Today it’s been 970 days since my last cigarette.

2 years 7 months 3 weeks 5 days 3 hours and 40 minutes

33,922 cigarettes I haven’t smoked

$5,936.35 I haven’t spent on cigarettes (I smoked expensive American Spirits)

3m 3w 5d 18:50 life saved (all according to the QuitTime program I still run on my computer)

I work very hard to not be an obnoxious ex-smoker to people who are still smoking, not say stupid things or be a general pain in the ass. But at the same time I am very, very proud of this accomplishment. It took three tries to finally have it stick. The longest time I’d quit before this was eight months.

This was probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life. I’m not even exaggerating. I had started smoking at fourteen at boarding school. I quit at thirty-one. By then I’d smoked for about sixteen years. Don’t even want to think about how many cigarettes or “life not saved” Quittimer would calculate for that.

If you’re curious this is what worked for me. I’m certainly not saying it’s the only way to do it. I was on a combination of prescriptions for Wellbutrin, Zoloft, my thyroid meds (of course), and I used the nicotine patch. I started with the highest dose of Nicoderm CQ. I found that the clear ones stuck better. I didn’t even complete the cycle with the patches. One day I forgot to put one on and just kept forgetting.

I honestly believe it was the Wellbutrin and the patches that did the trick. Cody couldn’t take the Wellbutrin and had a relapse with the smoking for six months (meanie that I am I made him go outside). Then he actually got addicted to the patches. He would wear more than one at a time, changing them after twelve hours. He used the patches for a year and a half. But we got him off of them too. Now we’re both nicotine free.

When I first quit smoking I ate approximately 10 thousand Salsa flavored sunflower seeds and went through about two cases of coke per week to counteract all that salt. I quit both of those a few months later. Now I stick to diet sodas with the occasional sonic drink. I’m not counting starbucks coffee drinks right now.

Yes I gained weight. I’ve since lost it and more and gained it all back. I’ll probably be doing that the rest of my life. I’d been doing that anyway even when I was a smoker.

But at least I’m not always thinking about when I’ll get to smoke next. Or have to worry about whether or not I have enough cigarettes to make it through the night. Or get so stressed on airplanes because I can’t smoke. Or make my mother cringe every time I have to go smoke on their back porch when I visit.