6 weeks, 5 days...Gettin' close to 2 months!

Never, never, never in a million years did I think I would be able to make it this far.  I even made it through a nasty episode with bipolar and didn't smoke.  That's an accomplishment for sure.  My personal best stretch of time that I've ever been able to quit smoking is somewhere between 3 and 4 months.  This was back in 1998.  I rememeber it because of the place I worked at the time.  It was my first job out of beauty school, and this is also the time when I met my husband.  So ya, not an easily forgetable time.  Anyway, I have no idea what made me go back to it......oh ya, everyone I knew outside of work and parents smoked!!  I was doomed before I even started.  At 22, I was nowhere near mentally oe emotionally strong enough to truly believe that I had to do this for myself, and that my self was worth it.  I couldn't imagine the long term risks in any kind of reality.  My Mom always said that I had to learn things the hard way.  And that's exactly what I did.  I didn't really know that I had to quit until my health started to suffer in obvious and serious ways (to me).  Inhaler "hits" numerous times a day, and complications of high blood pressure are what did it for me.  If you're blood pressure's too high, you could have a stroke. And if you let high blood pressure go for long enough, you can replace "could" in the previous sentence with "will". If you can't breathe, well, you know what happens.  So, those were big enough reasons for me to actually do it this time.