Of course you can’t make anyone do anything and an adult’s behavior is both up to them and their own business, but I spent decades trying to get a couple of family members to stop. Both died horrible smoking-related deaths.
I have, however, succeeded in getting three other smokers to quit. Obviously, they did the hard part, but I think my efforts had an influence. Have you convinced or helped anyone stop smoking? If so, what strategies seemed to work?
I wish. I bugged my dad relentlessly since I was about 5 years old and was accidentally burned on the shoulder by one of his cigarettes that he was holding down by his side. He felt bad but he didn’t quit. I would come home from school with pamphlets showing a smokers lungs. I think I even destroyed a pack of his cigarettes once, barely survived that myself. Nothing I did convinced him to quit, it was watching his father slowly die from emphysema that finally convinced him to quit but by that time it was too late because he had it too. He died of complications in 2002.
I bugged my brothers to quit smoking, too. They watched both our grandfather and father die. My oldest brother finally quit a few years ago. As far as I know, the other two still smoke.
Yes. The man who mows my lawn. When we first met we chatted as one does when meeting a new person. He was married, with little kids. When we would chat he would be smoking. One day I surprised myself by suggesting he should quit. I said something about the fact that he had kids and how great it would be for him to stay healthy and see graduations and weddings and grand kids. I say I surprised myself because I am usually the last person to give advice or in anyway suggest that someone should live their life in a way different from what they have decided. But he struck me as such a nice guy. He worked at a full time job and did lawn work on the weekends to provide for his family. And the way he talked about his kids was so wonderful. He did not quit immediately and I did not nag him every time he mowed the lawn. He did eventually quit and told me it was because of what I had said to him all those years ago about seeing his kid’s futures.
When we were children my brother, sister and I nagged our mother into stopping smoking.
No, and I’ve tried and failed numerous times with family members (two of whom are now deceased from smoking-related illnesses). I’ve also made less aggressive efforts with friends and co-workers and failed there too.
I’ve never smoked, but after having the same conversations over and over with smokers, I’m convinced that smoking screws up the reward centers of their brains. The general tone of their response is “I absolutely DESERVE this for all the shit I put up with!” They say this even if there is no apparent shit that they’re putting up with. I’ve also noticed that they tend to strike cocky, ain’t-nobody-telling-me-what-to-do poses as they puff away. No arguments about cancer and emphysema can penetrate their force field of sheer attitude.
Telling them that their breath stinks and their clothes, house, and car reek also has no effect. They will insist that their habit is odorless, inoffensive, and affects no one but themselves. “My kids/friends/coworkers don’t even know I smoke!” is a frequent (and utterly delusional) refrain.
I don’t even try anymore. It’s easier to get a heroin user detoxed. I know of no other addictive substance that produces this obstinate, fuck-you, chip-on-the-shoulder defiance.
Nope. Nor drinking either. I will tell smokers and drinkers that I think they are a good person if they are a good person.
Just myself. I was stubborn about it, but i finally convinced myself.
I’ve convinced a few people, who hinted that they wanted to give up, by giving them the book I used and then never mentioning it again. I actually have a copy of it in my desk at work waiting to bump into someone who has mentioned she wants to quit.
I’m gonna say, “Yes?”.
My wife smoked when we met, and I told her I wasn’t cool with it. She stopped, but who is to say why?
Now, she tells me when she’s old and sick, she’s gonna do heroin. What eve…
Yes, my husband. Well, me and two doctors and his work. The company he works for banned all tobaco from their properties.
He also has to have a physical every year and that same year his PFTs (Pulmonary Function Tests) were getting worse. His primary doc sent him to a respiratory guy. The respiratory doc told him he was in the early stages of emphysema and labeled him COPD. He freaked out a little and quit.
He used to sneak one once in a while but, even that’s stopped. How do I know? He doesn’t ever stink. Yeah. Smokers don’t think they stink, but they do. Just ask any non-smoker.
Just myself. It was pretty tough, but I was able to make a successful transition to e-cigs.
I got a coworker onto e-cigs, but that was his own initiative. He saw me using mine, asked some questions, and picked one up for himself. I hate ex-smokers who try to evangelize current smokers–I make damn sure to never do that myself.
Only by example, never by nagging or begging or scare tactics.
Oh, I’ve *tried *the nagging, begging and scare tactics - they just don’t work. But when I quit smoking, several people followed suit, and when I relapsed (had two cigarettes in one night; thought I was gonna die it hurt so badly) and then went to the ecig, several more smokers in my community decided to try the ecig route. About 1/4 of them eventually quit inhalants entirely, 1/2 still use the ecig, and 1/4 went back to tobacco or mixed use of tobacco and ecig.
