Are there any statistics on the hardest day to avoid a relapse for someone who has quit smoking? Is the first day the hardest, or does it get harder and harder up to a point (say day 10) and then get easier? Anyone been through this before?
It’s a very individual thing. It partly depends on just how committed you are to quitting, and what method you use to quit. I quit (cold turkey) after a ~20-year, pack-or-more-a-day habit just over a year ago. For me, I’d say the first week was the hardest. After that, it seemed to get easier and easier to shake off the cravings, and now they’re all but gone. One thing I can tell you for sure from bitter experience, though, is if you want to stay quit, once you’ve decided you’ve had your last cigarette, never smoke a single puff ever again! If you do, I can all but guarantee you’ll be smoking again at your old level within a couple weeks.
Can’t find any stats, so have some first and second hand data.
The first three days are the hardest, but cravings can go on for longer. Basically as your body gets rid of Nicotine it starts to miss it and after a while it starts adjusting to the fact that it’s not there.
I think many people relapse during the first three or four days when they think that the withdrawal symptoms aren’t getting any better. Once you get to a point where the symptoms start to die down it’s easier to motivate yourself.
Apart from that I think replaces are more going to be triggered by situations either where you would normally smoke or where your willpower is lowered (by stress, booze, whatever).
I’ve read somewhere (maybe on this site) that there’s a ‘danger zone’ after five weeks or so when you’ve become complacent and might decide to ‘just have a couple’.
Everyone’s different but there’s lots of good stuff on the web, and it does get easier in the end.
Very, very, true. Happened to me a few years back, I’d quit and then went on holiday and thought “You know, I can smoke a couple, I’m on holiday”. Bang, smoking more than ever after a few weeks continued for a good few years.
I quit again a while back and now I can say to myself “Well if you smoke one, you know you’ll end up on a pack+ a day, and you can’t afford it so you’ll have to quit again, and then you’ll have to go through withdrawal again, and do you really want to do that again”.
SD
In my experience the first week was the hardest. In then got easier. And, yes, don’t have another single little puff of a cigarette. I did and started smoking again, after around 1.5 yrs of being a non smoker. Now I’m caught in a terrible circle of smoking, quitting, smoking when drinking whihc leads to smoking. Quitting is hard and NEVER NEVER take a puff again. Good luck to you.
In my experienceS, it becomes more and more difficult during the three first days. Then it becomes more and more easy (you think less and less about cigarettes), and after roughly three weeks, you don’t have anymore a craving.
But since you’re talking about relapse, actually, the most dangerous moment, still in my experiences, isn’t during this period when you’re craving for cigarettes, because you’re inthe process of quiting, your will is intact, and you don’t want to waste the efforts you already made.
It’s latter. You don’t crave for cigarettes anymore. You don’t feel the need to smoke one. Then come the tempation. Out of curiosity, or because you had a bad day, or because people are smoking around you, you’d like smoking one. And you’re sure you won’t relapse because you don’t feel the need to smoke it. That’s right. That’s right for the first one. But, reinforced in your feelings, you’re going to have another some days latter (just one cigarette won’t hurt you much when you used to smoke a pack or more before, right?). You don’t have cravings, but still, you’re accustomed to have something in your finger, to smoke when you’re listening music or have had a good meal, whatever. This other cigarette will be fulfilling for these reasons, and you still don’t think you’ll relapse. But before you realize it, you’re buying a pack again, and you go back to your former habbit.
Now, that might not be true for everybody, but I’m not the only one with this kind of experiences, either. The most displeasant/painful is the beginning, when you’re fighting the craving. But it’s also the moment when your resolve is intact. So, the most dangerous is IMO when you don’t feel anymore this craving and let your guard fall. I know it’s utterly stupid, but each time I tried to quit I relapsed this way. Utterly stupid because after the first weeks, you really don’t feel the need to smoke, and you could go on without effort. But precisely because you know you aren’t dependant or craving for the stuff anymore, you’re convinced theres no way you will relapse, you’re sure this cigarette won’t change a thing…and you relapse.
There’s a saying in french roughly saying “only the first step is costly”, which is true in my opinion both when you quit and when you relapse. When you quit because once you haven’t smoked for a short time, you don’t want to waste your previous effort, and it’s likely you’ll stay firm until you get rid of the habbit/craving. But also when you relapse, because once you had one smoke again (which didn’t change anything…anyway it tastes ugly), your resolve is chipped, another doesn’t seem a big deal either, nor a third one, nor…until you realize you’re smoking again and are dependant again.
So, I would suspect it should be like the alcoholics. Once you quitted, never, ever smoke one again, even if really, it doesn’t seem a big deal.
For me, it was like the third or forth week. I got real tired of that gnawing feeling in my stomach. It felt like I was trying to starve myself to death. Try going without eating for a couple days, then you know how it feels for me to quit smoking.