10 months smoke free!

I logged in to reddit after a while and I see that my last post to this group was 10 months ago. Since then, I have been smoke free! In this 10 months I have not missed smoking, in fact it's been the opposite, I've quite enjoyed the freedom of not having to piss money off buying and throwing away cigarettes, take smoke breaks during work, not having to explain to my wife why I couldn't bring myself to kiss her, or to be ashamed and apologize to her when she kissed me regardless, I haven't obsessed that I'm getting cancer (I'm a hypochondriac. I fully realize my smoker days can still cause cancer).

My life hasn't been perfect. Actually, it's far from being perfect: I've gained weight, my other mood disorders still make me an unpleasant partner, my outlook towards life has not turned very cheery. During the first few weeks of quitting, I was a terrible person to be around: I constantly fought with my wife over minor things, I felt hopeless and felt like I was a trainwreck, but things got better and honestly for the first time in my life I'm not afraid I'll relapse. I now realize that smoking is an addiction, pure and simple chemical addiction.

I'm writing this post so people trying to quit can take heart from the fact that a smoker of 10 years with shitload of mood and personality problems could push himself to quit once he saw what smoking really is: in the words of Allen Carr, it's an act that feeds the nicotine monster. You can slay that monster. Once you slay it, you're done, you move on to other problems in life, but you're done, you're no longer the self-loathing smoker, you're done, you're free.