How I stopped smoking and saved thousands of dollars

Here is a story about how I stopped smoking and saved thousands of dollars…

I started smoking at a young age; my brother took me into his room when I was seven and said: “Here, try this” … And then once I had smoked a whole cigarette he said: “Now you can’t tell on me”… and that is where it all began.

We had a cubby house and we would all go down there and make a fire and smoke; we would steal cigarettes off our parents, or steal their change and go buy them. It was easy back in those days because my mum would often send me to the store to buy her packet of smokes, so no one ever questioned us.

I never questioned smoking either as both my parents smoked, and even though my father had asthma and so did my brother and I… we all just smoked. It was normal and socially acceptable and back then everyone did it … in the home, in the car, in a restaurant: there were no health warnings or things to be alarmed about.

I remember when I was 9, walking down the street and picking up dirty butts and then smoking them, or taking all the tobacco out and re-rolling it. Thinking back on that is horrible and I can’t believe I did that. Not something I really like to admit, but there it is.

I continued to smoke for most of my life, and as a teenager I lived in a country where a packet of cigarettes only cost a dollar, so that meant that I could easily afford to smoke a pack in a day and then if I went out to the bar or to a club, I would smoke another pack.

Going to sleep with an ashtray nearby and waking up and having a smoke before I could function was pretty normal.

My asthma got worse and I used to suffer with bronchitis on a regular basis, like at least 3 or 4 times a year. It too was normal. I never stopped to put cigarettes plus the lung conditions together.

It was not until I was much older and I started to notice the wrinkles around my mouth and the discoloration of my teeth that I started to really see the effects of my smoking addiction.

There were times where I was travelling and was on a limited budget financially but I always seemed to find enough money for smokes. Be it ready-rolled or cheap and nasty roll-your-owns, I would do whatever I could and make smoking my priority over buying healthy foods or taking care of myself. Of course, this depended on which country I was living in and the cost of the cigarettes in the first place; the cheaper they were, the more I could afford to smoke. When I moved to Australia, about 9 years ago, I was still smoking, although a lot less just because of the crazy price of them – but I was an addict, that was for sure, until I finally stopped smoking.

There came a point in time when I realised that my life was not working, and I started looking for answers to the problems I was having. I did not want to quit smoking, but I did want to feel more in charge of my life, rather than having things like smoking cigarettes controlling me. I had been searching for quite some time and had tried Reiki, Meditation, Yoga and a few other things, but none of it worked for me until I heard about Universal Medicine.

When I started going to Universal Medicine events and having Esoteric Healing, I really started to question my life and all of the choices I have made. By then, my father had been living with emphysema for quite some time and I didn’t want to end up with the same condition. I realised I had never questioned why I smoked in the first place. For a while I just thought that I did it because everyone else did it. I hadn’t stopped to ask: what was the purpose? How did it really make me feel?

Looking back now I can see that I would smoke to fill myself up, to not feel things I did not want to feel, to fit in and to take the pressure off. So if things were difficult I would smoke; if life was good and I didn’t know how to stay with that feeling, I would smoke. I smoked a lot!

When I first gave up it was a struggle because I didn’t have my crutch to numb me in times of stress or whatever it may be that I was used to reaching for a cigarette to support me through, but the more and more I became aware of that, the less I needed it.

The more connected I was to me, the less I needed the cigarettes and today I don’t even think of them, and cravings for them or wanting them to fix me are a thing of the past.

With the support of Chakra-puncture I quit smoking 8 years ago. Chakra-puncture helped me by allowing me to feel the truth of who I am, unburdened by the ideals and beliefs I had taken on of how I should be in life, and the hurts I was carrying from the past. It allowed me to drop the judgement I had of myself, and to appreciate myself, just as I am.

Despite this great support, it wasn’t easy at the time, but I wanted to stop and knew that I was finally worth making the effort for.

I also didn’t want my daughter growing up with a smoker around her, thinking like I did, that it was normal. I decided that I needed to change my ways to be a role model for her and I knew that it was well overdue time for me to take care of myself.

These days I love that I have a smoke-free car, house and life. I have saved thousands of dollars since giving up my addiction to cigarettes and I no longer have asthma… ever. I don’t even carry a Ventolin puffer or have one at home. I can’t remember when I last had bronchitis, as it was many years ago. I love that I made this decision to stop smoking when I did as I feel that if I had continued, I would have killed my lungs. And since I stopped smoking, I love the feeling of breathing my own breath, of breathing in the air around me... no more wheezing, just me being me.

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Addiction, Drugs, Lifestyle diseases