The title of this post Dying for a Cigarette can be put in two different forms. It can be used as a statement or a question.
Dying for a Cigarette.
I have used the statement “I am dying for a cigarette” hundreds of times during the years that I fed my nicotine addiction. And at the time that I made those statements I believed that if I didn’t get a smoke or a nicotine fix I actually would expire by some terrible unknown, unexplainable, mind blowing phenomenon. Or, at the least, I would do some unlawful act, such as killing someone, that it would end my life and existence as I knew it at that time.
Little did I know that the statement “Dying for a Cigarette” would have such a traumatic and dramatic effect on me and my life?
Eventually after over twenty years of smoking and a number of attempts to quit smoking I was finally successful. In 1980 I quit smoking “cold turkey”. This time the quit wasn’t as hard as I had made all of the former attempts to quit. Notice I use the term “I made” because that is the way it was. In my earlier attempts to quit I was convinced that it would be hard and it was because I believed it would be. In my final and last attempt I told myself that I could do this no matter what. I decided that I would quit for good this time because I could. And I did.
Dying for a Cigarette?
Three years after I quit smoking I was diagnosed with smoking induced lung cancer and had to have my left lung removed. I was very fortunate because they got all of the cancer with the entire lung. I did not have to have chemotherapy or radiation treatments. I almost lost my life and fulfilled the statement “Dying for a Cigarette”.
Tobacco and lung cancer have had a profound effect on my life. Use of tobacco caused me to have lung cancer. But I have not let either, tobacco or lung cancer, completely define my life. And you don’t have to either.
Yesterday, March 28, 2010, I celebrated my 70th birthday. Thirty years after I quit smoking I am still doing well. There is life after tobacco use and I am living proof that quitting smoking can make a difference in one’s life and well being.
If you think that you can quit smoking take my word for it you can if you believe that you can.
I tell my story about my nicotine addiction and what I went through to beat it at http://www.quitterscanbewinners.com/
You can get my free ebook on How to stop smoking forever or Simply be Tobacco Free by clicking here http://www.simply-be-tobacco-free.com/
Thanks for visiting and good luck.
