by Tricia
It was so tempting. Nice and cold Mountain Dews were sitting in the fridge and they stared at me every time I opened the door. Even though my head was hurting and I knew a drink would help ease the pain…I reached for the water every time.
It’s been a tough week, but I made it!! I gave up the caffeine 🙂
The headaches are gone and I am almost on a normal schedule. It’s funny, because at first I had no energy at all but slowly it’s coming back and I would almost say I feel more energetic. It’s weird.
Cigarettes are next on the list of things to quit, but I’m going to give myself at least a month to “normalize” and to map out my game plan. Am I going to use nicotine gum? Am I going to go cold turkey? Am I going to methodically cut down till I’m at zero cigarettes a day?
I still have more thinking to do on that one, and it probably is best to quit when winter is here. It is not fun going outside in a blizzard when it’s below zero out (I do not smoke in my house). I natually smoke a little less in the winter because of the inconvenience of getting all bundled up so it would be an ideal time to quit.
Still pumping myself up for quitting the cigarettes…
Hey, congrats on being caffeine free. Those headaches can be a mess, especially if they come at the wrong time (COUGHworkCOUGH). But really, good luck with the cigarettes too. You can do it, and I’d be willing to be when you give up those, you’ll be the inspiration of many, many, many of your readers. I know that when you do it, I’ll show my smoker friends and family your blogged path to enlightenment. Either way, kudos.
Yay! I kicked caffine when I found out the hard way I was addicted (I’d stopped drinking pop on the weekends but I still had coffee during the week at work and had horrendous headaches on the weekends) and then had worked it back into once or twice a week before I found out that new meds I was on required that I avoid it all together. I still have it now and again, like last night when I volunteered in the middle of the night for a 197 mile relay race and wound up being up for almost 23 hours.
Personally, I haven’t smoked. But what I’ve heard from people who have and have quit is that cold turkey is the way to go. Any other way puts too much thought into it and it’s easier to slide back into the habit. But I hope you find something that works for you! While I don’t like smoking, and I tease my brother about it now and again, I realize that nagging people is not the way to make them quit. Rather encouraging them when they say they’ve decided to quit is a much better approach. I wish you well!
Congrats! I’ve given up caffeine from time to time and would love to do it again. My husband gave up cigarettes 2 years ago (patches for a few weeks and then he just was fine) and we saved a lot of $$. He didn’t do it to save $$–it was to save his health–but he did say that he noticed that he found he had more $$ in his pocket. I noticed there was more in my purse, too, as he was always asking me if I had a few dollars when his pockets were empty. Good luck!
Tricia:
It has now been a year since I have consumed caffeine, which, never being a coffee drinker, I mainly consumed with a daily soft drink at work. After a week I can truly say I did not miss it at all (water and ice works great as my work drink).
As a non-smoker (and I do not drink alcohol either) I can only hope you are successful in kicking the cigarette addiction.
regards,
Barry
Thank you everyone for the congrats! It feels good to have done it. Smoking will be the difficult one for it has a much more psychological grasp on me. If I can make it though the psychological part, I believe I can make it through the physical withdrawal symptoms. That’s why I keep “pumping myself up” 😉
I think you’re wise to wait a little bit until you stop smoking. It can be a shock to system when you quit. I don’t smoke, but my mom did/does…. She’s been on and off for several years. I think right now she’s off.
You may want to check out the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association web pages. One of them has an online program to help people quit smoking. I know someone who tried for years to quit, but for some reason, the online program was what helped him.
Which leads me to another thought – don’t get discouraged if you try one method and it doesn’t work. Different people use different methods to quit smoking, so you may need to try something different than someone else.