My last cigarette was in October 2010, give or take a month or so. I’ve certainly noticed how much more money I have, but I couldn’t quantify it.
I don’t get this counting thing. But well done all, anyway. Whatever works for you is the important thing, not what may or may not work for someone else.
$25k? Wow..I mean..I knew it added up, and it’s been 13 years..but…I mean..$25k?
That’s like..almost real money!
-D/a
So, last night, the family and I went to the drive-in to see The Hunger Games and This Means War. It was chilly and raining, so I would have had to forgo a cigarette (and therefore nicotine), or I would have had to brave the elements. I did neither. I got to stay in the nice, warmish car.
I think the dollars saved are understated in these counters.
The SO and I quit in February 2010. At the end of March we had an extra $500 we couldn’t account for and it’s been that way every month since.
I think I related this before, but I quit some 30 years ago, cold turkey. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that difficult, since I had flipped my mental switch to “quit”, so to speak. You will not be successful unless you have committed mentally to doing so. This applies to any addiction. At first, I thought that I would have to stay away from coffee and beer and other things that always went hand-in-hand with a smoke. But upon further reflection I figured that I couldn’t go through my whole life avoiding life’s little pleasures. So I deliberately went to places where people were drinking and smoking, etc. I’ll admit to getting a contact fix from second-hand smoke, but every time I was able to do something that was a trigger without lighting up myself, it was a victory over nicotine and a further step to better health and longer life. Keep at it, drink a lot of water, breathe deeply when you get the urge to smoke, and the urge will pass. Good luck.
It’s hard to believe that I’m leading the charge, as it were, but yes, we can do it! and we are doing it!
You did give me that link. I’m not sure why, but I’m flattered that you remember that. But, holy moly, $12.20 a pack. That would have had me deciding between smoking and the rent. That is a lot of money.
Way to go! Sometimes it’s easier than other times to not have one. Those times are nice.
I found the beginning to be very difficult, but it is much easier now. As far as the link between smoking and other things goes, that hasn’t been too bad since I never smoked indoors. A hard part for me has been writing, actually. Since I used to take a smoke break whenever got stuck, I still want to do that. I haven’t really yet found a good replacement yet for these breaks, sometimes I surf the net, sometimes I wander around aimlessly, sometimes I get a snack, but I managed to write eight pages without smoking. I’m just not all that comfortable around it yet. But it’s only been three months.
I like it because it’s a way for me to think about smoking without thinking about actually having a cigarette. I remember back in first days, looking at it damn near every half an hour or so, but now, I look at it less often, maybe three times a day, more when a significant milestone is approaching. I do admit I like watching the “odometer” hit a whole bunch of zeroes.
I stopped smoking on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:45:00 GMT.
It has been 14 weeks, 6 days, 18 hours, 0 minutes and 33 seconds since I quit.
I have saved $ 1037.03 by choosing not to smoke 3456 cigarettes.
More importantly, I saved 3 weeks, 5 days 9 hours 44 minutes of my life!
That’s a good website, but the money calculator is useless since it’s not progressive. I paid as little as $.14 a pack in Vietnam, and probably never paid more than a dollar. The more important things are that I’ve NOT smoked some 219,000 cigarettes since I quit a pack a day habit in 1982, and have added about 20 years to my life.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Thinking “Gee, maybe quitting smoking wouldn’t be too a bad an idea” usually won’t work. You really have to feel the need to quit. A real need.
What pushed me over the line between “I should quit” to “I’m going to quit” to “I’m quitting” was the realization that, as much as I was doing to adopt healthier behaviors, I was still doing the one thing that is all but guaranteed to kill me anyway.
And, frankly, who needs the hassle? Finding places where I could smoke without bothering other people, cleaning up the mess, making sure I had cigarettes and a lighter, and making sure I could get more just got to be more than I wanted to deal with.
This for me, although it was the first of a planned progression. I quit smoking, then lost weight (well, I still am but I’m 95% of the way through) and then started uni. I realised that in the past my all or nothing (I’m going to quit smoking, improve my life, go to the gym, lose 50kgs all at once starting on Monday - GO!) attitude made it too hard and therefore set me up to fail every time.
Plus, I figured if I could quit smoking I could do anything. I was right. 
For me, it was the opposite. I lost the weight and then, once I had a good, structured food and exercise plan worked out, I felt confident that I could stop smoking without worrying about weight gain. I’m still fighting the munchies, but walking seems to help.
