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Sallysmoker (cindyb ) Getting Rid of the Blinders 2/24/2003

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1q2 S
1q2 S Discussion started by 1q2 S 5 years ago
Getting Rid of the Blinders---a Ramble

From sallysmoker on 2/24/2003 9:59:01 PM @sallysmoker b.

. Have never done A ramble before, though I have rambled for sure. But this is something I have thought about for a while. 
I have seen posts here tonight about what made this quit stick for some, and I have posted about that before. I always wondered how and why this is different, and what actually happens to us in this quitting process. 
I truly believe we take off the blinders and get rid of them. Those blinders are different for everyone. They are the feelings that we have told ourselves cigarettes give us, the power, the self-esteem in the beginning, the courage, the relaxation forces, the stress reliever, the magic bullet to keep us awake or put us to sleep, or calm us down during periods of stress, or help us stuff away feelings that are too hard to deal with. They are the friends we hang with that we think we have to "share" our habit with, some ones that we have another commonality. They are the lies that will always be there to help us live with smoking every day and not see the reality of what it really does. 
So we get into this quit, and what happens? For some it still is too hard. The feelings are too overwhelming that we have stuffed away, and now bombard us from every direction. Our bodies go through almost a reentry process when we stop smoking, and we are beaten from every angle and every direction, and our weakest link becomes our greatest battle to stay quit.
When we make it through those first few days and weeks, we start to really look at cigarettes for what they are. They are the biggest thief, the biggest murderer of any chemical ever made. We see how they have made us feel, the cigarette hangovers, the burned clothes, the smell, the gum disease, the shortness of breath, the chest discomfort with exertion, the cough. Smoking is like being in an abusive relationship--we hate what we are while we are in it, and what we have to deal with. But we have such a hard time taking those first few steps to a better life because of the lies we have made ourselves believe for years.
I work in health care. For years, I would take care of patients on ventilators, or help put them on them, would give breathing treatments to patients with COPD, and help them get thru their crisis. Back not so many years ago, smoking was allowed in the hospitals. So we would give these patients breathing treatments, then turn off their oxygen so they could smoke. Blinders? You bet, for all of us. And then I would go right outside and have smokes with my coworkers without ever thinking about what it was doing to me, or about what it had done to the patients I had just taken care of. Not really, anyway. Blinders. I smoked thru both my pregnancies. Was in pre-term labor with them. Did I quit? Nope. And I knew better. Blinders.
We all have to find our own reasons and ways to remove our blinders. The help is here, with the Q, and with NRT, which I could not have done without for a couple months. Still we have to have that special thing that is just uniquely yours. For me it was a promise I made, and I cried through weeks of feeling miserable, but I did not break the promise.
Find your special reason. Dig deep, and don't put the blinders on that will let you only see what you want to see. Because once you take them off, there is a whole beautiful world out there. Give yourself the chance to see it.

Cindy
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