Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
As your doctor, well as a doctor, I strongly urge you to not take up smoking again, even as a fillip to your friends. Quitting is hard and the reinforcement of the dopamine resptors that you get when you take it up again is brutal. Just say non!
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pshrynk, as a doctor of my acquaintance, you may be very proud of me ; the other day a friend of mine offered me a cigarette and i waved it away without hesitation ; in fact, without even thinking about it. i stopped smoking about 4 or 5 months ago (not good at remembering dates, but i know it was sometime in february) and although i have smoked the very occasional cigarette of a friend near the beginning, this time is definitive. the fact that all bars are now non-smoking in France has definitely helped a lot ; no more temptation, you see.
this is actually about the eleventy hundred and first time i've quit. the first time i found it suprisingly easy, and didn't smoke for 2 months. after i idiotically started again i quit every week for at least one day, and frequently several (those would be the attempts 2 through eleventy hundred). it seemed a lot less easy.
this time, i had no choice, since i had to have a small operation. it was a minor intervention, which went perfectly, but its success depended primarily on my never smoking again*. that's a remarkably effective impetus, since i am such a giant baby that the thought of potentially having to go through that ordeal again was more than i could bear.
also, stopping smoking is actually remarkably easy, despite what you may think after reading this post. just ask Allen Carr (i read his book ; it's not great litterature, but it sincerely helped me).
*EDIT : well... in any case, not during the several weeks immediately following it, anyway.