Freedom: your journey to comfort
John (Gold) - July 19, 2001
The title says it all! This journey leads to comfort for all of us. As it does, the seriousness of the site and the tremendous focus maintained here will gradually evolve from being exactly what you needed during Glory Week to exactly what you don't need as comfortable and relaxed ex-smokers.
It's almost a paradox. The sign on the door says "Freedom from [Nicotine]" but once you grow into a somewhat relaxed ex-smoker it's natural to want the sign on the door to read "Freedom to Relax, Let Our Hair Down a Bit, Loosen Up and Have a Bit of Fun!" "The path was long, at times intense, we made lots of friends along the way and now we just want to tone things down a bit!" It's normal for oldbies to feel like things are just too structured - because for many of them they truly are!
Freedom is a unique blend of education and support but almost all of us see our education mission as coming first. In fact it must, for without a solid quit education our success at supporting an uneducated member is in serious doubt.
We recently had a couple of posts posted at Freedom that had nothing whatsoever to do with quitting smoking. In response, Joel reminded members that non-smoking-related posts were not appropriate at Freedom. A couple of our oldbies were not happy with this position even though we made it as clear as possible that if it's quitting related it's fine and that if ANY member EVER feels that their quit is in trouble, to post their heart out! That's what we're here for!
Our content rules are simple - if it's a recovery-related post, it's fine - if not, then it is not acceptable! And recovery is pretty broad to include all member recovery-related posts, milestone threads, daily stat parades, tobacco/nicotine medical articles and studies (please get stories and links approved by a manager first), relapse prevention, and every other subject covered by the titles of Freedom's message boards, including youth prevention!
Also, we don't use Freedom to engage in opinion debates regardless of the topic. Debate divides people and creates teams. All are needed if today's mission of helping each member and visitor remain nicotine-free is to succeed. If members have a question or want to express an opinion then all the managers' email addresses are available at the click of a mouse. You may not like the answer but it will be honest and frank.
We understand the desire to socialize and to want Freedom to relax things a bit as you move along but we refuse to let it happen. Each new arrival deserves the same deadly serious forum that existed when we arrived. Many here understand the comfort development concept and the growing desire to share some relaxing time with those who made the journey with them, but they don't appreciate the fact that the rebellious spirit is a normal development (almost like teens who feel the need to move out and get away from mom and dad's house rules).
We'd love for nothing more than to shut Freedom down for the weekend and take all of our members out to the beach, a movie or for a Hot Fudge Sunday, but for every comfortable oldbie Freedom graduate, we have a Glory Week newbie walking through the front door. We can't leave!
When the time comes where any member's recovery evolves to the point that they feel that Freedom is simply too strict in staying on message then there is absolutely no reason why they can't spread their wings, take some time away from Freedom, or find an online place that is designed for socialization, and maybe even invite their Freedom friend along with them. It isn't necessary to disrupt Freedom's focus or try and burn the house down just because you're ready to enjoy your new life. We want our oldbies around but not if they're growing hostile to their confines.
You can always come back and post when you need your batteries recharged or you feel like sharing your vast library of recovery wisdom with Freedom's next generation of newbies. It isn't necessary to say things that can't be taken back in order to justify your departure. or your displeasure with the tremendous focus we will continue to maintain. We're not like any other site, it's by choice and we each knew it from day one!
We're far from perfect and we know it. We make mistakes now and then and we know it. It's extremely easy to find fault with all of us and the longer we're around each other the more human we each become. Out of respect for Freedom and the education and support this forum has provided you, we ask that as your recovery matures into comfort and you begin to find the structure here at Freedom too confining that you act in a mature manner that ensures that all new arrivals will be able to enjoy the same life-saving message that Glory Week shared with you!
If you have any comments or criticism that you'd like to share please DO NOT post it to this message but email it to us instead. Our new members deserve a tranquil site and each knows that we don't tolerate disruption. We did it for you, we do it for them! Thanks!
John
John (Gold) - Oct 06, 2001
The Evolution of Our Recovery Needs
It's my opinion that with past generations at Freedom we didn't do a very good of preparing members for the normal online evolution that occurs as they each transitioned from the often powerful early struggle with the challenges of physical nicotine withdrawal, through reconditioning the bulk of their crave triggers, and then watching as they learned to cope with their smoking thoughts and memories, before arriving at a point where complete comfort was their new norm in life.
