I started Chantix on April 4 and have had a fairly good experience with it. I’ve had no wicked dreams, but the mood swings were strong enough to make me taper off the medication after the first 4 weeks.
As of now, I only smoke 1-2 cigarettes a week, down from half a pack a day. The cravings are starting to come back, however, and they’re getting more and more difficult to resist. How long until they either stop or become manageable? I imagine it’s different for everyone, right?
I quit cold turkey about 14 years ago. IMHO, if you keep smoking only 1 or 2 a week, you are still feeding the physiological addiction and the cravings will never stop.
My physical discomfort peaked at about 3 days - boy, did I feel strange. After that, no physical upsets but the psychological cravings lasted a year or two. By that, I mean that every time I found myself in a situation or state of mind where I used to reach for a cigarette - I did and had to tell myself that I was not a smoker.
As I wrote that, I realized that compared to previous times I attempted to quit, I had started to think of myself as a non-smoker - not someone who had quit. I guess that made a difference for me.
I was also extremely pissed off at the tobacco industry because of the admissions by Liggett when they settled a class action suit in 1997.
I never really stopped the cravings completely: even now, ten years later, I sometimes really wish I had a cigarette. I sometimes dream I am smoking, and am both appalled and delighted.
But the cravings are less intense, and they come less often. For the first year or so, the intensity did not go down at all, but the duration and time between them declined fairly quickly: by six months I was having less than one strong craving a day. I don’t think they got much less intense until after the year mark.
But I also really, really liked nicotine. It’s totally my dream drug. We get along.
I agree that you should eliminate smoking altogether and that by failing to do so, you are not doing anything to undo the physical addiction. I think the Chantix regimen works by picking a quit date about 1-2 weeks after you begin Chantix and abstaining entirely after that date, no? (I quit cold turkey with the Allan Carr book.)
As for when cravings ended after quitting cold turkey (which I did one month before the bar exam), I had them pretty intensely for the first few weeks; fairly often for about a month or two; occasionally until 12-18 months in. Around that time, they stopped. The thing is, in the first year, there are going to be occasions that you didn’t realize you associated with smoking (like rolling down the car window to let fresh air in on the first nice spring day), so you’ll have brief and transient cravings when that happens the first one or two times. After about a year, all those seasonal triggers have come and gone, so they quickly dissipate.
I actually don’t really have any psychological cravings for it anymore (2 years out; they went away after about 9 months or so), but I dream about smoking ALL the time. Then I feel like total crap when I wake up because I feel so guilty, and am then relieved that I didn’t actually smoke. I think the overwhelming guilt I feel is a good sign for my continued abstinence.
It’s been a little over five years, I think. Just yesterday at a company picnic I had great difficulty restraining myself from walking over to the smokers and bumming one.
OTOH I can go a whole month now without thinking about it. In previous attempts to quit (as long as 3 1/2 years, I think) I thought about it/wanted one every.single.day.
Stop smoking and the cravings will go away. You can’t expect cravings to go away while you are still feeding them - it’s a drug addiction and you are giving your body the drug, however infrequently. You have to stop.
There are many stop smoking threads that are filled with info about a particular book… Please look them up.
I stopped cold turkey about 9 years ago, i never really had any cravings.
My Dad used to tell a story about finding himself patting his shirt down as he came out of the theater after a movie. It took him a few moments to figure out why it was happening. He had quit smoking ten years before, because he was about to have a child and wanted to set a good example.
While we were very young, he couldn’t afford a babysitter and a movie, so any movies he saw were at the drive-in. Now we were old enough, and he’d had a few raises, so we could all go to a sit-down movie together. Because you can’t smoke during a movie, his smoker’s habit was to light up as soon as he exited. Because he hadn’t been to a theater since he’d quit, the habit hadn’t been over-written.
It wasn’t a craving, so it didn’t cause him any stress. He was just amused at discovering that little turn of mind.
I quit cold turkey a little over three years ago and after about a week of REEALLY wanting a cigarette about 15 times a day, it just started to taper. Maybe 10 times a day for awhile… then 5… then only on the drive home and at the karaoke bar… then only at the bar… etc.
After about a year, I started to actively dislike the smell of smoke and, outside of the occasional smoking dream, I no longer have cravings despite living with a heavy (outdoor only) smoker.
My short answer is “about a year” after being entirely smoke-free.
I agree with those who say you have to stop smoking to stop the cravings.
I just finished my 12 weeks of Chantix and I smoked for the first “blue” week, waiting for the Chantix to make me want to stop smoking.
Then I realized that Chantix doesn’t make you want to stop, you have to stop on your own. It also doesn’t stop cravings, you have to fight those on your own. What it does is help you manage the cravings in that you forget pretty quickly that you were craving a cigarette.
I have been smoke-free since February 7 and I could totally smoke 3 packs right now. I could maybe EAT 3 packs right now. But, that is actually just a thought in the back of my head now, not a physical craving. The physical cravings were easy to beat once I got rid of all the physical stimulus (smelling like smoke, having cigs handy, having an ashtray, having just smoked one, etc).
I’ve heard it takes 21 days to get over an addiction. Well, that’s some shit my mom says all the time. But every time you smoke again, sadly, you’re re-starting the clock.
Good luck!
After about five days, my cravings stopped, sort of. I did some re-engineering of my mind and started to think of not-smoking as an activity, an adventure, a new experience for me, and not a negative. Every day for weeks afterward was a bit of a challenge, but it was a good kind of challenge.
I buy a pack sometimes before I go out and have some beers with friends, and always smoke the whole pack that day – the next day is never fun, and it’s not because of drinking too much beer, either. Maybe once a week or every two weeks I do this. Hard to get re-adjusted mentally, the next day, but I suspect with practice, it will get easier. It’s hard to have a clear mind when you’re slightly hungover, IME.
It’s been over two years for me. I also quit with Chantix. I still wish I could have one once in awhile. But then that’s not surprising. Smokes were a constant in my life for more than 40 years.
I quit cold turkey on the day, over 46 years ago, that I had a heart attack. For about a year, I would fantasize that I had been diagnosed with an incurable and had only six months to live, so I may as well start smoking. For at least ten years I regularly dreamed I was smoking. At that point, any craving was gone and I started being revolted by smoke. I asked my wife how she put up with kissing a smoker and all she could say was that most people smoked so she couldn’t do anything about. She had a couple times tried to start (because everyone did it) but, fortunately for her, couldn’t get past the nauseated stage. I am still revolted by cigarette smoke.
My daughter’s boyfriend smoked and, when he proposed, she made his stopping a condition. He stopped immediately and has never looked back (that was in 2003).
Full bore cravings should go away a couple of days after you stop. The lesser desire never goes away. There is a theory that it stops when you die, but it hasn’t been proven.
Agent, I agree with the poster who said you won’t stop craving it until you stop getting it completely.
After that, I’d say it was up to six months before I really trusted myself. But, it got progressively easier that whole time.
It helped me to automatically go through my mental list of everything I get from quitting, whenever the urge hit me. Also, cravings aren’t important, just hold on a minute and they pass.
But, like they say, once an addict, always an addict. About ten years now and I still get the urge now and then, usually when I see or smell somebody else smoking one.
But right after that, reality kicks in and I remember what it was really like, an then I feel sorry for the smoker instead.
Good luck with it.