Updated March 11, 2015.

I'd like to introduce AWL, a member of the About.com Smoking Cessation support forum. At four weeks quit, she sees how nicotine enslaves us and how to remove the shackles, one-by-one.

Congratulations on your quit, AWL and thanks for sharing your perspectives about the destructive relationship with tobacco most of us develop over the years.

From AWL:

I am just four weeks quit. I don't have a whole lot of quit time under my belt.

What I do have is a complete comprehension that I will not smoke. That's it, that's all. It just simply doesn't matter what my day is like or what I'm going through. Or, how the craves are bad, bad, bad. Smoking is just not an option any longer.

Yes, I have the unexpected craves that sneak upon me - out of nowhere. I could be minding my own business, just as happy as can be and all of a sudden, I could do something as simple as hear a commercial or walk by my computer and BAM, there it is. All of a sudden, I'm thrown back into that 20 year memory.

But, see now I QUICKLY change the storyline of that memory. And, I think that's the key that most of us forget to use to unlock the door of N.O.P.E. We actually play the thought out, we keep the vision going, we start seeing ourselves with our ex-lovers (cigs) and we get dreamy-eyed over them.

What we are not realizing is that we are feeding the whole darn thing at that point. We took what could have been a passing three minute notion and empowered it.

We literally gave it legs to walk on. What we need to do is dis-empower the crave by shutting it down IMMEDIATELY. Don't give it the legs or the breath of oxygen that it needs to start taking shape.

I think when we quit smoking, we often make the horrible mistake of looking at cigarettes as we would a lover of the past. We see cigarettes as the guy or woman that things didn't work out with. What we should have been doing is looking at them for the horror story they truly are.... the ex that tried to put a bullet through our lungs,(copd & emphysema) stick a screwdriver through our neck ( tracheotomy) and cut our limbs off with a chainsaw. ( Berger's)

We need to see cigarettes for what they really are - the potential death of us.

When I see them like that, I have NO desire to return to smoking them.

I don't look at them and long for them like I miss an ex-boyfriend who things didn't work out with. No, instead I despise them, like I did the man who nearly drove me insane, who tried to cause me to have a nervous breakdown, who married me for every wrong reason that exists. ( I've healed from some of that with that ex - but I have no desire to be with him anymore).

I think so many of us would be helped if we stopped "missing" the cigarettes, and stop longing for them like we would long for a lover to come back to us reformed and with open arms.

The relationship between cigarettes and us is dead and over. Truthfully, it should have never been a relationship in the first place.

((( Peace and Love)))

AWL