My grandchildren will not remember I smoked if I keep this quit. They are 3 1/2 and 10 months. They will not have to smell me either!

That gym bag that I used as my emergency kit in the car is now the gym bag I use to go to Jazzercise to help me get all the pounds off I now have! That is coming along, too! One day at a time!

Anyway, good luck! Anyway you can do it, just remember you are the most important thing in your life! No one else can do it for you. Giving up smoking was the most hardest thing I have ever done, JUST FOR ME. But the rewards have been wonderful!

One year, one day, 6 minutes and 57 seconds. 9,150 cigarettes not smoked, saving $1,372.52. Life saved: 4 weeks, 3 days, 18 hours, 30 minutes.

On March 15, 2000 I checked into the hotel on Main St. in downtown Blairsville for a 12 quit and 15 month stay. During those months, I met many people some of whom I even liked. Those folks took the time and the interest in my world and showed me how to start quitting, then how to quit starting, then how to quit quitting. This story is dedicated to the ones here I loved not enough and the one I loved too much.

I started smoking cigarettes when I was seventeen in order to cover the smell of the marijuana I was starting to smoke. Had I known then I was about to start a long dark walk into the woods that would find me lost for the next fifteen years and would cost me tens of thousands of dollars, a college education, a productive twenties, millions of brain cells, countless years off my life and a few shirts I really, really liked, I would have never started. I would have gladly sacrificed each and every one of those smooth and sexy Marlboro moments leaning against the center post of the bar, hip cocked, pool cue prone, legs crossed, cowboy boots tipped, jeans ripped, shirt open, head down, beer in hand, hat back, peering over my glasses, cigarette hanging lustily from my lip, smoke twisting into the air, with a thought that I was, in fact, the coolest guy in, at least, that bar that night.

Every one.

Those moments, and thousands more with thousands more variations is the reason I kept smoking. Hey, being cool is important. Thinking you’re cool is ever more important. Certainly important enough to not worry about the yellow fingers or the ruined car seat. Skipping a meal because it meant buy food or buy smokes shouldn’t keep me from looking or feeling cool. Smelling good is not nearly as important as looking good. For all those years the reasons to keep smoking were powerful motivators. Enough to make an otherwise self-proclaimed brilliant young man do some otherwise obviously wasteful, careless, and destructive things. As time went by the reasons to keep smoking became hollow. The feigning attempts to quit were more frequent. The losses began to outnumber the victories. The failures began to outnumber the successes. Habits turned into addictions. Cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, alcohol, self-abuse, and one woman who cost me more than the rest combined. Then one more woman who threatened pain and loses seemingly incalculable. I had enough. Enough I said. Please, enough. Simply enough. Enough.

Thirty-two years old. Single parent. Business owner. Failing health. Miserable. Reaching out for something to change me, something to start the healing, something to launch a full-scale rebirth and recovery that would carry me the rest of the way. A way back. Back to the flagrant talent of a prodigal schoolboy…a star athlete…a prolific musician…a struggling Christian. A way forward. Forward to the delicious moments of fatherhood, the profits of ownership, the renaissance or art and taste, the passion and love so elusive in my life, the way of a struggling Christian. Or just away…away would do. Away from everything I’d become. Away from everywhere I’d been. Away from everywhere I was headed. Cigarettes were it. That was the way. As the epiphany swept over, I knew that if I could quit smoking cigarettes I would be able to quit everything else. What I didn’t know was that I would want to. Further, I would have to. And that, my friends, is how Q1 began.

One Wednesday morning, after having read everything this site had to offer back then, which was a stunning amount that took nearly two weeks to absorb, I started my quit. I had smoked my last smoke the night before and was excited and ready for the rest of my life to begin. It was seven o’clock in the morning and I felt great. Eight came and I’m thinking, “Not bad so far”. Nine came and went and I thought, “This might not be so bad”. Then it hit me around ten o’clock. The craving heard round the world. My stomach turned, my hair stood on end, I began to sweat, then shiver. Then I began to shake. At eleven o’clock my head blew clean off my shoulder and I broke down. No, no…I mean I BROKE down. I started to weep and realizing weeping simply isn’t manly, I began to sob. Just like that.

