Hello all....
I had something happen to me today that has really had me thinking.... and thinking deeply. I will post this to the ng after a bit but I wanted to be with you first. I really hope these thoughts will begin a group discussion about wellness and getting past the quit mentally into a new place where we can go forward and change our way of thinking by changing our behavior/our responses to triggers. Getting into a proactive mode instead of in a reactive mode where I know I have been.

In my heritage, when we sit in a circle as I envision us doing right now, we pass around the talking stick. Whoever has the stick, gets to talk while the others listen. When we get the stick, we give our name and our lineage. I am holding the talking stick now. I will pass it along when I am done. I hope you will take up the stick and speak your piece. And when we are all done, I know we will have new understanding between us. My name is Yukpa hashi. I am Chahta, Cherokee, English, Irish and Scots. I am quit (smoking) for 3 weeks, 2 days, 1 hour and 42 minutes. And I have been fortunate enough to have friends with me along the way who are in my same lodge. I honor them.

My experience in this endeavor has led me to be able to discuss this experience of recovering from nicotine addiction with some knowledgeable
folks, most notably Steve. Some of us have had an easier time of it than others but we have all experienced similar reactions from the lack of nicotine in our system. I have certainly chronicled my episodes of my roller coaster ride with you. The tears and the confusion and not being very sure of myself and who I am without a cigarette in my hand. I had a very hard time picturing me when all was said and done. I have often felt off-balance, as I describe it, and seemingly unable to get my feet underneath me. I so wanted to act "normal" and put on a happy face but most of the time, I didn't have the energy to even find the happy face let alone try and display it. During the worst times, I would seek Steve out and initially, through the tears, ask, What in the hell is happening to me? (No nonsense) Steve would ask me some pertinent questions and then give me something more to mull over to see if I couldn't picture the quit in a different way. I would very much like to share a few of those thoughts with you. When I am done and you get the chance to read this e-mail, I hope that you will step up, take the talking stick and talk to me about this. It is important to me and maybe to us. And in the sharing of our experiences and how we are handling them and how we intend to make this quit permanent, we can help each other in a profound way; that of insuring that many years from now, we will still all be smoke-free, and instead of sharing how we are surviving the quit, we'll talk about how we fulfilled our lives and about the grandbabies (and the great grandbabies for those of us who are already old broads. Ahem!).

Today, I had lunch with my daughter and her lover in Reno. We went to a bistro (a fancy name for the dive joint we went to, but hey, the food's good) and after lunch, they both lit up and tried like hell not to blow smoke on me. In the old days, of course, I would have lit up right along with them and then sat back, talked and enjoyed some time together before they both had to get back to work. I cannot even begin to explain the sense of terror that overtook me. (Because it makes no rational sense.) I simply stood up, hugged my daughter and left. Yes, about that fast. I could not stay in that atmosphere. (I wonder if she got whiplash from watching me walk out the door so quickly. Say, I'd better call her and see if she's OK, eh?) As I was driving home, I thought about this "crazy" reaction which then led to thoughts about some of the things that Steve and I have been talking about over the last couple of weeks or so. I was wondering why I had had such a severe reaction to that scenario? Perspective, choice, price, courage, recovery, behavioral change were the words that kept coming to me over and over. Wow. And what I knew had to happen now that I have made the choice to be smoke-free was when I am faced with a situation where my behavior had always been "z" (to pull out a cigarette and light up along with them), now I "needed" to change that behavioral response to "a" (where my choice is to sit there and talk and be comfortable in that setting regardless of what they were doing). Whew! Now there's a challenge if I ever saw one.

Now, I live my life in the moment....or I try to. I believe that I create my future in the moment. That's really hard to do - be in the moment only - sometimes. I have all of this history that determines how I act and react to all situations. And if I stop and think about it a little, when I was stressed, I smoked, when I was tired, I smoked, when I was hungry, I smoked, when I was happy, I smoked, when I got into the car to drive, I smoked, when I finished having se....wait....you get the point here, I think. If I stopped and thought about it, seriously tried to think about the moment where I would pick up a cig and light up and what I was doing at the time, I could start to see a pattern in my smoking behavior.

I have begun to believe that in order for me to stay quit and not be faced with this "process" of quitting again, I was going to need to look at my smoking behavior and begin to change the message that my brain was giving to my body if I had any chance to recover from this addiction for all time. And that was my goal. I simply do not want to do this again. The price on my sanity and my health is too great and I'm not sure I can afford it anymore so this is it for me. Now how to go about changing? (Changing - For me that is just about the scariest word in the dictionary? Oh my....)