It wasn't because we didn't want to teach this important lesson. It was because it took time for us to appreciate the fact that the online recovery experience adds an entirely new dimension to nicotine cessation.
Recovery is a temporary journey of re-adjustment where daily nicotine ups and downs become a thing of the past. It's a journey toward becoming completely comfortable with natural brain dopamine stimulation.
I take this time now to once again remind each of you that as comfort begins to arrive that it's natural and normal not to need the intense daily recovery focus that is maintained here at Freedom. Once you master the ABCs of recovery it's hard to find joy in learning them again and again, over and over.
Many of you will continue to find tremendous pleasure in helping the next generation of newbies share our glory, but don't feel bad if you don't. You're normal too! All we ask is that each of us try our very best to understand the natural evolution of our online cessation needs and that we each do our very best to ensure that Freedom always remains 100% focused on helping our brothers and sisters still in bondage find permanent freedom from nicotine. Our deep and sincere thanks! We truly are a team and together we can make a difference!
Breathe deep, hug hard, live long,
John : )
John (Gold) - Mar 09, 2002
Thanks Freedom!
Sincere thanks to all of you for helping keep Freedom an achievement-oriented forum whose sole objective is in helping every member stay nicotine-free today! From the newest Newbie to the most seasoned Oldbie, together we form a powerful team! The fact that Freedom has no distracting or divisive social clubs or cliques evidences the seriousness and oneness with which each us take our mission! It's beautiful! May every generation of new arrivals find the same dedicated spirit and focused support that thrived when we arrived!
You can't begin to imagine the pride that Freedom's managers and directors feel in knowing that so many of you have become such skilled givers and educators. You make it easy for us to feel comfortable while being away and taking care of issues in our own lives. To arrive back at the boards and pull up an hour-old distress thread only to find that the guidance, support, focus and advice given are as good as it gets, brings big smiles to silent faces.
Please don't ever feel that your efforts, dedication and tremendous focus are not fully appreciated because they are! We're a team, there is no "I" in T.E.A.M. We should each take comfort in the fact that together we're far stronger than when standing alone!
NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF, DIP or CHEW!
Joel - Mar 24, 2002
This is really an important string. I am embarrassed that I never read it quite thoroughly before. The real strength at Freedom is how it always stays focused on smoking cessation-even in the face of other major issues that may happen over time. I suspect at times people have areas in their lives that seem so important or so integral to their well-being that they sometimes think that not smoking is of secondary importance. Or, sometimes a person may feel that they need to bring up personal problems at Freedom that seem of great importance to them because this is where they got so much help in what seemed such an insurmountable problem as quitting smoking. But such actions will dilute the power of Freedom.
What Freedom is so good at doing is getting a person who may be so distracted by other problems to come here and refocus their thoughts-that even in lieu of other big issues, not smoking still needs to still be given the utmost priority. The person's actual life depends on it.
A person's thought sometimes may be, "How can I quit smoking and not be able to discuss this lifestyle, personal issue, specific problem or belief which is so much an important part of my life right now?" This same question could be asked about issues involving things like family values, abortion, politics, religion, gambling, drinking, drugs, premarital or extramarital affairs, sexual orientation, gun control, child-rearing problems, caring for the elderly and a host of other real-life issues. Each and every one of our members does this everyday-we live the other areas of our lives and deal with many issues of major importance and still reserve a little time at Freedom to focus on the importance of not smoking.
This same effort is crucial to sustaining a quit, while here at Freedom or even when people have moved on, keep not smoking a number one priority. To keep your Freedom, your health and your life always stay focused on the bottom line importance of knowing to never take another puff!
Joel
'John (Gold) - Aug 24, 2002
A struggling visitor is knocking at the door. It's day two of his quit and he has arrived at Freedom with doubts flooding his mind. Two rather intense anxiety crave episodes so far, he has three to go to make it through the day. As with over 4 million other smokers this year, both time and opportunities have run out. Unless successful today, the heart attack next month will be fatal.
His mind has tried to convince him that his last two-minute crave anxiety attack was more like two hours long. He is giving his all while knowing almost nothing at all about quitting. The first thread he clicks upon turns out to be a birthday party. Desperate, he decides to try another. This time his anxieties are greeted by a comfortable and highly successful six-month quitter describing in great detail how horribly brutal their day has been. Discouraged, he turns off his computer, relapses, and dies.
