Top ten reasons to stay quit

I am a genuine quitter no pun intended. I quit on March 7th, God’s year of grace 2008. That adds up to one month and 8 days ago. Was it hard? Not really. Is it getting easier? Yes indeed. Do I still want a cigarette? Rarely.

Beyond quitting as we all know is the staying quit. The thought of staying quit for the rest of my life used to scare me into postponing quitting. Well I quit not too long ago and I am getting into that second stage: the staying quit.

And therefore, I decided to make a list to help remind myself, and others to keep on being the quitters that we are.

Stay quit, because otherwise:

1. People around you will finally know for sure you are weak. You will have lost both your smoker aura and quitter aura. See job loss, missed opportunities and no more pats on the back.

2. You will have less money for alcohol, pot, clubbing, spray tanning, eating out, stripper tipping.

3. No tooth brushing & whitening session will give you back that deep-french-all-up-in-your-grill kissing confidence.

4. Your dog/cat/hamster/girlfriend/boyfriend will hate you again and spray pee on the walls.

5. You will once again wake up coughing pondering the odds of actually having cancer.

6. You will have lost all preaching & demeaning rights to others and their annoying bad habits and lack of willpower.

7. Plane rides, long meetings, movie theaters and even the slightest hints of physical exertion are going to really suck once again.

8. You will again try to ignore and deride the messages on the cigarette packs.

9. You will have just lost some great pick up lines to the nice toned, healthy looking, health crazed flock of women/men . “*Cough, cough*, I only quit X time ago but the smoke in here is ridiculous”, “Finally a non-smoking place”.

10. You will continue to think you are: your_age/100 of the way through your life although in the back of your head you will know you should probably be counting out of 60.

And the list goes on and on…