This is a great post that I found on another site and wanted to share with my quit friends. I'm going to put this same title in the "Intro" forum with a link to it here as I suspect that some of the newbies don't get down to this forum too often. Enjoy.
[b][color=blue]There are quite a few newbies on the list lately and I'm seeing a lot of them dealing with a similar hurdle in their quest to quit. It's having to deal with those smoking friends and family close to them. Some new quitters see this hurdle as very hard to overcome. Now, don't get me wrong. The perfect scenario for a quit is to be able to separate yourself from everything that has anything to do with smoking, at least for a little while. But, unfortunately for most of us, that's just not possible. So we get to decide to become a successful quitter in spite of this hurdle, or use this hurdle as a handy "excuse" to fail. Or worse yet, to not even try to begin with. Let's try looking at these smoking "friends" in a little different light. Maybe it'll give ya'll something to fall back on in a time of need.
You see, I used to be one of those smoker "friends". I think there are quite a few of us who were. As a smoker I knew deep down that smoking was wrong and that I really shouldn't be doing it. But, I also convinced myself that if I was given a choice I would not choose to be enslaved by those little cancer sticks. So since I was still a smoker, it couldn't be by my own choice, right? I convinced myself that I was helpless against it and with this mind set I could just sit in my cozy little fantasy world and keep telling myself that I had no control over smoking. I didn't have to deal with the issue because I was just doomed to be a smoker for life. It's much easier to tell yourself that it's not your fault and therefore there�s nothing you can do about it, right?
Now, when someone around me quit smoking it really posed a threat to my little chosen fantasy. You see, I continued to smoke because quitting was too hard, if not impossible. When you convince yourself of that you give yourself an "excuse" to just keep on smoking. Things are settled in your junkie brain and the waters are calm. You and your friends keep on keeping on and don't have to think about your smoking - it's just the way it
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Days: 9392
Hours: 2
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