I am an ex smoker. I smoked 1-3 packs a day for more than 30 years (one year I smoked 4 packs a day). It took me 3 full years of quitting and relapsing over and over and over before my quit stuck.
I have been quit for 11 years in December. I don’t think about smoking, I definitely get grossed out around smoking and I have zero desire to smoke or cravings ever. I have definitely given it up and forgotten about it.
It took about two years to truly be over the hump with cigarettes and nicotine. I was still drinking then, so that tripped me up for awhile.
I’ve never seen somebody word this so perfectly. I smoked for the exact same reason. Cigarettes would make drink and drugs 10 times better for me and extend their effects. I’d often chain smoke on drugs but not even touch a smoke when sober.
Lol thanks man! Without question I would have never touched cigarettes. I can’t stand them and the smell drives me crazy on me and my fingers. But its funny how it effects the high, i loved it even when I knew it was horrible to do for myself. I had to switch to vaping to bypass that. I’m getting close to a point where I’ll put the vape down soon when life gets settled. I have to quit, I’m a dumbass for smoking on crohns. I’m also getting tired of saying “well at least it’s better than heroin and meth”…
“The Hump” is all in your mind. It’s there, because you expect it to be there. Like when someone relapses at 2 weeks, that two week mark looms large in their minds, on their next attempt at sobriety.
I say you are truly over the hump when you decide you are, be it day 3, or week 3, or year 3.
Or you can decide there’s no hump at all, and press on regardless.
It’s personal. I guess it depends on how long and how much you’ve drank, the condition of your body and mind. For me the hump was the 3 months mark. And by hump I mean it’s starting to be more normal to be sober. Sober my new normal
My hump is when the old habit becomes completely replaced with a new habit or habits. I don’t know when that was but the realisation that I can do ‘other things’ by my own freewill and control led me to believe I might actually be free but still being aware of what my trigger points are.
My daily cravings stopped at around 3 months I am 950 days and a lot of the time when something bad happens I don’t think of drinking but there is always that random day when the stars are all aligned the wrong way and my mood is just wrong and then something bad happens and for a split second I will let my addict that lives in me try to take over and say we should have a drink. I shut her up with loud music some candy and a dance party usually.
Then it’s gone. I don’t get get cravings at all anymore. I get thoughts of oh I could have one drink and be ok. Then I stop that thought right in the tracks and try to figure out why I had it. Usually it’s because I allowed myself to be in a bad mood instead of perking myself up. It’s almost always something in my head that I am over thinking. That’s what I am working on now. Training myself not to over think after 34 years if life. I figured if after 15 years of drinking I can train myself to not need it anymore I can do anything to better myself
A friend of mine in AA who has 55 years sobriety says 1 month for every year you drank till the insanity starts to fade and that’s only if you’re working the programme to the best of your ability.
I don’t do AA but I can agree to the one month for every year thing before you are over the hump of wanting to drink when life gets you down.
I work my own program that I put into place for me and so far it’s worked and I would definitely say it took over 15 months to get that feeling of wanting to reach for a drink when I had a bad day to subside.
Watch roadmap to recovery on youtube (as recommended here!)
Short answer - physical cravings, up to two weeks,
And emotional cravings up to 6 months.
And just random associations up to forever.
Is my understanding.
You’re over the hump already, if you’re serious about not touching the stuff again. You never have to deal with the consequences of alcohol again if you don’t want to. Quit while you’re ahead if it was a major problem that you couldn’t control.
Well, I appreciate their perspective, but that would be about 40 months for me. For me it was hard to figure out what normal was as I had never not drank since I started at around 15…so I didn’t really have any baseline for my self as a sober person…except the time I was pregnant or breastfeeding…but that time was hormone fueled. Anyway…being sober felt like my normal after about 18 to 20 months and now at around 34 months, it is simply who I am.
