I was reading online a few days ago about a man who said he still occasionally badly wanted to smoke even though he had successfully quit many years ago. But I remember a few Dopers saying how glad they were to be quit of the icky habit and never looked back.
If you quit cigarettes (or cigars or pipes) long ago, do you still crave to smoke? Or is it something you never even think about nowadays?
No at all. I basically quit at 18 in Bootcamp. Probably smoked 7 cigarettes over the next 7 years and only when in a bar drinking with friends. So 30+ years later, no desire at all.
On the other hand, I never smoked much at all, so even quitting was fairly easy for me. I don’t think I was ever addicted. Now coffee, Fuhgeddaboudit. Never happening. Can’t give it up, it took a lot to get down to 1 cup a day. I’ve reverted to multiple cups in the last year after a good decade or so.
I was a pack a day smoker for about 30 years. I gave up 20 odd years ago and once in a very rare while I fleetingly think about lighting up a cigarette. Just as though I still smoked and had a pack on me. But to provide some sort of context, only a few days ago I suddenly had a terrible feeling that I hadn’t phoned my parents for weeks. A wave of shame/guilt washed over me and then I realized that they have been dead for years.
No longings at all. I quit cold turkey in 1984 (2 packs/day) and had few problems with cravings after the first week. Tried smoking on a vacation a few years later and found I didn’t like it anymore, and that was the last time for me.
Weird occurrence afterward: When we decided to have kids, we purged almost all photos with cigarettes in them. My son started smoking in his late teens, and chose the same oddball brand I smoked back in the day. Despite never seeing a picture of me with it, or knowing about it.
After 42 years: Nope. Never. I’ve seen firsthand the damage that it does to people and want no part of it. One of the saddest sights at this facility is the guy in a wheelchair sitting outside in shitty weather puffing away. I see the damage that it is doing to my 51 year old daughter, who can’t kick that nasty habit despite the health problems it’s causing her.
After 30 years of smoking, I quit 15 years ago. No longings whatsoever.
It probably helps that smoking isn’t nearly as widespread or common as it once was. I rarely encounter a place or event where there’s a lot of folks smoking. The smoking areas are all outside, if they exist at all.
Case in point: last month I chanced into a tavern that allows smoking. The smell drove me away before I finished my one and only beer.
I smoked a pack a day for 40 years. I quit 5 years ago and still get cravings. Not often, but socializing, drinking, etc are just not the same without a cigarette. Cigs are $10 a pack. I now pay $10 a day for my COPD inhaler. But I’d start again in a minute if it wasn’t going to kill me.
I “quit” in 2002. At that point, I had been up to 2 packs a day. I put “quit” in quotes because I have had some cigarettes since then. When my uncle died seven years ago, I bought a pack. I’ll occasionally have a cigarette with a friend if the mood strikes me – this happens maybe twice a year. Sometimes not all on a given year. Otherwise, day to day, I don’t have a longing for cigarettes. I don’t miss them as part of my daily routine. I can’t stand the smell it leaves on one’s clothes.
Maybe once or twice a year, in summer, I’ll get a whiff of cigarette smoke and think, ‘boy, I’d like a smoke right now’. Looking back, I can’t believe how we all smoked, everywhere. I wish I’d quit longer ago, but it’s been only 10 years. Such a trashy habit!
I quit about 35 years ago. Cold turkey – just stopped. Not only did I have no urge to ever start smoking again, but I find the stench of cigarette smoke physically revolting, so no danger that I’ll ever go back!
I quit for five years when my eldest was born 19 years ago. Then, like a total moron, I picked it back up. About 10 years ago, I gave it up, again.
I’ll never do it, again.
On occasion, about once every 2-3 months, I’ll dream that I smoked, and I’ll wake up washed in panic and remorse. (And sweat!) It’s jarring.
I do not, however, crave them at all in my waking life.
My dad quit after off-and-on smoking for 45+ years just before I did. He says he could pick one up at any time, but thankfully, he does not.
My mom smokes like a chimney, her own health be damned.
I smoked from the age of twelve to age forty five. At the end I was a two pack a day plus. I also smoked cigars. I quit 11.30.1998. I don’t miss teh cigarettes but I sometime feel nostalgic about the cigars.
Quit fourteen+ years ago during a stint in the hospital. I really don’t have cravings. What bothers me is when I dream I’m smoking. At first I’m enjoying it, then the horror of being addicted again sets in. The thought of “Hey, I quit a long time ago- why am I doing this now?” really makes it a bad dream.
I quit about twenty-two years ago (whe Mrs Magill was pregnant with Fang). I still occasionally think, “Man, I could really use a smoke about now,” when I’m having a particularly stressful or frustrating day. Then I remember how awful I felt the last time I had a ciggy (about fifteen years ago), and that clears the yearning right on up.
Hell, I never smoked to begin with and find myself craving a cigarette after finishing a particularly satisfying meal.
Yes I still get cravings. Only very occasionally, but when they come it’s like I never gave up, although the feeling is fleeting. I ignore and move on.
I smoked for 35 years, then quit for 11, then like a dumbass started again. I quit (for the last time!) about 5 or 6 years ago. I sometimes get a craving. Mostly when I smell a freshly lit cigarette. I definitely don’t want one when someone who reeks of one walks by me.
Isn’t it crazy how we couldn’t smell ourselves when we smoked, but now we can pick out a smoker from 10 feet away? That shit stinks.
Yeah, that’s the one thing that really amazes me. I’ll go out to my front stoop in the morning and get the barest whiff of smoke in the air, and I can tell my neighbor two doors down is smoking. Before, you can be next to me smoking and I wouldn’t really notice. But after my first week or two of quitting, I really, really started to smell the smoke that would stick to me from the bars I would go to. I would never have noticed that before. I love so much now how I can go out to a bar or concert and not come home smelling like stale cigarettes. How did we not smell this before?
Heh, I still haven’t quit, but I once went into a bingo/slots place that allowed smoking inside to see if I could use their phone. Whew, that place smelled like death and I couldn’t leave quickly enough. So, you don’t have to quit to notice it.
On a cool spring or fall day, when I drive with the car windows open, I can smell the cigarette smoke if someone is smoking in the car in front of me at a stoplight. If the wind is blowing in the right direction, the stench is strong enough to be objectionable. It’s no wonder that the homes, furniture, cars, and clothes of smokers reek to high heaven. This is not from the psychology of being an ex-smoker. I don’t feel morally superior and basically couldn’t care less if someone wants to smoke, as long as they’re not anywhere near me, because cigarette smoke is objectively acrid and foul.