There are thousands and thousands of wonderful social forums on the net that were designed and created to share and comfort their members when life gets rough, or to celebrate and share when things are good! It's what they're all about. The groups are sorted by age, sex, location, hobbies, political philosophy, religion, occupation, and hundreds of other categories.
If any of you would like to discuss our policies with the managers please do so by email and not on the Boards. We know this isn't easy. We sincerely thank all of you for helping keep the focus here at Freedom on our mission - freeing those dependent upon nicotine! I know I speak for all the managers is saying THANK YOU FREEDOM!
John (Gold) - Oct 08, 2003
We're told every once in a while that we need to be more like other forums and let members do their own thing, that we're taking quitting far too seriously, or questioning how we can call ourselves Freedom when there is no freedom of general socialization, freedom of speech to engage in discussions about issues other than nicotine dependency recovery or prevention, no freedom to advertise, and absolutely no freedom to explore toying with the latest quick-fix magic cure.
They're right in every regard except one, we have no desire to try and be like anything other than what we are - an education, motivation and support tool that will always and forever put education first. We're a serious classroom first and foremost, we have to be as nicotine dependency is not some multiple-choice exam where the price of failure is simply some bad grade on a report card. Here a failing grade - one puff - is often a death sentence. Above the door it says Freedom from Smoking, not freedom to exercise personal liberties.
Does the classroom have rules with some rather intense focus? Absolutely! Too serious? I don't think so. My second live clinic had fourteen participants. Two weeks later eleven had remained nicotine-free and graduated. I just learned that one of the three who didn't graduate isn't doing well in her battle with lung cancer.
The more than four million graves being filled by tobacco each year contain the bodies of our bother and sister nicotine addicts, half having died during middle age, each an average of 22.5 years early. If they had arrived here looking for a serious recovery tool and only clicked upon one or two threads before making their decision on whether to read further, what would they have found?
We thank each and every one of you for ensuring that those who do arrive are greeted with the single-minded sense of serious purpose reflected in the phrase "just one day at a time Never Take Another Puff!"
Joel - Oct 08, 2003
Hello John:
I am sorry to hear about your clinic participant. This is a story that I have encountered many many times over the years. The longer I have been in the field the more often I encounter this kind of news. I just brought up a post that contains a story of one such clinic graduate, also named John, titled Past FAILURES.
That story illustrates the point that whether or not the woman had succeeded in your clinic may not have made a difference in this particular case, being that she was in your clinic within the last year and very likely had cancer at the time she was quitting. But there is a possibility that your clinic was not the only attempt that she had ever made and if one of those earlier attempts had succeeded it may very well have made a real difference.
When I first started doing smoking clinics I didn't take the work I was doing anywhere as seriously as I do today. Back then I knew the statistics of what smoking was doing, but they were still only statistics to me. By that, I don't mean that statistics just say what a statistician wants them to say and were somehow not really true. Deep down I knew the numbers were real. But they were only numbers to me.
As the years progressed, though, those numbers became people I knew. People like John in this story. I can put names and faces to almost every disease imaginable caused by smoking now. The stark reality of the devastation that smoking causes has strengthened my resolve to try to help prevent other such senseless losses. I suspect the same thing happens to you and each of our members as they become witnesses to the senseless loss of people they knew and cared for too.
So as this thread discusses, we take our mission serious here at Freedom. We hope each and every one of our members takes their personal battle with cigarettes as seriously as we take our mission here at Freedom. I hope each and every member realizes that their early efforts here to sustain their own quits should be viewed as an effort to save his or her own life.
I also want our longer term members who stick around to help assist others to know that they are also participating in an effort to help save the lives of all other members who participate here and even those people who just read here who never joined up. We take what we do here seriously because we realize that what we are doing is trying to help everyone who reads here to save their own health and their lives by staying totally committed in the decision that they made to never take another puff!
Joel
John (Gold) - Oct 09, 2003
Thanks Joel. I love the part of this work where we get to see so many find that rich inner sense of happiness and contentment that comes from just returning to being themselves again. I know it not only fuels my spirit but the spirit of a host of utterly amazing givers here at Freedom. Although expected, the list of victims we each knew continues growing and that part we could each do without. I too once thought your focus a bit too serious but with each passing year I've come to appreciate a bit more how you became the serious giver you are. Thanks so much for all you've taught me.
