Quitting smoking

last cig was friday am. the longest i've gone since i started. feeling pretty good so far! had the most amazing run ever this morning. still get testy / annoyed and it's still hard even though it's easier now. i have some gum just in case. my partner smokes but it hasn't made it harder, mainly because i decided not to let it!

really helps that i want to take my runs to another level and today it happened :)

Yeah, like some days I'll pass some wretched old hag standing under an awning smoking a cigarette and I'll be like "damn, that smells good!" but most days it makes me nauseous and irritated.

Day two of quitting again.

Hardest part for me is always the communal aspect - going out to smoke with friends or on class breaks, not chain smoking while drinking.

Eventually all those things start to feel normal, or not 'a thing,' like Pleasant Plains noted. You have to believe!

This thread revive has inspired me.

It's crazy to me to think that I am only about three months away from a full year of not smoking. I never thought I would ever be some kind of smoking cessation success story.

The hardest times for me are the ones like last Friday night: I had a great day, the weather was beautiful, I had just done some intense exercise (yay endorphins), and then my partner and I went to a new restaurant in the neighborhood and had some tasty food and a glass of refreshing wine. And, right after we finished and went outside and were greeted by, like, a 70 degree night (a rarity here), I wanted a smoke so bad I may have blown up a school bus for one.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3536/3864760873_c07a6d6d60_b_d.jpg

today. i quit in december but stupidly started again a couple of months ago "to cope" with the stress of finishing my thesis. terrible decision and i can seriously feel the negative effects it's had on my health. time to quit again....

Smoking makes a person feel like dried-up shit, don't do it, nath!

srsly

paralysis?

ugh this shit gotta stop

if i could keep it just to the 1 cigarette i actually enjoy every day or two that would be fine, but..

yeah, exactly. started like that again (after i hadn't smoked for about a year, during pregnancy and bf-ing) but after couple of weeks i was smoking half a pack again. urgh i crave it soooo badly. i stupidly think it'll help with the diet. lol

2days in! FUCK

starting smoking

!

started again recently :|

if i could keep it just to the 1 cigarette i actually enjoy every day or two that would be fine, but..

― pies madness (electricsound), Tuesday, 5 October 2010 22:23 (Yesterday) Bookmark

yep.

at the moment i'm on this horrid rising-panic-must-smoke thing, and then when i smoke the panic flows out and is replaced by miserable. suckssssss

my gf can buy a pack and have it last her for a over a month easily. she'll go a week without smoking at all. hate her for that tbh

2days in! FUCK

me too! going ok. quite pissed off at the world. stay strong!

Five weeks, one day and 19 hours since my last.

I will murder people!!!

― village idiot (dog latin), Wednesday, September 1, 2010 11:11 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is difficult

I quit on either January 7 or 8 of this year. For the first month I had to constantly remind myself that I was either a pack a day smoker (which I hated myself for being) or I was going to have to quit completely. I do not have the ability to only smoke a couple cigarettes a day or whatever so i would only be throwing away all the progress I made if I reward myself with an occasional cigarette. They are not to be messed with. At least not for me.

The pangs subsided after a while though I still get the occasional desire it's easy to squelch it. One thing I underestimated is how you have to reorient your entire identity into being that of a non-smoker. For so much of my life, I was a smoker that was part of who I was, and now I wasn't. And it's strangely disorienting at first.

As far as the social isolation goes, I learned to just go outside and hang with the smokers, even though I wasn't smoking myself. If I know I'm not going to smoke, then I know I'm resolute enough to not smoke just because I'm around people who are smoking and the fact that I might have a pang of a craving isn't enough to override the social need I still feel to go outside and hang out with the smokers.

Really, we can go on and on about how hard it is, but it's really just getting over the initial hump of withdrawal. Go 3 days without any nicotine and it only gets easier and easier. Before you do it, it seems really hard, but looking back, it wasn't really that hard at all.

Today was my 5th day and I had a really intense craving. I was at work, left my office and went on a hunt for a cigarette. Luckily I didn't see anyone smoking for a while and when I finally did I managed to dissuade myself from bumming a smoke. I feel like for me the hardest part is reminding myself I'm doing this for myself and not anybody else.

yes! my husband just inhales really deeply. this reminds him how much better it is not to smoke. his lungs are finally getting some oxygen. for me that's not really something i can do, i didn't smoke long enough to feel that disadvantage. but otoh having clients who stink of smoke come in your shop is an eye opener. before i didn't notice.i wonder if i smelled that badly too. don't think so, cause we never smoked inside the house.

if you make a list of the pros and cons, there's not that many advantages to smoking, really. and boy does it save money. i am pretty sure we save about 150 to 180 euro per month on cigs. yikes.

