I quit smoking a couple of days ago!

I was just saying in my last post that I quit smoking this week.

I’ve wanted to quit smoking for a long time, but when a neurologist told me last March that with my migraines and strange prolonged auras that I’d been having that my chances of having a stroke had just increased, and on top of that I was a smoker which increased my chance of stroke even more I knew I had to quit.

Unfortunately, even though I knew I needed to quit smoking the timing wasn’t good. April through early September is pretty busy for my husband and I. We have lots of family members and friends that drop by our house or end up staying over at our house and then there’s the entertaining and so on. I just knew I could successfully give up smoking in the spring or summer with all that going on. I had to do it as a quieter time.

So … I picked October. It’s perfect. Hopefully no house guests, no traveling, no invites to places where others will be smoking and drinking … the perfect time to give up this awful habit.

I’m using Zyban to help me quit. I started taking the medicine on October 1st and by the 3rd or 4th of the month the cigarettes I was smoking began to taste just like hot air. Still … it took until this past Tuesday, October 12th for me to finally stop smoking. I only had two cigarettes that day and the last one was at about 2:30 pm that afternoon.

I’ve had none since and my cravings aren’t too bad. I’m managing. I think the Zyban is really helping with the nicotine withdrawal although I’m dizzy and my stomach is a bit achy.

I keep telling myself how much better I’m going to be feeling soon and how much extra money my husband and I will have soon. I figure our bad habit costs us about $400 a month. Now we can save that money, or put it towards or bills or our car payments or hey … maybe treat ourselves to a holiday, perhaps a week on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship or something like that? Yeah, that sounds good to me.