I salute you, Siam Sam, for your own sake, and as an example for the rest of these quitters. 
-D/a
I’m still quit. I now reach for gum instead of cigarettes. I will say that it was nice to be able to chaperone a field trip yesterday and not have to go through nicotine withdrawal or having to sneak a cigarette. It was also nice to be able to go up and down a bazillion stairs without getting quite so winded.
I have been quit for 2 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 Days, 6 hours, 49 minutes and 39 seconds (80 days).
I have saved $391.37 by not smoking 1,204 cigarettes.
I have saved 4 Days, 4 hours and 20 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 3/12/2012 12:00 AM
It does bother me a lot to be around smoke, but like you, it is about the smell. I’ve recently gone through all my clothes and either washed or had dry-cleaned everything I had that still even remotely smelled like smoke. My winter coat still has some lingering odor though, which is one of those things that annoys me more than it should. Despite this, I still ultimately voted against Prop 29. The idea of persecution entered my head and didn’t leave. Banning tobacco altogether would be more palatable to me, even though I understand the slippery slope that might create.
Congratulations! That’s a big step!
Congratulations to you too! I don’t really get those perfect-right-now cravings. And I think I would be frightened if I did because my main motivation is that cigarettes never really did me any good. Alan Carr beat into my head that the pleasure of smoking was found in simply not being in withdrawal anymore. If I came to see that as not true, I think I’d be on the way out of quitting. On the other hand, I freak out fairly often about a lot for things that might not happen, so who knows? Anyway, extra congratulations from me to you since you seem to be handling these type of cravings really well.
Congratulations to you as well. A month, and now two, is huge! I still get the wistful stuff, although maybe once every three weeks or so now. I think it happens when I want to go back to being how I was before because all the changes are too hard or useless or other negative thoughts like that. The good news is that I don’t feel like that very often, since in my heart of hearts, I know it’s not true; I know that life not smoking is better and overall easier. The pain of hangovers, just to mention something I’m going through right now, is almost laughable now, whereas before I’d be groaning the whole day. But still, it is work at times to change, and sometimes I don’t want to do it, and that’s when part of me wants to say, “Fuck it.”
Twenty years! Well done! It’s good to know it can be done.
Regarding myself, it has now been six months since I have quit smoking. Actually 6.195 months if you want to be more precise. This is also the first month that’s elapsed since I’ve quit where I didn’t watch my quit-smoking meter roll over. I was planning on it, and I just kind of forgot until half an hour after I had missed it. That made me feel sad, since six months is a rather important milestone. It’s true, though, that I’ve been watching the “odometer” roll over much less often than I used to. I remember that I watched every week for a long time, and then every other week, but even that has faded. Still though, it would have been nice to see. Watching the clock hit 6 months and 1 hour just isn’t the same. Who knows how I’ll feel about things next month?
Past that, this month has pretty much been smooth sailing not-smoking-wise. It helps that now is the end of the school year and that I’ve been able to take things a bit easier. Cravings, on the whole, are nonexistent. I’ve been racking my brains for a few examples where there have been cravings, but I can’t really think of any.
The biggest thing I can think of is the wedding that I went to a few weeks ago. It was a wedding of a friend from college, and all my old college smoking buddies were there. Like me, they had all quit (although I was the most recent) but some of them do smoke at various special occasions. One friend in particular now only smokes at special occasions with someone else who is also smoking. He was very excited to have me there to smoke, and it was really hard to tell him that I wouldn’t be joining him. It was not easy to do, but it wasn’t the smoking itself that was the difficult part, as much as it was a rejection of an old friend.
But that’s been the only real smoking challenge over the past month. Perhaps the next challenge will be getting used to the reappearance of cravings when life becomes stressful again. Now that I mention it, it kind of seems like I want there to be challenges, I’m not sure why. Challenges are like a constant reminder of my decision to quit, and without them, maybe I’m not me. I know that I don’t really like the praise my friends have been heaping on me for quitting and also for starting to exercise more regularly. It could be the fear of changing into the person that I am deliberately working to become. Or perhaps I need to stay out of my head for a while.
