How do we know when we're home? If you've ever moved, you know there's a big difference between moving into a house and having it feel like home.
The correct answer is, you are home when you feel it. Some are home in a couple of weeks while others need months.
Amazingly, within 2 to 4 months the adjustment process transports most in recovery to a point where they experience that very first day where they never once "think" to themselves, "gee, I'd sure like a smoke," "vape," "dip," "chew," "lozenge," or "piece of nicotine gum."
After the first such day, such days become more and more common. Soon, they become our new norm in life, with the distance between the occasional "thought" growing further and further apart.
If it happens sooner or takes longer, don't fret. If sooner, enjoy it. If longer, patience, it's coming!
Long-Term Quiet and Calm
Imagine entire days, weeks, months, or eventually even years without your mind ever once feeling an urge to use nicotine.
Imagine living in a constant state of total comfort without any nicotine use related anxieties whatsoever - none, zero, nil, complete and total tranquility.
It's where hundreds of millions of comfortable ex-users reside today. Were any of them truly stronger than nicotine? Were any of them stronger than us? Or, is that just another lame use excuse?
After arresting my thirty-year dependency, my recovery evolved to the point of substantial comfort by about eight weeks, a few weeks earlier than most but later than some. It was then that I experienced my last major subconscious crave episode.
And about then when I started to notice that thoughts of wanting were ever so slowly becoming fewer, shorter, and generally less intense. During the first few weeks, I worked hard to maintain a strong positive attitude while refusing to allow negative thoughts to infect my thinking and dreams.
While feeding myself large doses of positive thought, I also confronted and analyzed those remaining thoughts that kept inviting relapse. Soon, it was no longer a matter of trying to believe what I was telling myself. I did believe in the new nicotine-free me!
Although at times intense, I did my best to remain focused on the long-overdue healing occurring within. I saw each and every day as a full and complete victory in and of itself. Today I was free. Today was about healing!
And there were lots of little gifts along the way. New smells, tastes, energy, extra pocket change, a whiteness emerging in my smile, pride, empty pockets, a bit bigger step, odorless fingers, hope, endurance, an ash-less world, newfound time, long overdue self-respect, gradually lengthening periods of comfort, freedom and even a few extra pounds, it was simply me coming home to meet me.
Eventually, the minor urges and periods of thought fixation became further and further apart. After two years of freedom, I found myself going months without an urge. And the last time I experienced anything that can be fairly called an "urge" was in December 2001, two years and seven months after beginning the most amazing journey I'd ever make.
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Published in the USA