For those of you, who like me, are on the roller coaster right now, and for everyone who needs reinforcement or motivation, read the following. I copied it this morning from the No Smoke group. It's long, but boy, did it make me think.
Marie

Subject: DEMON NIC TALKS..
LOUDER THAN I CAN FEEL!

There's nothing pretty about demon nic. There's nothing pretty about the ladies at WEV nursing home, sitting in the hallways or the lounge, waiting to have their safety bibs put on so their shaking hands can hold a sickarette.

For those who have had a stroke, with one side of their body still paralyzed, mouth awkwardly angled.... in the home in their 50's and 60's because of a stroke... leading cause of stroke is sickarettes.... wearing diapers, being helped to bathe, conversations difficult because language is garbled, separated from their families, their homes....institutionalized for what can be up to their 90's because of the good care taken of what is left of their health... having to leave a program that gives them pleasure.. because they need to be back in the lounge where they can have their supervised sickarette....

I don't want this. This is written as much for demon nic as it is for support from others. Demon Nic, i see these women - career women , wives, mothers, grandmothers, decent people, shake as they reach for you... handed to them by the same R.N. who distributes meds... and it makes me sick!

I see myself, a few weeks back , in the back yard, picking up butts off the grass, not caring if the dogs had peed on them, that they had been stepped on, that they were soaked from days of rain...I had to have you in my mouth, feeding my brain poison so it won't have to acknowledge reality. I see my dog moving away from me when I try to brush her with a sickarette in one hand and her comb in the other... I watch my son move away and sneeze... because of your smell.. on me....I watch myself climbing stairs, going for walks, having conversations with people, having to ration myself before the coughing fits start.

demon nic I have fought a long time to be free. From all sorts of lousy rotten things and lousy rotten people. I have beaten a lot of it. I have chosen a new path for myself. Except for you I walk that path. And now it's your turn. Get ready Nic, do the best you can to make me love you again - and work your hardest - because it doesn't work anymore. You don't do for me what you used to. You don't make me think I am cool, or sophisticated. I don't think I am being particularly bright as I suck on you in silence, no longer giving the impression I'm looking for a particularly bright response, taking advantage of your presence to justify pauses....you are a liar. Would promised me freedom... you gave me bondage.... you promised me maturity... love...appreciation of life... you took me into slavery, taught me to avoid feeling by sucking on you, and to move away from life.. rather than move away from you....you oozing mass of tar, nicotine and assorted poisons... rot in he**.