John
John (Gold) - Oct 31, 2004
Thanks Freedom!
Although each passing day transports each of us further and further from once vivid memories of active daily dependency and from the early challenges of this temporary journey of re-adjustment, no matter how comfortable we become or how much we forget, our arrested dependency travels with us. The common bond between each of us is that we remain just one powerful puff of nicotine away from trading places and again vividly smelling, seeing and recalling what the endless cycle of feedings and our own self-destruction was like.
Quality support is a beautiful self-discovery and reinforcement trade between those still in physical recovery and heavy subconscious reconditioning, those waiting on conscious fixations to dwindle from often to rare, and those who've found that deep rich inner calmness and mental quiet that was impossible to savor while more than 200 of our body's neurochemicals rode an endless roller-coaster of highs and lows, as we each struggled to keep pace with nicotine's two-hour chemical half-life within our bloodstream.
We also have some recovered members for whom the circumstances of life, fading dependency memories, and the arrival of conscious junkie thinking is beginning to create a serious need for quality reinforcement. And then we have our "reluctant quitters," those who, for whatever reason, insisted upon clinging to and taking with them a few romantic fixations about the chemical they left behind, that likely require a bit more ongoing long-term reinforcement than most.
Although crisis or temptation may arrive at a moment's notice for any of us, the challenge before each group varies greatly in intensity, frequency and duration. Although crisis or challenge at six months can pose an immediate and very real threat, intentionally causing Freedom's new quitters to believe that your challenge compares to what they are going through is wrong, misleading and can actually deprive many of them of their desire and motivation to continue.
It is impossible to again experience the symptoms of chemical detox six months after ending all nicotine use. Impossible! It is also almost impossible to postpone encountering and reconditioning all but our most remote or seasonal subconscious triggers for six months (unless in a coma).
Yes, a crisis or event can thrust any of us into a situation where thoughts of smoking again briefly take center stage in the mind. Yes, having not fought any such battle in weeks or months may catch us off-guard and feeling unprepared but to compare a brief period of challenge to what a newbie is going through is like calling a gust of wind a full-blown hurricane. It just isn't right. It's rare when we see a seasoned member try to convince new members that they've got it just as tough as them, but it does happen now and then.
The crisis of a long-term quitter can be every bit as real as any moment of early challenge. But I hope all of our long-term members at least try to remain mindful of the full scope of the early challenges and take care to be as factual as possible about how long it had been since they last experienced such conscious fixation, the time of onset, and the intensity and actual duration of their challenge. Doing so will provide our newer members with honest perspective that hopefully leaves most smiling in envy over having such infrequent encounters.
It is normal to feel that in order to connect with new members that we need to somehow convince them that we vividly remember what they are going through. Frankly, it's hard to do. The mind suppresses the hurt, anxiety and pain of life, just as it should. Imagine what it would be like inside these minds if it didn't.
Instead, what the new arrival needs and begs is for us to tell them exactly what it's like to go for hours, days, weeks, months, or, for a few of us, even years, without ever experiencing anything that they would remotely classify as a crave.
The moment you begin feeling you've forgotten the early challenge and no longer have anything to offer is the moment when your potential offering becomes greatest. It is exactly what they yearn to hear - that recovery is temporary and it does get better. They want to hear about our boring craveless day and how we wish we could vividly remember and relate to what they're going through but that we find it increasingly difficult to do so.
Again, we don't ever want to discourage any long-term member from returning and posting in time of challenge but only ask that we make such posts as factual as possible. Although I have not had anything that any newbie would consider a crave since December of 2001, I promise to return and post should junkie thinking ever begin occupying this mind.
I know any such post would likely have newbies smiling but they need to understand that although everything is relative and it was only a gust of smoke-filled wind blowing through my mind, that I deeply cherish my freedom, healing and health, that encountering such a gust would scare the heck out of me, and that I would never hesitate to turn to each of you to help set me straight.
We know that we don't say it often enough but sincere thanks to each of you for helping keep Freedom's focus as intense and single-minded as it was when we arrived. Millions of words but only one rule ... just one day at a time ... Never Take Another Puff, Dip or Chew!
Breathe deep, hug hard, live long!
John (gold x5)
Knowledge is a Quitting Method