Add me to the list of quitters. It’s not that I smoked a whole lot, half a pack a day or so, but the number doesn’t really matter to nonsmokers, does it? It’s not so much for my own benefit as it is to get nonsmokers in my family off my back, plus the fact that there’s not really a whole lot I can afford right now, much less a daily thing like that. Anyhoo, it was one of the two big things I gave up for Lent. I went into it thinking, “Okay, I’ll give this up for Lent, who knows, maybe longer.”
Now I figure it’s what, six weeks later? Not going through any major withdrawal problems here or coughing up really gross phlegm or anything like that. It’s mostly just annoying, the urge to light up strikes mostly out of boredom more than anything. The urge passes quickly but it comes back more times a day than I was expecting, probably twice or 3x as many urges as times I actually lit up. I’ve been going through an obscene amount of gum and mints and hard candy and, well, other food, and have put on a few pounds. And I’m still not sure how it will end up. I could have already smoked my last cigarette ever or I could end up lighting up ten minutes after church lets out on Sunday.
Mostly I’m scared of becoming either an insufferable anti-smoking pr!ck or one of those guys with a really really short fuse where I didn’t really have one before; there’s been a few days where I’ve been really irritable since I quit, but I was working on something I rather wouldn’t have. Or maybe I’m just going through the grieving process because it’s another one of those vices I could indulge in in my 20s and early 30s with little or no damage, but I’m reaching the point I have to give them all up now (sigh).
…okay, I’ve been rambling too much probably. Hope everyone else is staying off the lighters out there. Wish me luck.
Jrbor. You don’t need luck, you have already become a non smoker. Congrats!
You sound like I did before I became a heavy smoker. I was a half pack to a pack a week smoker for a couple of years in college before I started to ramp up. In that time I made a couple of half hearted attempts to quit mostly for the people around me more than for myself. Each time I talked myself out of staying quit and then convinced myself that quitting was too hard. That it made me irritable. That ex smokers were assholes. That I needed something to do in my down time, or that I was missing out when my still smoking friends got together. None of this was true. You have already gotten past the worst part of quitting the rest of this is your addiction trying to talk you back into the habbit.
At this point all you need to do is decide that this is what you want. And if you do backslide don’t beat yourself up. Nicotine addiction is a tricky thing partly because it is so strongly societally reinforced. Your biggest road block is thinking you can’t do it. You absolutely can do it. Don’t be afraid.
I finally quit after 40 years of smoking.
I was hospitalized for COPD, and my children drove all night to see me. The look on their faces did me in.
It’s been one month and I won’t smoke again - but god, the urge is so strong.
I crochet to keep my hands busy. Sigh.
YAY Jali! I posted in the GBB thread, but I wanted to say something here too. You are awesome and I am glad you are feeling better. The urge to smoke goes away, I promise.
Thanks NAF!
Well, it’s been a whole month since I quit. So far, I’ve lost weight, which is good; I was worried that I’d gain. The patches are driving me crazy because they irritate my skin, but this is apparently normal, or at least not an allergic reaction, so I’ve just got to deal with it. I did soak in an oatmeal bath this morning, which helped a lot, and I waited a few hours before I put a fresh patch on, and that also seemed to help. I’d rather go through the irritation and itching than the smoking, though!
I have been quit for 1 Month, 15 hours, 48 minutes and 44 seconds (31 days). I have saved $154.33 by not smoking 474 cigarettes. I have saved 1 Day, 15 hours and 30 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 3/12/2012 12:00 AM
Keep it going!
Do you put the patches on the same spot every time? I’m allergic to many adhesives…I find rotating locations and using hydro-cortisone cream helps a lot when I am forced to use something. You’re cause is probably different, but the same solution may help. Or maybe an antihistamine if it gets bad.
-D/a
I rotate and I don’t put it on until after I’ve showered, so my skin is clean, and if a spot is really irritated, I use hydrocortisone. (Showering also helps get those little adhesive boogers off my skin.) When I talked to my coach, though, she said it’s normal because it’s how the patches are made. It just sucks because it itches under the patch where I can’t do anything about it. 
But it’s still not enough to keep me from quitting. 
I love the attitude.
Can you teach the annoying smokers at my office? Right now, one of the two entrances is closed, and the other one is RIGHT NEXT TO THE SMOKING AREA OUTSIDE.
So it’s really hard to enter or leave without walking through…smelly, annoying smoke.
Ugh.
The world needs more quitters!
-D/a