Good for you mate,I gave up a few years ago and I agree with the cosensus,cold turkey is the way.
Good luck its worth it.
I have made it to the 4 day mark now! 
No smokes for over 4 days. Shocking that I made it this far, but it really hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. Heck, today I almost feel normal (relatively speaking that is…I mean, I not exactly normal at the best of times. :D)
Congrats, I quit cold turkey more than ten years ago. Day five next!!
One day at a time. That’s what they tell me. So far, so good!
Doc, I had a similar experience to Qadgop- spending a week in ICU for CHF with a Lasix drip and a Foley catheter got me off of them. It’s been 28 days now and I’m doing better. I was warned by doctors to quit about a decade ago-
It’s not whether or not cigs will cause problems, it’s when. I’m sitting here looking at $33,000 worth of hospital bills I probably wouldn’t have had if I didn’t smoke.
Keep it up!
Hang in there Doctor! You are a champ already. I’m on Day Eleven of cold turkey and am facing a huge trigger tonight which is my buddy coming over to hang out. We can easily put away a pack between us over a few hours! So it will be a real test of willpower. I’m not an everyday smoker so the first few days were easy for me because I can often go a day or two without one, providing I’m not in a social drinking situation or a trigger situation when I have them lying around. When my subconscious realized it had been five days and still no fags… I had some of the worst cravings I’ve ever experienced. I felt possessed by desperation to smoke and thought about it for minutes on end. Which doesn’t sound like long but it felt like hours! I have two packs in the house and this has really tested me, but I want to be able to resist them in all situations. On reflection, my addiction to smoking seems to be entirely psychological - no physical withdrawals, just a gnawing urge that waxes and wanes.
Give me some of your willpower.
Funny about that. I was around a couple of guys I work with sometimes and they both lit up as we were outside and I was like “yeah, I’d kind of like one, but I don’t need one”. I think I’m making progress! The triggers can be a bit tough, but make sure you have a substitute like your favorite munchies, or gum or something to keep you busy while your buddy is smoking. It seems to help.
If I could, I would give you a whole bunch. What seemed to work was I really researched out the subject, found what made sense to me and made a decision to stop smoking. Not a decision to try to stop smoking. I actually had to decide to stop before I could actually do so. Trying in the past had not worked.
As Yoda once said, “Try not. Do or do not.” Or something like that. 
That’s what’s up, Doc! Great job. I quit cold turkey in November, and I still deal with the psychological cravings. But then I walk past a smoker and the smell makes me choke. You’re absolutely right about making up your mind to do it. After a dozen or so miserable attempts, it was easy once I started thinking of myself as a non-smoker.
I’m on three-and-a-half weeks of cold turkey, and while the cravings and monstrous irritability I can handle by considering the upsides to quitting, it is the fear that I will become a sanctimonious twat which I see as perhaps the most unappealing part of the deal.
They say when you start to quote Yoda, you’re already more than halfway there. The first time you quote ALF, you’ve arrived. Quoting the Cookie Monster is a warning – backsliding becomes a real possibility. Doing any of these things in polite company is considered very gauche indeed.
Congratulations on quitting. Don’t ever go back to smoking and you’ll never have to go through cold turkey again. I know what you mean about not quitting until you make the actual decision to quit, my son says the Yoda quote is “Do or do not. There is no try”. I quit 4 1/2 years ago. I used Quitnet, they have lots of great information and message boards too, plus the gadget that tells you how much money and life time you saved.
Congrats on quitting! I just reached the 4 1/2 mark after quitting cold turkey - marking the end of 20 years of smoking. The key to me making it was telling myself “Whether or not I have a cigarette right now, I am going to want another one in 15 minutes, so why bother?” And that bit of realization made it so much easier. I also told EVERYONE I knew that I was quitting, in an effort to make myself accountable. There are still people at work who see in the smoking area and jump all over me to make sure I’m not actually having a cigarette.
It still is a conscious effort, though, and last night, I had what has become a recurring dream: I dreamed I smoked a cigarette and woke up feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself for having failed. I was so relieved when I realized it was only a dream.
Well, no smoking dreams for me so far ;). I actually seem to be over the physical cravings now and it is more like my habits of when I expect to be smoking that I have to work around. It’s like the automatic response of “when I am doing X I can light up and have a smoke” and then I realize, that I don’t smoke anymore and that is not a valid computation. Gotta break those old training patterns. When I leave from work at the end of the day, one of the things I won’t be doing is having a smoke. It’s kind of weird after doing it for so long. 
5 days, no smokes!! Woo hoo!!
I quit three years ago when I found out that I have an aneurysm. I thought at the time that it would make a difference. (It probably doesn’t.) But by the time I found out that stopping smoking probably would affect the aneurysm, I had already stopped. Damn.
The aneurysm turned out to be very small and it shows no signs of growing. It’s also located in part of my brain that will not endanger my life. The worst it could do would be to block the vision in my right eye. (Hey! I don’t have much vision in my right eye! Thank you, Jesus!) So everything is working out just fine.
No way I’m going back.
Keep up the good work!!!
Try cinnamon candies. They really helped me as a kind of substitute. Great on 5 days. You are over most of the physical part now. I know you know this but if you pick up even one cigarette you may relapse. I did several times and the last time I know 'one" is not an option for me. I really love being smober.
7 days now – 1 week down.
Confession time: I tried a cigarette today to experiment with the data about you can’t ever take another one and so forth and to see if I actually liked smoking and if I would go through more withdrawal symptoms. Kind of curious at this point to see what my reaction is and pretty sure I could go through more withdrawal if I had to.
I took about 3-4 hits off the cigarette… and put it out. The action of smoking was kind of nice – sorta familiar – but the kind of “high” from the CO and nicotine was more of a yuck. I’d forgotten that feeling after all the years of smoking and I was kind of like, WTF? Why would I want to do this? It was no longer a good feeling. It felt like poison actually. Physically, not interested in another cigarette. No cravings since the experiment. Went and bought some gum instead just for the flavor and something to do with my mouth – handling the psychological effects.
So, I think I’m over the hump. I believe I could smoke an occasional cigarette if I wanted to without becoming hooked, but I don’t really have a desire to do so. So, screw it – I ain’t wasting my money on this crap.