Anyway, as I mentioned above, I did end up voting no, on Proposition 29. I don’t know how I feel about that now, which is just shy of three weeks later. I don’t even know if the proposition passed or failed since it’s turning out to be really close. I guess in the end that it isn’t really the tax that gets me, since it’s hard to argue that a state tax of $1.87 per pack, which is what it will end up as if Prop 29 ends up passing, is all that excessive. I think it was very much the persecution, or the seeming persecution, against smokers aspect that gave me pause. I am still a tad uncomfortable with voting no though, since I feel I should act as if I were on the “nonsmoking team,” and to increase taxes is how this team votes. I still feel that way even though, in all but the most unlikely scenarios, most of the people who voted against Prop 29 were nonsmokers.
So, that’s where I am at six months. Both proud of what I’ve done and also a bit scared. It really is a transformative thing, I’d say. But in any case, here is my counter as of now:
I stopped smoking on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:45:00 GMT.
It has been 26 weeks, 6 days, 22 hours, 31 minutes and 39 seconds since I quit.
I have saved $ 1870.49 by choosing not to smoke 6234 cigarettes.
More importantly, I saved 6 weeks, 5 days 15 hours 4 minutes of my life!
Congrats to you, well deserved. As for smoking only on special occasions, I don’t think it’s a good idea for your friend. I know people who say they “only” do that, but to me smoking is an all-or-nothing proposition, and if you’ll “just” smoke at this “one” reunion or wedding or whatever, then it’s too easy to extend that to greater frequency.
I think you should be proud that you didn’t feel the need to watch the clock roll over. It’s a sign that smoking isn’t taking up your head space the way it used to. Congratulations again on quitting, going half a year is a big deal.
Congrats! You’re now considered a non-smoker for insurance purposes.
I myself now have three months smoke-free! Yay!
I must say that this past month has been rough, very rough. It started a few weeks ago, when I was on a walk, thinking about smoking for some reason, and when I said to myself, “I will never smoke again,” a bit of a frisson shook my spine. It was like I didn’t really believe it or like there was some doubt in my resolve. Something about that frisson hit me really hard, and I became really afraid that I that I didn’t have what it takes to quit smoking for good.
This sent me into full-on panic mode, and I went to the nonsmoking message board, and freaked out there for a while. They helped a bit, if only by listening to me ramble, and I came to believe that the fact that the odds on remaining quit were against me was the reason for my fear. And so, I felt like there was nothing I could do, the math, in a sense, had spoken, and that was basically that. And I admit that that does scare me because it makes me feel like some of my quit is outside my control.
But the message board was not convinced that this was my real problem. They kept insisting that I have some secret desire to smoke, and I explained and explained and explained that that was the case, as they insisted and insisted and insisted, and I eventually just stopped arguing, if only because at this point I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in over a week. My mind was always going on about it, and it just wouldn’t shut up.
But now, and I haven’t told this board yet, I think they were right. I think I do have some attraction to smoking. It comes out when I read stories about people who, for example, can get cigarettes at a very favorable discount. There’s two reactions in me. The first is, “lucky bastards,” and the second is the reaction to that reaction, “so can kill himself more cheaply.” So, I think there’s some draw to the cigarettes still. But I have no idea what it is. I have racked my brains trying to figure it out. You’d think it would be easy to know this, but maybe it’s not anything about smoking in particular that’s drawing me in.
The word freedom gets bandied about on the message board I go to, and for a while that’s really been bothering me because, on the whole, I don’t feel free. I feel like I have replaced one set of constraints with another. I feel like I am depriving myself of something, but I don’t know what it is, and that is making me crazy. The only thing I can think of is that I’m pulling against a restraint I’ve placed on myself simply because it’s a restraint.
Right now, what I’m trying to do is to stop the freaking out, since I don’t think it helps. I have succeeded in doing that to some degree since I have managed to calmly and I believe lucidly explain everything that’s bothering me just now, but I am definitely not in a good place. I feel weak and insecure about the long term success of my quit even though I know I won’t be smoking any time soon.
It’s a bittersweet seven months for me, but seven months all the same, and I am still in the game. Here is the current counter:
I stopped smoking on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:45:00 GMT.
It has been 31 weeks, 2 days, 4 hours, 14 minutes and 34 seconds since I quit.
I have saved $ 2169.85 by choosing not to smoke 7232 cigarettes.
More importantly, I saved 7 weeks, 6 days 6 hours 1 minutes of my life!