My company was then located in the back yard in my barn. I was in the house. With a piece of paper, a magic marker, a few drop of sweat, some tears and some snot, I scrawled a note that said, “F*CK OFF…I’m quitting cigarettes” and taped to my back door. No one bothered me after that. I sat back down, dug my nails into the top of my desk and made my first post. That was the first time I’d ever reached out for help. It was the first time I’d admitted that not only did I not have the answer, though more frightening was that I had no idea where to get it. Half a dozen or so folks responded to my plea, but one stuck for sure. It was a simple acknowledgement of what I was feeling from another newbie who was on day three. She ended that post with, “I’d love to help you through this…we can quit together. Would you like that?” and she signed it, Twilight. The addict in me fell hard for that one and that pretty much says it all. However, it was my introduction to the idea of support. People with similar experiences sharing them with each other in an attempt to help each other realize they are not alone and that someone else may have survived exactly what they think they can’t survive…and actually lived to tell about it. Support is what Blairsville used to be about and hopefully still is.

I held on to that quit by shear excitement and interest in my new pen pal until the company ran out of money and I missed payroll. I had made it five weeks when I caved for the first time. There wasn’t much thought involved. I was tired and wanted a break. The point had been made though, to my friends, employees, and family members…oh yeah and to myself. It could be done. What I thought I never would do or could do I had done. Five weeks was previously an unfathomable amount of time to go without a cigarette but of course it wasn’t without some exciting newbie moments ranging from my then two-year-old pressing each half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich against her ears at a restaurant after I ordered EVERYthing on the menu I thought she’d eat only to arrive at the old standby but with a different and unexpected conclusion…to a tree in the woods that met an untimely death at the hands of a real bad crave and an freshly sharpened axe for no apparent reason. Oh, yeah and then there’s the lilac air freshener I sprayed into my armpits instead of deodorant on morning in an IwantacigarettesobadIdostupidthingsIwouldntotherwiseimagine haze.

That first quit was definitely a classic. It was hard on Jesse and me, but great fodder for my new friends here and great reason to stay close to this place. That was the best, of many, pieces of advice I got from my second “I’d like to thank the academy” acknowledgement. Sherry R also responded to that first cry for help back then and has stopped in her tracks to respond to every cry for help I’ve had since then. Every…single…one. On quitting, business, relationships, and technology I’ve gone running peeing in my pants to Sherry like the four year old I can tend to act like. Every time she has had a firm voice, a loving sense, a word of wisdom and a change of cloths for me. Some people in this world leave you speechless with their actions. Others fill you with lofty words to describe the wonder you witnessed in their presence. Still others appear to not be from this world or at least being used as a tool by powers not of this world with words and actions so poignant and accurate they appear divine in nature. That is the Sherry I’ve grown to know and respect. She is a woman that God put in my life at a cunningly strategic time to get me up and get me over. She did that for me as He did that for me and I thank them both with all my heart.

Thank you.

**looking skyward he tips his hat, then bows his head for a moment then continues**

I spit and sputtered through eleven more quits my meter had named Q2 through Q12 that year and into the next. Two 5 week quits, two 2 week quits, three 1 week quits, with the rest being aborted from 3 days in to somewhere around 10 am Day 1. Early on, I had a sense that the people close to me and not so close to me were thinking I was the boy crying wolf but as I slipped and got up and slipped and got up and slipped and got up I could see a faint jealousy especially in the smokers and even something similar in the non-smokers. I just kept on coming back every time. I had a plan that only I knew and I would not deviate from it. I had faith it would take and it did. There’s not enough skin on my fingers to type the blow by blow of each quit. All I can do here is tell you why I lost them, what I learned, what worked and what didn’t work and then hope that someone can draw from it.

What Worked: