Quitting smoking

Now I feel pretty confident. I would suggest quitting cold-turkey. I am sure there are pros and cons to any method, but cold-turkey has an absoluteness to it. "I did not smoke any today" is far more motivational than "I only had two today."

Also, after a while you start not to like the things. I started actually smelling cigarettes and not liking the smell. I also became much more aware of the smoke. Go into a restaurant and look at the smoking section and the non-smoking section. The non-smoking section is so much nicer.

found that by running more and taking Vitamin B6, I was able to pretty easily stop my cravings.

Wow, does this actually work? Even if it's just a placebo, why not, I'll go take some-a those supplements I got months ago & haven't touched.

I can't run right now because I am sore from the other night when I had to run 4 miles total to the store & back to get my dog some syrup of ipecac after he ate roach traps. (excuses) And I don't want to take up a new hobby because I always get frustrated at learning curves. I was good at smoking right from the start. *bittersweet laugh/cry* Maybe I'll just start making art regularly again and maybe meditating more (aka zoning out to drone in semi-dissociative state and eventually taking a nap).

So the ONtario government will send you a five week supply of nicotine inhalers for free if you agree to participate in their "study" which consists of three no doubt long and irritating phone calls over the course of the next year.. http://stopstudy.ca I foolishly started smoking again in June after 6-8 months without, and I've tried to quit a few times since and it's been a lot harder. I suspect it'll get easier soon as I can only smoke outside and it's starting to get very cold and terrible outside, but I just tried my nicotine inhaler's first puff and it's an incredible replication of smoking without the smell, smoke or being outside in the cold. Apparently it doesn't contain the many other toxins that you would find in a cigarette, only the nicotine. Anyone else ever use one to quit?

I believe I would just get addicted to those.

it depends on how much you believe your addiction is due to chemical dependence and how much you believe your addiction is due to habit. in my case it was mostly the latter.

former for the first three days, latter for the next 8 months

...then i started again, of course

meditating more (aka zoning out to drone in semi-dissociative state and eventually taking a nap).

― Abbott, Sunday, July 8, 2007 8:10 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey, been about two months!

Haven't smoked since August of 2007 but I swear to God, I just started craving one.

don't!

Well, I'm not gonna.

hey, been about two months!

― donna rouge, Tuesday, October 21, 2008 11:02 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

i "broke edge" when i was in georgia two weeks ago (for some reason i can't resist when it's legal to smoke in a bar) but that's been it since quitting in august

This morning an insurance agent asked me if I smoked, and I said "no," and realized I've been off them for a year and a half. This is pretty much a miracle for me. I loved smoking and did it for twenty-plus years. I have been through some REALLY AWFUL PERSONAL LIFE SHIT since I quit and it hasn't even been a problem, and have gotten drunk innumerable times without goin' "fuck it, I'm drunk, I gotta smoke!"

I just wanted to testify because it felt really great to actually feel, in response to the question "do you smoke?": "of course not"

High fives, duder! High fucking fives. I haven't smoked since February and this breathing thing is a thing I can totally dig.

Abbott let me just tell you that this time next year you are gonna 1) barely remember that you used to smoke and 2) have one of these "fuck yeah, this is way better!" moments when you do remember

High fucking fives!

i wonder if the next questions of the insurance man was: have you smoked in the past..

Haven't had a cigarette since 2008 (or more accurately the wee hours of 2009), but it was the kind of thing I usually only did on weekends, as a "treat," and now I find myself using weed in the same way. Used to be I would smoke weed every couple weeks or so and it didn't really matter if I did or I didn't, but lately I've kind of gotten into a routine where pretty much every weekend, I'll get stoned at home one night and watch The Office and 30 Rock, and it's totally something I look forward to during the week like I looked forward to cigarettes. It's not preventing me from living the rest of my life or anything -- if I have Saturday night plans, I just do it whenever I get home, after my girlfriend falls asleep -- but it still sorta feels like I'm just replacing one vice with another.

Technically I quit last Sunday - I had a cognac cigar at the renaissance festival. On Mother's day I told my mom I was going to quit and diet since she had been on my case about eating unhealthy. So far I am doing just fine without cigarettes. I think a lot of it has to do with having two goals I'm working on at once. Also I had definitely cut down on smoking to the point where I was only smoking one pack or less a week.

i quit more than a year ago. and the cravings haven't vanished. i didn't realise how strong my addiction to nicotine was, i thought i could stop any day with a bit of discipline. what i realised in the meatime is that stopping smoking is a lifetime project. it's not like i don't smoke for a year and then i can have one. it's definite. the first bloody cigarette is the nail in my coffin. why the fuck is this drug so fucking strong. i still can't believe it. btw like john i have smoked for 20 years. but i have started only with 23 or something. it was a very conscious decision to start. and i smoked roll-ups. i only smoked ready-made cigarettes when there was nothing else. they taste like shit but roll-ups are really tasty.

The trick for me is not to really quit. then again I was never a really big smoker (for a long period). I think I smoked about half a pack for roughly ten months. My dad refuses to consider me a smoker (slip: I typed joker first). so anyway yeah I smoke zero to five per day. Usually it's about four. I know that's still smoking (to non-smokers) but I rather enjoy the odd cigarette than quitting altogether (esp with a husband who smokes).

Alex, my dad quit about 15 years ago and still has cravings. He was a MAJOR smoker, as was my mum. She'd get up and have a smoke in the middle of the night. Now she's a fullfledged anti-smoker. (TBH I have yet to smoke in front of'em. Tonight I was outside. she probably noticed but pretended not to see me smoking.)

I just realized that I've made it 5 years last month! It seems insane that it's that far behind me considering how attached to smoking I was during the 10+ years I smoked.

I don't have cravings anymore, but it definitely took more than a year. And not long ago I saw a whole cigarette that had obviously fallen out of someone's pack just sitting there on the curb. It scared me that I had to think twice about it.

My dad quit for a couple of years, I think, and his brother (probably maliciously) left a pack. he was smoking again in no time.

I just realized that I've made it 5 years last month! It seems insane that it's that far behind me considering how attached to smoking I was during the 10+ years I smoked.

― kingkongvsgodzilla,

Me too! Five years ago when we bought this house my wife and said, "Enough is enough." Having someone else going through it made it easier (I had tried to quit a few years earlier but she hadn't - I lasted about two months).

Now if I can drop the thirty-odd pounds I've put on since I quit...

wife and I

hey alex you kick ass for having not smoked for so long! and isn't it nice to have ILX to vent to? (It helps me when I'm cranky baout shit like that.)

absolutely. i love this place. posting away and getting answers by people from all over. one of the coolest things on this planet.

I have backslid a few times in ~2 months, but I'm really lucky that I don't get cravings the next day.

I only made it part of the way through the Easyway to Quit Smoking (Carr) mentioned above, but the line that stood out to me is that having a cigarette isn't really relaxing or enjoyable, it's just putting off withdrawal.

Nath, I'm totally in your camp. I'm a zero - three a day smoker, and I feel like that's not too bad for me. I've never been a heavy smoker, and I certainly feel less crappola when I'm not smoking too much.

For those who cannot control it, though - I feel for you. Its got to be really tough.

i went from 15-20 cigs p/day to 1-3 p/day over a year ago, and have maintained that level since. my husband thought that cutting down so drastically during such a huge life change would be a bad idea, but it was actually the best - whole new environment, whole new set of habits and new routine. made it waaaaaaay easier than trying to quit while living in the same house where i could always smoke inside, and going to the same job where i would smoke before, during and after work. and several times - while on vacation - i've gone for as long as 6 days without even thinking about smoking.

next time we move i might try to stop altogether.

Gum didn't work for me (my jaw got sore) and the patch didn't work for me (I need to adjusting my self-medication to the situation).

But I encountered Swedish portion snus from a peer on another forum, and that's worked for the past 8 months. Snus is steam cured mini teabags of oral tobacco left under the front lip with essentially no carcinogens, they're discreet and don't require spitting. Once I got the nicotine dosage under control I slowly, over a month, lost the habit of needing a cigarette between my fingers. Over the next few months I stretched individual portions out to 2+ hours, till I was down to 4-5 a day. I'm presently down to 1 portion a day (and not every day), but plan on keeping tins around for anxiety emergencies, as its far more benign than cigarrettes.

In the US, Camel is marketting a rather foul saccharine (and low-dose) version. Don't judge snus on the Camel product - if your intrigued either as a cessation aid or for harm reduction, get a sampler from northerner.com or swedish-snus.com before you write it off.

wah

this would be a little easier if i didn't need a giant excuse to get out of the office right now

I wonder if taking up knitting will help distract me from my smoking :/

YES it WILL if you are of a singular and obsessive mind like I am.

It worked REALLY WELL for me.

Hahah I was actually remembering you Abb! And then I remembered how you said you couldnt interwebs when you got onto the knitting and I was all "nooooooooooooo"

i think when i see it i just see the huge plumes of smoke and it looks really gross to me. it seems grubbier in a way. i don't claim to understand why. it just does. i mean i realize that smoking cigarettes can be a grubby thing too.

― scott seward, Tuesday, September 12, 2017 8:47 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I can see that. Also grubby is not good.

Still a smoker myself tbh, and don't desire quitting for another year at least.

tbf you don't have to set your vape to churn out masses of vapour, that's just twats.

smoked a few hand rolls in Barcelona with my cousin. They were glorious!! first time i smoked in something like 7 years. no desire to start again or anything but they were nice in the moment .

don't tell me these kind of things, i have more than nine years without smoking and was thinking of allowing myself a joint on the tenth birthday. but somehow i doubt that i will risk it...

I did a year and a half without smoking and loved it, but then at a crazy wedding party I started again and have been smoking (at parties) on/off since :'(

Have recently moved and used the opportunity to quit again, hoping I can stay clean this time

Having said that, even when I was smoking I could never really see the point of vaping - obviously, there's been decades of medical research gone into the long term health risks of smoking vs. the long term health risks of vaping, so just how healthier it actually is remains to be seen.

― more Allegro-like (Turrican), Tuesday, September 12, 2017 5:12 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we don't have this research on vaping yet! the consensus feeling is that it is safer than combustible tobacco, but it will be a long time before we really know much about the health risks of vaping

i worked with a pulmonologist, probably in his sixties, who recommended e-cigarettes to a guy in his seventies who had been smoking for over 50 years. i thought that was pretty progressive

Nearly three years without so much as a puff and do not miss it one bit, aside from very occasional cravings which come at weird and unpredictible times - in the pub or at parties I usually couldn't give a shit. I don't feel markedly better physically for having given up, but I relish being free of the addiction.

now that it is £10 + for a 20 pack, the temptation to start smoking again is very much reduced for me. To smoke and drink you have to be pretty rich these days!

sheeit, I can remember paying 67p for 10 Berkley king size.

Yeah, I always forget how much they cost... before stopping, I was smoking rolling tobacco for years, but I was in the shop yesterday behind someone who was buying some cigarettes and I was stunned at the price.

Although, I've been told they've changed the way rolling tobacco is sold too?

i picked it up again in march-april after some stressful life stuff. been smoke-free for three weeks except last night i bought a pack, ugh. probably smoked 1/3 of it and it made me feel so gross. poured water on the rest and threw them away. i can't afford it, it makes me feel like shit, i'm trying to run and it ruins it. still quitting is hard every time.

any users have experience with the patch or gum here

i used the patch years ago and again recently and the nightmares are terrible, i suppose that is the nicotine in your blood

the gum 2 MG or 4 MG is better, despite the occasional burning sensation in the mouth but I cannot say it actually reduces my urge to smoke

the inhaler device made it so i could not sleep all night, absolutely worse than the patch

i have found in the past when i quit for 3 years that i just had to get beyond the first 3 days of the psychological shit and then 21 days later i was essentially fine...have these anti-smoking tools helped anyone

I find the Allen Carr method v efficient and it's all about realizing nicotine doesn't really add any value to your life, patches/gum/vaping may help change your addiction to something much less harmful but imo better to altogether rid yourself of the nicotine urge

sounds reasonable, thanks niels

sure thing, his book's readily available online, recommend it if you haven't read it, it's a bit brainwashy but gets the job done

I know this is thread is primarily about cigarette smoking, but I started juuling a couple of years ago during a particularly stressful time for me personally and always felt shitty about it, though it is fun and a good way to pass the time. it does almost nothing for me now beyond the satisfaction of seeing the cloud, but it's been hard to find the will to kick it and it doesn't help that all the women I've dated over the past year have been smokers or vapers. anyway I realized my ex had left her chantix pack at my apartment and I've been using it for two weeks and am definitely noticing a reduction in the cravings -- I know I'm doing it wrong but I'm cutting back which I like. I've been getting stomach upset with the 1mg doses though -- the dreams actually are a lot of fun

if you ever want those endless lucid dreams without the chantix pack I'd recommend some Rhodiola Rosea aka arctic root!

I invented a new method of quitting. I've been smoke-free for a week on it.

Basically, I've decided to make some changes in my life in ways that both "play to my strengths" as well as "take advantage of my weaknesses". One of my biggest weaknesses? laziness. So: I'm quitting smoking with The Lazy Method.

It works like this. I ran out of cigarettes a week ago, and the store is a fifteen minute walk away, and every time I had a nicotine craving, I just told myself "ennnh but the store is so far away" and "ennnh but then I'd have to get dressed and leave the house" and "ennnh but I'm so comfy on this couch/in this bed" and so on.

Gonna see if I can't publish The Lazy Method, make a mil off this plan

I managed to stop twice for long periods. But the last time I didn't have the vigour to go through nicotine withdrawal again so got into vaping, which isn't really stopping. But currently I'm stressed out and sad so I'm retreating back into ciggie and alcohol abuse. I've not actually bought any cigarettes yet, still guiltily working through my partner's cigarette stash. She's lost all her mobility after a fall down the stairs and the hip replacement op didn't make anything better, and she's got dementia so has had to go into residential care because she couldn't be safely based upstairs or downstairs in our house.

Depressing shit aside, I'm determined to stop drinking and vaping this year. Vaping might not be as bad as smoking but it still makes my lungs feel like shit and chemical addictions are just a very irritating pain in the arse to maintain.

i quit smoking a few years back and am so happy vaping wasn't as developed and easy as it is now (it was hard work to vape then). i'd definitely be a hardcore vaper if i'd quit even a year later.

it's my understanding that vaping can actually help with quitting, but only if you stop smoking actual cigarettes... if you carry on doing both, it's no good

yeah, but you are just changing the nicotine delivery system, so when you switch it isn't really much of an accomplishment. Overcoming your nicotine addiction - that takes work.

During my second stopping period I used patches. One day I felt really bad, had a complete inability to concentrate. My vision was going crazy and was hyper anxious, ready to murder anybody who even said good morning to me. Then I realised I'd forgotten to put the patch on that morning.

xp agreed.. I guess it's more of a harm reduction thing. And I've known people who actually quit smoking, but then went on to vape for many many years, which is still a harmful addiction

Allen Carr didn't work for me. It worked at first, but then I got stressed and bought a pack. Then my brain wrote a subroutine to deal with Allen Carr: it started imagining that every cigarette was my last. "oooh yeah, this is the last one of these disgusting things," I'd think, stubbing it out. Then I'd run a half-pack under water. Then I'd buy a new pack an hour later. It was nuts.

The best thing about reading Allen Carr tho was learning about how the actual nicotine cravings pass after three days. This is absolutely true. Day four no cigs feels magical. From then on it's just mental discipline, ime

Don't vape it's so stupid and bad. I'm glad my bf vapes instead of smokes but I'm gonna press him into trying The Lazy Method himself, he's pretty lazy too so it might work

oooh yeah, this is the last one of these disgusting things

When I was still working in San Francisco, I used to periodically find packs sitting on park benches, with one cigarette missing. I'd bring 'em to the band practice studio, they were usually American Spirit or something fancy like that

I think Carr was actively bad for me, I think he kept me waiting for some kind of joyous smoke free nirvana state that never came

actual nicotine cravings pass after three days. This is absolutely true. Day four no cigs feels magical. From then on it's just mental discipline, ime

Deep agreement here. As I said more than ten years ago... getting the nicotine out of my system was a huge hurdle. After that it was mostly dealing with the thousands of mental triggers that told me it was time to have a cigarette. After at least a year of that struggle, it came down to fighting against a certain nostalgia, a golden-hued sense that, once, long ago, I had a beautiful relationship with cigarettes, and they were waiting for me to come back and hug them. That faded out after about a decade.

Being a nurse didn't stop her. Volunteering for the Cancer Society didn't stop her. My dad dying of esophageal cancer didn't stop her. Her own lymphoma didn't stop her.
What finally stopped my mom from smoking after nearly 70 years was the ever-increasing price of a pack.