I did it…and so can you~!

I chose the name “The Happy Quitter” because I started out as a smoking cessation blog. I gave up smoking after 35 years and I gave it up with ease. What I experienced was the contrary from what I had been told. I didn’t fly into a rage, I didn’t feel the need to use medication or other things to help me quit. I put my last cigarette out and walked away.

Relapse, or the thought about quitting my quit, never really came to my mind until I joined a quit-smoking forum. I joined two of those support forums for a short while, one was worse than the other. I suppose every ex-smoker becomes an expert on how to quit smoking, or at least that’s what many think. They just repeat what they have been told over and over, without research or questioning…and what’s worse, without thinking.

I didn’t feel like an expert, I felt more like an outsider. I had many questions about addiction in general, about the way I reacted, compared to others, who had to fight so hard. I didn’t find the answers, until I started my own research. Some of the stuff I found was eye-opening and showed me how uneducated the people on the so called support boards really are.

Many articles that can be found on the internet about smoking or quitting smoking are absolute humbug, other are extremely helpful.

Once a week I look in my status and I can see that my very first posts, the ones that I wrote when I started here at word press, are still being read almost every day.

I still get emails from people who quit smoking, or want to quit smoking and with many I stay in touch and we email back and forth on a regular base. The thought that I might have helped another smoker to become smoke free makes me smile.

I don’t think we bloggers are supposed to change people’s life, but we might help others to deal with life’s challenges.

Many of us write about our own experiences or share the things we learned and our blogs are being read, because the things we share have meanings to others as well.

I would like to know, that I made someone rethink an opinion they already had. That would be the biggest reward for me~!