Hi,
I've returned, and will be providing my normal irregular posting here in the SA Blogosphere.
For those of you who may have missed it, I quit using smokeless tobacco near the beginning of the year, and took a hiatus from SA to start another blog at a site related to quitting smokeless tobacco. Today is my 53rd day free of all forms of nicotine (I had used Nicorette gum for a few weeks).
While I was at the other site, I blogged on such topics as: how I became addicted, weight gain, aspects of addiction, nicotine pushers, my previous caves, smokeless tobacco user stereotypes, sin taxes, temptations, $ previously spent on tobacco, phases of a quit, thinking about tobacco, nicotine as a laxative, tobacco replacements, anxiety during a quit, oral health, and trigger events.
Who new that for 25 years, nicotine had worked in my body as a mild laxative, and removing it from my system ...
Number one, I've kind of run out of topics without becoming redundant, and number two, I'm at a phase in my quit where things are a bit more smooth than they were a couple months ago.
Don't get me wrong, I still need to steel myself against caving, and going back to tobacco use. But I'll be doing that more on the forum side of the site than the blog side.
Within the forums I have my own "quit group", that is, other "quitters" that quit within the same month that I did. According to the site rules, I couldn't count the period that I was using Nicorette, only the days that I was completely free of all forms of nicotine.
Within my quit group, I do what's called "posting roll call" each morning. When I post roll, I make a promise to all members of my quit group that I will not use nicotine in any form for that day. We post roll every day, and make the same promise. It seems to work really well.
Just like any on-line forum community, there are spots within the forum to help others, new quitters and old quitters.
As far as the blog goes, I was the only one actively using it for the past six weeks. I got a few comments, and I could tell that others were following it by some comments in the forums. But, it's not like here where there is an active community. The active community is pretty much in the forums.
But, just like when I joined here to get out of debt, my quitter blog helped me organize and clarify my thoughts, and helped me to stay accountable.
I'm just at a point where I can do that through the forums by themselves.
And, I thought I'd come back here to blog about all that money I'm not spending on tobacco anymore.
I'm Back.
March 14th, 2016 at 04:28 pm
March 14th, 2016 at 04:58 pm 1457974681
March 14th, 2016 at 08:53 pm 1457988834
March 14th, 2016 at 11:08 pm 1457996891
I use my blog here as almost like an online "diary" except that it's not private and I love to get the feedback. As you said, putting it down in writing, and being able to refer back to what you've written at any time, makes you more accountable to your goals. I am very sure that if I didn't put my savings goals on paper, for instance, that i would never have been able to achieve as much as I have.
March 15th, 2016 at 12:35 am 1458002132
March 15th, 2016 at 12:47 am 1458002858
March 15th, 2016 at 01:30 am 1458005423