What keeps me going is that I know I can do something for a short time that would kill me if I knew I had to do it for the rest of my life. So I concentrate on not smoking right now and try to keep busy so I don’t think about it. So far, it seems to be working.
Besides, as any sober alcoholic or drug addict will tell you, cravings are part of giving up a drug. Cigarettes were our friends for a while. They helped us cope with stress, provided a social lubricant, and gave us something to do with our hands. When you don’t have that anymore, you want it back. It’s not the cigarettes you miss so much as it is that you miss smoking because you want back what it did for you. I had to turn it around, from “I can be social when I smoke!” to “I really don’t have anything in common with these people and didn’t really want to talk to them in the first place. Not smoking means I have an excuse not to!”
Just food for thought.
I have been quit for 4 Months, 1 Week, 5 Days, 6 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds (134 days). I have saved $654.58 by not smoking 2,014 cigarettes. I have saved 6 Days, 23 hours and 50 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 3/12/2012 12:00 AM
I have a secret weapon at the moment helping me. I just say aloud " I need/want a cigarette!" The three terrors come raining down on me. I’ve been dog piled just for picking up my wife’s cigarettes in order to move them away. Kids don’t miss much.
What do you think you are missing out on?
Serious question. What do you get from cigarettes that you are missing? Think about it for a while and let us know and we can talk from there.
I could tell you that this is your mental addiction talking, but that won’t really help you. You are freaking out and you need to deal with the freak out. So what are you missing out on? You don’t need to tell us if you don’t want to, but you need to figure it out.
Let’s take your first freak out. The math isn’t against you. The stats take into account all sorts of people who quit in ways that are unreasonable. Moreover, you are not a robot. You are you. You are not doomed because a stat says something is unlikely. I smoked 2 packs a day plus several pipes and cigars per week for several years. I was a significantly heavier smoker that you were, and I was deeply deeply addicted. If I can do it so can you. I promise. You *can *do this.
When Mr. Mallard quit, he promised himself that he could take it up again when he turned 70. This is knowing full well that at that point, having been smoke-free for decades, he won’t want to, but he said that knowing it’s not “never again” helps.
I can be around smokers with no problem, but that has just happened and I have been quit for either 3 or 4 years. As an added incentive to remain quit, I have been diagnosed with mild COPD thanks to my 30 year habit. That said, I still crave although not daily. More like situational. I swear that telephones are powered by cigarettes.
I quit at 12 noon yesterday, so it has been 24 hours. I got my first real cravings late this morning. I’m very figety right now. This sucks.
39 years old, been smoking since I was 21/22. I LOVE(d) smoking. I love the taste, the smell, the buzz, the culture. I fucking love it!
This is going to suck. 
Are you interested in some unsolicited advice? You are going to get some anyway so feel free to ignore it or yell at me.
When you have time head to a bookstore, get Alan Carr’s book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking and a pack of cigarettes.
Smoke the whole time you read the book. Don’t torture yourself. I try hard not to pimp the book around here because I don’t want to be that guy, but to a certain extent I am that guy so…whatever. It helped me quit. It has helped many people I know quit. It doesn’t work for everyone, but nothing does. It sounds like it might work for you.
If it doesn’t work then there are other methods that may help. But it sounds like you don’t want to quit, and wanting to quit is the most important part. The book helps with that.
Hey thanks…I’ll take a look at it, but I can’t start smoking now.
I do want to quit. I really do. It is making me feel sick and unhealthy. I can tell it is having an effect on my breathing. I may completely love smoking, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to quit.
Good for you! Buy the book and forget the smokes.
Welcome to the party! Lots of strong people in the thread. Good luck with it.
RadicalPi - I can’t pretend to know what you’re feeling, but all the reasons that you quite are still real. Hold on to that, and reason the rest through. You’ve already done the hard part. Keep with it.
-D/a
RadicalPi- Kids are sending out a DogPile on RadicalPi, to hold you down and keep the evil cigarettes from getting you!
Hang in there, keep your stick on the ice, and remember, we’re all in this together!
((Red Green))
Stay strong!
RadicalPi, I’m one of those weird ex-smokers who have periods of intense craving for it, and ambivilant feelings about it.
I’ve been quit 3 1/2 years.
You can. You do want to. It’s been nearly half a year. That was a hard time for me, some days almost as bad as day one.
Grit your teeth and hang on, mate.
Hang in there.