Three Whole Years – Smoke Free – Happy Easter

It is Easter Sunday, the day us Christians celebrate the resurrection of our savior Jesus Christ, but today is also a very personal celebration day for me as well.

It was just three years ago that I made the decision to quit smoking. I hung the last empty cigarette pack on the wall in my gym on Easter morning in 2014 to remind me each day that I am a non smoker. So today I can scream out to the world “I have been smoke free for 3 whole years”.

When I look back on those smoking years it amazes me that I allowed this addiction to go on for so long. Although I am now in a very healthy pattern with life I still pray each day that the damage I caused all of those years don’t come back to haunt me in the form of some medical problem.

Although throughout those years I tried so many different types of solutions to my nicotine addiction, which all failed terribly, I found that by replacing the nicotine with a healthier form was the answer. For some reason I just couldn’t cold turkey and when I tried my mind would fight me so hard that it made life unbearable. I turned to vaping and although I know that even this form of nicotine addiction is not healthy, it still was an answer that I was looking forward to.

Some people have the ability to go cold turkey and other’s don’t. I even know people who smoke just one cigarette a day after dinner and are OK with that. But for me one cigarette lead to another and that’s what my life became.

Even after three years I still have this monkey on my back and still calm my nerves with nicotine in the form of vaping, but today my lungs are clear, I don’t cough when I get up and I rarely get out of breath. Besides health one of the other benefits I have enjoyed was using the same money that I spent on cigarettes to pay off debt. Today the only debt I have left is my mortgage and I continue to use that smoking money to continue to pay that down too.

People occasionally like to lecture me on the dangers of vaping, but that’s OK. I understand myself and how my mind and body operate,  and know that eventually I will give it up as well. But for today I simply celebrate the fact that I could find a way to give up smoking cigarettes. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.