I just recently quit myself, after seeking advise here. Its been a month and I haven’t cheated yet. And to be honest it already makes me feel better. I don’t know if its just in my head but when I breathe in, it feels like my lungs got bigger.
The end of last week I stopped using nicotine aids and went through a mini withdrawl that weekend but this week its not a big problem. I still get urges but when I do I pop in a stick of gum and move on.
This is not my first attempt, but its hopefully going to be my last. And I hope the best with you as well. Its a fight, a hard fight, but we can win it.
I was never a heavy smoker, but I smoked 1/2 a pack a day during the school year for the two years I was an 8th grade math teacher (a profession which, especially in an inner-city school, would drive a saint to the depths of vice). Cold turkey did it for me the two times I quit (once just for the summer, the second time for good).
What helped me most was being too lazy to leave the house to get cigs. The second time, though, I also quit taking my Zoloft at the same time, after a period of tapering of course. I couldn’t even keep a thought in my head long enough to crave nicotine, let alone act on that craving. Being mildly disassociative worked for me!
-About 27 years smoke free for me. Accept the fact that you will always have cravings (yes, even 20 years later), but they will lessen over time.
-The patch wasn’t around when I quit, but the gum was. I just went cold turkey.
-The longer you are smoke free, the better chance that you will never resume. My rule of thumb was about 4-6 weeks; if I could quit for that long I was a long way toward quitting. But, even then, I ended going back a few times.
-Get rid of the cigarettes. I tried to quit a few times, but still kept the cigarettes around. Face it, if you keep them around you’re not even trying.
-Accept the fact that you may not be able to quit the first time you try (I don’t know how long you’ve been smoking, but it’s more difficult the longer you’ve smoked).
-If you do relapse, keep your smoking to the absolute minimum that you can tolerate. For me, it was about 4-5 cigarettes a day (and if I could stick to that I would probably be smoking today).
-If you start creeping above your minimum, it’s time to consider quitting again. Get back on that horse.
Best of luck George Kaplin
Try Wrigleys Doublemint gum. Just that brand and flavour, it seems to help many dudes.
Go completely cold turkey. Don’t 'allow yourself" any. If you need nicotine, try the patch or the gum.
Good luck, George.
I’m smoking again. I’m just not motivated to quit.
Three methods worked for me:
Hypnosis – quit for 10 years, after the first of five sessions (the other four sessions were reinforcement)
Allen Carr’s book (already mentioned) – quit for three years, it was remarkably easy.
Zyban (Wellbutrin) – quit for several months, but the cravings came back when I stopped taking the drug, which is very expensive. I know, it’s not as expensive as cigarettes, but i enjoyed the cigarettes.
I’m a person of no willpower whatsoever. Last year, I quit smoking after 17 years and many, many tries.
At first I figured I’d “cut down,” but I think we all know that doesn’t work. Then I hit upon the idea of cutting down in very specific, gradual steps. That was the key breakthrough for me.
First I stopped smoking in the house. 100 degrees outside, raining or snowing outside, didn’t matter; there I’d be out on the back porch. (Not sleeping in a smoky apartment resulted in a noticeable improvement in my health, btw.) I did that for a while until I felt comfortable with it.
Then I stopped smoking in the car. I’d wait until I got where I was going, or have one before I left, or whatever, but no more smoking on the road. This took a bit longer to get used to, but after a while it became an accepted fact of my life.
Then I stopped smoking at work. No more smoke breaks; I’d smoke on my lunch break if I left work, but I refused to stand outside the building in the “smoking area.”
I cut out more and more: I wouldn’t smoke while I was on the phone, or before I’d showered and dressed in the morning, and so on. Eventually I got to where I only smoked when I was drinking, but then I started drinking all the time so I could smoke. This was fun, but it wasn’t really the point.
The idea here was twofold: (1) I was, as I read somewhere once, “pushing cigarettes back into smaller and smaller ghettoes of my life.” (2) I was getting my body comfortable with going longer and longer periods of time without smoking.
Finally I picked a Quit Date, about a month out in the future. For that month I unapologetically enjoyed every damn drag on every damn cigarette; god, I loved cigarettes.
And on the final day, I cleared all the smoking stuff (ashtrays, lighters, etc.) out of the house, and then I sat on the front porch and drank a lot of beer and smoked a gazillion cigarettes, and I enjoyed the hell out of them, and then before I went to bed I flushed the rest of them down the toilet. And when I got up I declared myself a nonsmoker, and that’s how it’s been ever since. There were cravings for a few days, and I still get them sometimes, but they’ve gotten less and less, and I’m no longer the miserable wretch I was for the first few days.
I even smiled last week.
Hey all.
Thanks for all your tips and kind words of encouragement. I have been smoke free (aside from my nightly cigarette, of course) for 3 days, 8 hours, 42 minutes, and 38 seconds. I have not smoked 30 cigarettes and have saved £9.08p.
The cravings aren’t nearly as bad as when I tried to quit last time. I think this is in part due to my nightly ‘cheat smoke’ but is, for the main, due to increased determination on my part. I can breathe so much easier and already have more energy than I used to. I’m going to skip my cheat cigarette tonight and see if it makes any difference.
Thanks again!
Allow me to post another: WTF?
Atropine injector? Behind the EAR? Tell me this is not a similar injector that accompanies 2-pam chloride in a military chem agent survival kit! That’s an autoinjector as long as your fist is wide. With a 4 gauge needle (or maybe it’s a 10 penny nail?). That’d kill YOU dead, dead dead!
Hi. I’m Inigo. I smoke. 
I think I’ll quit smoking. See my nice new white teeth? 
KOS: Here Inigo, try this. 
Inigo: 
:eek: 
KOS: goes through Inigo’s pockets and looks for loose change.
Hi. Sorry to not respond - I just lost track of this thread. I’d really like someone who knows more about it than I do to chime in, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen. So, here’s what they did to me:
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Atropine/scopolamine injections - one in each shoulder, one behind each ear. The idea apparently is that the combination binds to your nicotine receptors (which are actually acetylcholine - if I have that right - receptors), keeping them happy (or, at least, quiet) while you’re busy not smoking.
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Another medication in pill form (one a day for about two weeks) whose name I can’t remember, but which I seem to recall is usually prescribed to patients with Parkinson’s Disease.
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A prescription for Xanax that I never bothered to fill because the anxiety never became too much for me or others around me to tolerate.
As I said, one of the things I didn’t like was the dearth of unbiased information about the treatment, but here’s a place to start:
Standard disclaimers apply here: I’m not a doctor, and I’m not an advocate for or against this.
Tomorrow I start my final week using the patch. I have followed the regimin to the letter and wish I’d done it a long time ago. Cravings have been minimal and are gone almost instantaneously. I’m hardly having any at all now. Yes, I had some really weird dreams but they were more entertaining than disturbing. Chewing gum has helped as well to ward off the physical triggers. I think you really need to be incredibly motivated for any attempt to quit to work. I was and am. I finally feel like I’ve got the monkey off my back and never want it back.
I am two months smoke free as of today. I used the gum. I feel great.