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What You Need for a Successful Quit
Goggles O. ... posted A Year Ago, Circa 2018
I remember when I first joined Quitnet and seeing people with 2000+ days and being unable to comprehend ever having that amount of days quit. But it turned out that it wasn't impossible - it wasn't even the hardest thing I've had to face, but it's certainly one of the most rewarding.
What do you need for your quit to be successful? A few things:-
1. Commitment
2. Accountability
3. Responsibility
4. Willingness
5. Knowledge (ignorance is not bliss)
This list is in no particular order as I believe them all to be as equally important.
Commitment - If you're not committed to your quit you will fail, no doubt about it. However, if you commit yourself to NOPE and DFS than you cannot fail but to be successful.
Accountability - Keep yourself accountable by posting on Quitnet. Tell people in real life that you're quitting. I remember posting on Facebook that I was quitting - this is something that I would have never considered doing but it was a tip that I'd read on the internet. And since I'm pretty stubborn, that gave me extra motivation as I didn't want to have to go back and say that I'd smoked.
Responsibility - Being responsible means ignoring your internal nicotine-addicted 'instant gratification monkey'. It will give 100% in the first few weeks to try and get you to smoke. But you know that smoking is very damaging to your health so do the responsible thing and ignore it using whatever distractions you need to.
Willingness - Quitting smoking is a pain in the a*rse to go through - seriously. You don't feel like yourself, you're exhausted, good chance you're eating junk food which also doesn't help in the long run but it tastes damn good at the time, you're cranky and you may start wondering if it's all worth it. YES, yes it is most definitely worth it. All these feelings are temporary and will pass and won't leave any lasting, permanent damage. But continuing to smoke WILL. You have to be willing to endure these feelings of discomfort and come through the other side to FREEDOM! (btw I can't put into words how good the freedom from quitting smoking is - you'll just have to do it and experience it for yourself).
Knowledge - Knowledge is power when it comes to addiction. My first quit I just tried to stop smoking; I had no knowledge of nicotine addiction, didn't know you couldn't have just one; thought I could still smoke 'infrequently'. My 2nd quit (years later), upon finding Quitnet, I read everything I could and gained so much knowledge that once I'd reached 7 days quit I couldn't smoke even if I'd wanted to. All the information you could ever need to quit smoking is on this site - so use it! I was always amazed at the amount of people who would post the same questions over and over and had been trying to quit for years. READ, READ and READ again! Without educating myself I know for a fact that I wouldn't have quit.
So, here I am now one of those people with (almost) the 2000+ days quit. It used to be that I couldn't quite believe that I could reach 1000+ days, but now I have no doubt that my quit will just keep on going until the day I die. Your quit could too if you use those 5 qualities I listed above.