Cravings verses Urges verses Desire/wants????

Earlier on in my quit, I decided that if I could understand what feeling I truly had at the time triggers would hit me, I might better know how to resolve them.

So I decided there truly was differences, and this is how I worked it out for me.

Cravings: Climbing the walls, willing to KILL for a cigarette! This hits early on in the quit, first days really, and it was important I kept busy and distracted best I could taking lots of deep breaths and drink lots of water of course but realizing I was withdrawing, so naturally I had some intense moments. These cravings would end though after the first few weeks as far as this degree of intensity.

Urges: These would tend to come about, and rarely still come about when something happens suddenly. Like my computer breaks down, or I suddenly get some bad news, a catastrophe of some kind happens in my life that I would feel that need to want to reach for a smoke. That "junkie thinking" that a smoke would help pacify me in some way due to the situation. I had to learn to substitute that with a talk with a good friend, writing out my feelings, or getting some form of exercise, a walk perhaps.

These still happen to me on occasion but much more rarely.

Desire/wants: This is probably the one area that I can still have problems with. It's likely to hit me when I am bored, and away from computer for sure, sometimes when I am with a friend that smokes. Not a craving, certainly not climbing the walls, and not an urge, just wishing I could have the "just one" cigarette. I know I can't. Too many quits in the past have proven to me that "I" am an addict to nicotene and that "just one" would lead to "just another" and so on until I'd be back to a full fledged smoker.

So when these times hit, I need to revert back to deep breaths, hold 4 counts, exhale slowly a few times until that feeling passes on by. It surely is not a craving, as those feelings of climbing the walls ended way early in the first few weeks of my quit. It's just something I consider normal to have happen now and again, and perhaps that will always be the case. But with time it's easier to understand them, and I don't get alarmed because they happen. It's all part of this journey we're on, and it helps to understand it's normal to have such thoughts. I do not get surprised by them, or alarmed, because I know what I have to do to work through them. So be it!

Colleen
1365 days