Day 10 - The Rewiring

Not one craving today. I actually don't remember having a physical craving in a couple of days. I even find myself no longer thinking that often about smoking (maybe once or twice in the day I'll say to myself "Here, I would normally light up"). So I consider that a success, passing on to the next phase of my quit. Yay!

That was actually pretty quick. Less than two weeks to detox. Now it's all about the psychological side of the nicotine addiction. Continuing the rewiring. Continue ignoring my personal assistant which is only doing it's job by reminding me to light up; my brain will eventually fully catch on. Right now it's just like a confused little assistant who doesn't know on which foot to dance cause you just changed up the whole plan on her. She's a smart cookie, though. She'll get it quick enough.

Add to that that I've been sick since Saturday, so that has made it quite easier, thankfully.

The one thing that I have noticed and that I think I'm the most proud of is that I haven't taken my Symbicort in 11 days. Normally I take two puffs a day... every day. So my asthma was directly linked to my smoking. *&%$# And I knew it, too. I realized that my asthma actually started about a couple years after I started smoking, my first severe attack when I was 15. From then on I was prescribed everything from Ventolin to Flovent to Symbicort, nothing helping improve my condition. Until I quit. I hadn't noticed during my last quit either how my asthma had improved. And how a few months after I had started smoking again I was hospitalized for 3 days for a severe asthma attack. Here's an interesting article I found online about the link between smoking and asthma:

"How does smoking cause asthma? “Tobacco smoke contains several irritants that have been shown to cause chronic inflammation in the airways and in the alveoli. Such chronic inflammation can lead to asthma,” Dr. Jaakkola explained. “In addition, smoking has been shown to modulate the immune system and to impair normal repair systems leading, potentially, to asthma.” She added that in both animals and humans, hypersensitivity to allergens is enhanced in the presence of tobacco smoke." (http://www.pulmonaryreviews.com/jan05/smokingasthma.html)

Mitch is doing much better, too, no longer anxious about it anymore. I even reminded him today about the fact that I hadn't seen him jones in a while. He hadn't even noticed. :) Well, (other than the sick part) I continue to enjoy this path to ex-smoking.