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(This was my answer to a question on the ECF board about "Does Nicotine Cravings ever stop?")
I know this is a nit-picking point, but it's my understanding that after 21 days your body should be flushed of nicotine, and actual physical cravings for nicotine should be gone.
But we all know that it's not as simple as that.
The physical addiction to nicotine is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
The first time I "quit" smoking I had been smoke free for about a year and a half when I entered a fairly conservative seminary. No one smoked - period. No faculty, staff or student used tobacco of any kind.
But the dorm that I lived in had soda machines on my floor that needed to be filled about 3 times a week, and the fella that filled those machines smoked a cigar, and he wasn't about to put it out for a minute.
My room was 150 feet from those machines, and yet the first time I got just a WHIFF of that smoke - (in my room, 15 doors away!) - my body and mind took on a complete life of it's own. I followed that scent like a starving man would follow the smell of a steak dinner. I started hanging out around those machines when I knew he was due to fill them up.
I fought that craving for another 6 months, until I left seminary. I fought that craving for another month until I joined the Navy. I signed my paperwork to enlist, walked out the door, paused long enough to realize that I had just entered into a contract for 4 years of military service...
And went and bought a pack of cigarettes.
2 years I had been nicotine free. All the best minds told me I was long free from nicotine and all of the habits involved in them. The repetition "cycle" was broke too. I didn't even do that whole "chew on a pencil, suck on an ink pen, get my oral fixation" thing that many continue to do. I didn't even bite my fingernails anymore.
So just what in the hell sent me running back to tobacco after that long?
That was over 30 years ago. I've had a long time to think about it, with some very short breaks in between.
I think I have the inkling of an answer, but the answer is just for me. Because it's not a simple question, and there is no answer set in stone. If there is, then how come the guy or gal down the street can just go cold turkey and stay smoke free for 20 years, and not me?
Every smoker I know can point to someone in their life that did that very thing. (And yet, the last time I tried to quit cold turkey, I became such a miserable wretch after 2 weeks that the men that I worked with and worked for actually handed me a carton of cigarettes and told me to please Shut Up!)
The answer - for me - came after asking myself more questions.
Why does any addict - Her0in, Coke, alcohol, etc. - go back? 90 day treatment, flushed completely out of the system, clean and sober... Bam! Off the wagon they go.
OK, here's another question. It may appear to not be related at all. But then again...
How many people do you know - man or woman - that have has experienced satisfying sex, and then just stopped? I mean that after that ONE time just said to themselves, "Well, that was nice, but I really don't need that in my life, so I quit."
After the physical act itself, the body returns to a "normal" state - right? And yet every day women and men will enter into long term physical relationships with partners that are not only socially and psychologically incompatible, but in some cases mentally and physically damaging to them. All in order to meet what we would consider to NOT be a physical "addiction".
As I just said, it may appear to not be related at all. But then again...
So to make a long story even longer - for me it has NEVER been about a physical craving or addiction. It's always been in the mind. Since the first time that I lit up a cigarette and my brain said to itself, "YES! This is it! I want this sensation, and I WILL have it again! I will never be happy with anything less than what I feel right now!"
I've been able to trick my brain with lesser means like vaping and snus. But even that is a daily struggle. And my mind is a stubborn one. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be here on this forum right now.
And most of us are here for the same reasons. We've tried EVERYTHING else, and it hasn't worked. This is the last stop.
At least until something better comes along...
P.S. To the original poster: I know that this has been poor help at best. If I had the definitive answer to your question, I would gladly share it with you - free of charge. But the bottom line is that while we have the support of friends and fellow addicts here, we still have to face it with nothing but our own minds for closest company. And in our cases, the mind is a tricky ....... that will find a way to get it's way.
Good luck, and best wishes.