I’ve never smoked either, but I think the addiction itself IS the shit they put up with.
Smokers I have known made huge sacrifices for their habit. Things like: refusing to go to a movie (two hours without a cigarette? No way!), refusing to fly anywhere if the journey could not be broken down into sub-2-hour legs with long enough layovers in between to get to part of the airport where one could smoke, refusal to have medical tests or minor surgery because they could not smoke in the hospital, etc. Feeling that you absolutely must have a cigarette with this frequency while surrounded by people nagging and judging you and not taking your “need” seriously can create a stressed and beleaguered person who clings more tightly to their habit. They become stubborn and oppositional from feeling attacked and from the constant gnawing need for nicotine.
I have never successfully nagged anyone into quitting. I think making them feel bad just makes them want to smoke more, since it’s their go-to “feel better” solution.
I think you’re right.
I do some occasional acting in regional theater, and a lot of actors are unrepentant chain-smokers. Rather than face an hour without a cigarette, they’ll say “I’ve decided my character smokes.” When the city of Chicago banned all smoking in public buildings, including theaters, many of my actor friends went absolutely APESHIT WITH RAGE over it. The theater was one of their few remaining havens where nobody hassled them about smoking, and now that was being taken from them. Some of them vowed that they would refuse to act in theaters that didn’t allow smoking, or move to a smoker-friendly city. Of course none of them did. Their civil disobedience is limited to smoking in alleys and ignoring the “15 feet from the entrance” law. If anything, this law made them more determined to smoke until they dropped dead.
I moved in with a lady and she had been smoking for years. I didn’t ask her to step outside to smoke, instead I did, and within 2 weeks she bought the nicotine gum and quit.
My brother didn’t even quit when he went to jail for 11 months and it wasn’t allowed in jail. The day I picked him up he asked me to stop at 7/11 and he bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked so much he was puking within half an hour. Now if I had been kept from smoking for 11 months I’d say at least going to jail helped me quit smoking
My daughter told her wanna-be husband that she wouldn’t marry him unless he quit. He did, they got married and will celebrate their 10th anniversary in October.
My SO. I told him it scared me that he might die, and I might have a whole life time ahead without him. He was sort of fed up with smoking anyway, but that was the push he needed.
In general though, however annoying it is, the mild pervasive social nagging helps. If there were only pamphlets and tv campaigns people wouldn’t quit. Smokers will tell you that they’re not going to quit just because people hassle them, but plenty of people who have quit have told me that it is partially to do with the message coming from peers. Basically, if a message that is disseminated through pamphlets is reinforced socially, by peers, it is much more likely to become part of your thinking.
So in those cases it’s not that anyone individually convinced someone to give up, but all the “ew, you been smoking?” messages cumulatively did contribute. No matter how much they insist it didn’t.
No; have never tried to.
I don’t smoke, and never have done – never saw the point of it – but especially nowadays, I feel a lot of sympathy for those who do smoke. It’s a stupid thing to do, and basically not good for people (as, it would seem, the majority of smokers readily admit); but the incandescent, sometimes-verging-on-murderous, hatred displayed by many anti-smokers – not only toward the practice, but seemingly on a personal level toward those who engage in it – strikes me as utterly out of all proportion. Plus, the ever-intensifying restriction on where and when those who smoke, may do this thing which is – however much the zealots might wish otherwise – permitted by law. I’m personally acquainted with few smokers; and would not make any attempt to dissuade from smoking, any of those whom I do know.
A dissuading stratagem which I heard pronounced as effective, a little while ago; recommended by someone I briefly met, who seemed a decent enough guy, but a bit of a self-opinionated braggart. He was telling me of how, long ago, he used to smoke; and how during the birth of his first child, he was doing the standard husband’s thing outside the maternity ward, pacing anxiously up and down and, in his anxiety, smoking cigarette after cigarette at a more than usual rate. By his account, there was present a fierce little Welsh nurse who observed his cig-consumption, and said severely to him, with one of her compatriots’ characteristic twists to the English language: “Slave to it, you are !” This, apparently, was an instant road-to-Damascus moment for him; he saw on the spot, the folly of his habit, and gave it up forthwith and forever. And following on from that, he set to work on the smokers among his family and friends, using that method of pointing out their slave-to-the-habit status; which according to him, caused them all without exception, to see the light and give up smoking.
If I’d been a smoker, the only effect that ploy would have had on me, would have been to piss me off and strengthen my resolve to carry on smoking…
I doubt it, but I may have inspired a couple by quitting myself.