I really have not had much of a problem at home the last few evening, even drank some beers and hung outside for a bit. It’s this damn workplace that kills me. i've been here 15 minutes and i'm already freakin out.

Day 6. Quitting with a friend, we usually end the night chain smoking on her porch and talking. It's helping a lot to reinforce each other, since if I cave she's going to and probably vice versa. We're staying strong for the team.

Am currently applying the full arsenal of anti-smoking products because nothing has worked! I went to Target and grabbed the gum, the lozenges AND the patches, plus lots of sugarless chewing gum. Now that is helping! Don't forget to drink your juice - if your body feels healthier, it is more reluctant to accept pollutants.

u s steel did you try the allan carr book

I smoked for twenty plus years and that thing straight cured me, it's been almost three years now.

Drinking lots of water helped me a lot.

If this guy can control himself, so can you.

http://i38.tinypic.com/2djvrsp.gif

When you get a craving, that's all it is. You don't physically need a cigarette any more than Celine Dion songs actually make you nauseous. Just ride the snake, learn to love those tense moments. Because they pass. And when they do, you can say "hey, I didn't smoke just then."

Thanks to my massive consumption of anti-smoking products, I own about ten of those new age subliminal CDs. I am skeptical, however.

Also they say just talking about your efforts helps. I am chomping on the gum as I read this.

gonna ask you again if you tried allen carr which will rid you of your ideas about how addictive nicotine is

I think I did but will check it out again, thanks!

no sweat. my testimony: I didn't just "smoke for twenty years" - I smoked one to two packs of Winston red packs a day from 1983-2007. then a friend told me she had read allen carr and was thankful to feel confident she'd never smoke again. a while later I ordered the book; that was three years ago; I don't have any desire to smoke now. not when drinking, not when stressed. the desire to have a cigarette is just gone. it fucking rules.

has he done a book about biscuits?

if allen carr tries to stand between me & the bakery I will run him down

dont dent your fender on his coffin

but, uh, i appreciate the sentiment

Yeah, aerosmith my dad used to be a notorious chain-smoker, you could smell him coming from 3 towns away - 2-3 packs a day since the fifties and for a year and a half he has been totally SMOKE FREE! It can be done! He looks great now, had to have heart surgery after quitting tho so let that be a warning to you.

If I could control my dreams I'd smoke my way through them every night. Almost six years on and I still miss smoking at least once a day.

I still have the dreams where I've somehow stuck twenty cigarettes to each other end-to-end (centipede style) and I stretch my arm out to light the last one.

I probably have a hidden desire to light fire to my penis, but they're still pretty good dreams.

Alan Carr book seconded, it is pretty amazing at shooting down any reason why you think you might want to keep smoking.

The Nintendo DS game based on his book is NOT recommended, however, save yourself the $$$.

One thing that also helped me was living next door to the world's biggest fuckhead, a 75-year-old asshole who bragged that he'd slept with his wife and daughter at the same time. o_O He had emphysema and was hooked up to an oxygen tank, but he'd still lift the tubes out of his nose every 15 minutes to smoke a cigarette. He was usually naked, with just a sheet covering his junk (sometimes this fell off though, argh) and accidentally ashing all over his disgusting white chest hair and third nipple. And then hacking and coughing and struggling with his oxygen. I told myself, I do not want to end up like this guy. So thinking about him helps me if I ever get nostalgic about smoking.

o.m.g.

i'm not sure i want to keep breathing after hearing that, let alone smoking.

it's both a good thing and a bad thing that i feel so much better so quickly after stopping. a good thing in that it seems like i'm not too far gone to "recover" completely. a bad thing in that it makes it seem like smoking is no thing so it doesn't matter if i do or not. but i don't want to push it to the point where it doesn't seem like no thing.

i'm never sad to have my singing voice back. this alone makes me feel baffled that i ever get back on the cigs.

the allen carr book is total rubbish. i read it a couple of years ago when everyone read it and allen carr got a millionaire or something by writing that pile of shit. he is so wrong, stopping smoking is not easy at ll, stopping smoking is bloody difficult. i had my last cig more than two years ago and i still have cravings. and my throat has been burning for all the time untill today. and the only reason why i haven't relapsed is that i don't want to go through the hell of stopping smoking again.

you keep mentioning that your throat is still burning. you may want to go get that checked out if you haven't already - that shit isn't normal. I smoked for about 20 years and quit 9 months ago and I haven't had any kind of sore throats or congestion at all.