THE NEW WORDS

Perspective - What this word means to me is how do I look at my quit? For me, if I think I am having a hard go of it, I am. I found if I changed my thought to, Hey, this isn't so bad, you know what? It isn't so bad. And you know who showed me this? You fellas in here with me. I watched you and listened to you tell about how it was going for you. Yes, you experienced the emotional swings but it didn't seem to throw you quite like it did me. I wondered about that and realized it was how you looked at it. Mark said he didn't smoke all that much so he didn't think he'd have a hard go of it. And he hasn't. I don't think Map missed a beat. And Franz is already
without his inhaler and Frank was forgetting about his patch early in the quit. Do you remember me asking you guys to cry a bit so I wouldn't feel so all alone? Perspective. Thanks for teaching me that.

Choice - One time when I was whining, Steve asked me what my choice was.... did I chose to quit or not? If I chose to quit, then why am I whining? (I sometimes don't deal well with logical people when I'm having such a fun tantrum. He's lucky he lives so far from me because I'd of been tempted to bomb his home at that point. Smile.)

Price - I have had to think often about what I was willing to pay to obtain full recovery from my addiction to nicotine. I had already been through many quits before, haven't we all? Once I had quit for 2 1/2 years. So I was aware of the physical discomfort (now isn't that a nice way to put it? The down and out PAIN more like.) and the mental aspects of gutting through a quit. But what was my attitude towards all of these "discomforts"? I have chosen to look at them as something to be endured until I can get to the other side of the quit. No more, no less. It is a price I am willing to pay for being smoke-free. It does not matter how high the highs are or how low the lows, the point is it does smooth out in time. Whatever it takes to get from here to there, I am willing to pay the price. (And I thank the Creator every single day that I have you here with me in my circle to hold fast with me until it all smoothes out as it surely will.)

Courage - Selma, my sister, showed me her courage. My friend, you who can already go to old haunts and participate in your life smoke-free and with attitude just flat amazes me. I admire you. I hope you will help me to understand what Zyban means in your life and how it has helped you. And that we can dialogue about what happens next for you. I think what you are experiencing has great value to understanding recovery and how best to do it. I think you have much to teach me. Will you take up the talking stick at some point?

Recovery - In just saying this word, I find assurance that all that I am
going through is "normal", is expected, is not unusual for one who is trying to get past a drug that has had a firm grip on my body for 25 plus years now. Inherent in the word for me is hope. I think of all of the words that I have learned in this quit, this word and everything *inside* it holds the most meaning for me -- at least at this point in my quit. And the recovery is going to take time. I need to repeat this. The recovery is going to take time. (I am one of the most impatient people I know, especially when it comes to expecting me to perform. I can't even begin to discuss my impatience at my not doing more and doing it faster without my blood pressure rising several notches.) I have had to slow down, realize that I will not get well in one week, two weeks or even three weeks. Recovery may be complete as early as three months or as late as 6 months.... Who's to say for sure when I will be recovered and my body will be totally my own again? The point is that recovery takes time and within recovery is the roller coaster ride of a lifetime and that's a normal response.
Ahhhhhh....breathing better here. (You mean I'm not going batty? Batty Patty? And if any of you say that sounds right, I'm gonna bop you one!)

Behavioral Change - At some point, I hope Steve will step in here and fill in all of the holes I know I will leave in my explaining what this means to me but I initially met Steve when I saw him post in the ng a reply about (paraphrasing here) normal symptoms of recovery. I had wanted a time line of recovery. (I wanted to know just how long I had to suffer here! I mean, a couple of days, maybe a week or two or what?) That in turn led to a discussion on changing my behavioral responses as I went through recovery so as to insure that my quit will be for the last time. I was curious about learning a way to permanently change how I responded in life to the stresses, tiredness, hungry, happy, driving, after se... oh wait, been there, leave that one alone, Pat, and the answer was in changing my immediate response of wanting a cigarette to something else, preferably a more healthy choice. This reaching for a cigarette is an automatic response. It is not one I have to think about or conjure up. It just happens. Some might call this a "craving". This isn't craving to me. I no longer "crave" cigarettes as the nicotine is now out of my system. This is a learned response that has been reinforced so many times out of knowing that it's ingrained into everything I do. When I was sitting there with my daughter and she reached for a cigarette, I believe I panicked because the first thought that came to mind was reaching for one myself and that horrified me. The real truth is, it surprised all rational thought out of me. I had truly thought I was past the longing. And then I realized I was past the longing but I wasn't past the ingrained behavioral response -- what I had done on so many occasions before without even thinking about it had just happened again. And it would continue to happen until I changed my way of thinking.

My question to you, my lodge, is what are the words that we can use to reprogram our brains in these times when the first thought is to grab a cigarette? We need to learn how to replace the first response with a second thought of...??? What say you?

I honor you for sitting with me for this long....

Aho.
Yukpa hashi --->>>>>>passing the talking stick.... Next?