Long-quit smokers: do you still long for cigarettes?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Checks calendar - realizes it’s been 7 years almost to the day since my last cigarette (8/9/2017). Started around 15 years old (I’m 61 now), and quit a few times along the way, once for over 5 years, then always thought I could “have just one” and control it. No dice. I still occassionaly get the urge and actually like catching a whiff of second hand smoke, although the stench on people’s clothes who smoke is objectionable. A few years ago, I went to a cigar bar with a friend of mine and was reminded of how my clothes used to smell after going to bars (I predate the ban on indoor smoking).

I always used to say, if the doctor told me I had a year to live, the first thing I’d do is go out and buy a pack of cigarettes. Not sure I still feel that way, mostly because my SO wouldn’t be too happy about it. I’m torn between being nostalgic for my old smoking days and being disgusted by the hacking, phlegm, sore throats, stinking clothes and car etc. I’m kind of happy that cigs are $10+ per pack now. If I get the urge, I think about the $300+ per month I’d have to shell out if I got hooked again. Cigarettes were 50¢ a pack when I first started in high school. The fact that smoking is much less tolerated and socially acceptable also helps to curtail the addiction. That nicotene is a hell of a drug.

22

I quit by using Chantix 17 years ago. After I hit the 24 hours without one milestone, I lost the urge and have not had the faintest of cravings since.
I am also with others who say the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke is repugnant to me now.

23

No longing at all. And I get offended when someone smokes indoors, or near me, and I threw “No smokers, please” into my online dating profile 10 years ago, and never regretted doing that. Nowadays, I look down on smokers as pinheads and weak-minded self-destructive fools, which is what I’d say about myself in my teens and twenties when I smoked a pack a day most of the time.

24

I was never a heavy smoker, but knew it wasn’t a good long-term health strategy and quit in October '88.

But I still crave one every so often. If I’m sitting outside on a beautiful morning with a cup of coffee, I just know a cigarette would make the moment perfect.

I tend to binge-eat under stress (or out of boredom) and feel like all those Oreos would probably be Camel Lights if I hadn’t quit.

Same here. I always wake up relieved.

I’m convinced that, even 36 years after quitting, one cigarette would have me addicted again.

25

I quit 20+ years ago cold turkey just have to get your mind right. Of
course a heart attack is a strong impetus. No desire to smoke now or since. In fact when I smell someone smoking say at a red light or something it STINKS. I think my God I used to smell like that? What did my house smell like? It’s embarrassing now to think back.

26

I don’t recall my father ever smoking cigarettes though I’ve seen old photos of it and I know he did. He must have quit when I was 6 or 7 I’d guess. He smoked pipes for about 5 years and then switched to small cigars (like tiparillos). He quit those in 1966 when I was 17. I recall him saying sometime afterwards that he didn’t miss pipes or cigars, just cigarettes which he hadn’t had for more than 10 years.

27

My father smoked from the time he was 17 (and joined the Army) until a couple years before he died (because he was moved into a nursing home and had no choice at that point). I would have liked to have taken a few of their books when he and my mother were moved into the home in 2012, but they smelled so bad I had them trashed instead.

I did take some genealogical papers my mother had since there was nowhere else to get those.

Now, 14 years later, I’ve been going through those and digitizing them. They still stink.

28

I think that the smoke smell is gone from everything in our house after 15 years since I quit, but I don’t know for sure.

I do know that when I’m doing volunteer tax preparation, it’s damn easy to determine which of our clients are smokers. Their W-2s and 1099s reek.

29

My parents’ house smelled a lot better after everything had been removed and it was empty. Fortunately my mother had the carpets cleaned regularly, which I think probably helped with those, but I was ready to have someone remove them if necessary so I could sell the house.

30

I quit 59 years ago and no longer feel any craving. But for the first 15 years I did. I fantasized that I would be diagnosed with something and have only 6 months to live, so I could start smoking. Now, however, I find cigarette smoke repulsive.

I had a heart attack the day I quit. Then spent two weeks in the no-smoking hospital and determined I would never restart. I had been smoking a pack+ a day for about 14 years.

31

I quit a pack a day cigarette habit in 2018. I did it by using the help offered in the book “The Easy Way to Quit Smoking” by Allen Carr. I suggest this method to anyone trying to quit. I do not have any desire whatsoever to smoke cigarettes or anything else anymore and I only had cigarette cravings for about 3 or 4 days after I quit (until the nicotine left my system). I do, however, vape nicotine and cannabis.

One could say that I haven’t really quit because I still vape. To that I would respond, “It’s true that I didn’t stop using nicotine but I did stop smoking and that’s a huge deal for me.”

32

Nope. I quit for the last time in 2011, thanks to vaping, which I simply quit cold turkey in 2019 on a road trip.

No urge for either. It’s nice.

33

I was more a casual smoker, although for short periods of time was a pack a day. I would definitely go for a pack a day on business trips. And I would not have a cig for a year or so.

I tried but took about a year before reaching zero cigarettes after by eldest kid was born 24 years ago. It also really helped to stop hanging out in a bar with smokers (in China) getting late in the evening and a bunch of beers under my belt. My internal fortitude decreases with every beer and every hour past midnight.

For me, I could have intense cravings to light one up, that lessoned after about a year. That said, rarely still get the odd urge that thankfully passes in about a minute these days. I am almost paranoid about taking a puff, as I don’t want that nasty craving to ever come back.

These days, given how reduced smoking is in the US, it smells nasty even at about 20 paces outside.

34

Sort of. I was at least a pack a day smoker of cigarettes for about thirty years, at least. I smoked a tobacco pipe for several years as well (not in conjunction with cigarettes, but I found I enjoyed it more, plus less of a fast-food suck-it-down type compulsion, as an activity).

No, not a cold turkey non-smoker yet, but I’ve been using “Chantix” (varenicline) for a few months…haven’t made the switch to non-smoker, but it’s more often that I’ll simply “forget” to smoke.

At home, say, after getting home from work, or commuting in the car. Or at a dinner, whether at a restaurant or with friends at someone’s house. Takes the edge off, I guess. Or maybe removes the “edge.”

I’ll still go outside (as it seems most places are these days) if I want to continue a conversation with someone, but I don’t like “bumming smokes” off people. I usually have a pack of what I consider unsatisfying cigarettes, like American Spirits, somewhere nearby for such an “occasion,” plus a trusty Zippo with a torch insert (hey! one never knows when the arson bug might hit!).

I wouldn’t call it a “longing,” a “yearning,” a “yen,” or much of a desire in my case. It’s more like something to do. Bonus that the activity melds well with reading (books) or just killing time.

So, I think there is a notion in generalized rehabilitation therapy theory that relapses can be an important part of recovery…so, I don’t beat my self up about it if I buy a bottle and some easy-smoking menthols or whatever once in a while.

I wouldn’t call that a “longing” though…just me being an idiot, really!

There is that too!

35

I consider it win as a twenty-thirty cigarette per day smoked for at least thirty years to smoke at most five per day, and often less. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’ll take what I can get. No, I don’t vape or use any kind of nicotine replacement therapy, either.

Even with “Chantix,” it does require a bit of discipline, but, IMHO, very little. It helps that I have no ill effects from the drug, that I can observe (no, I’ve not had a liver panel or any other diagnostics done since beginning and continuing use) and it also helps that my insurance stopped paying for it, so paying out of pocket is also an incentive. It’s not horrendously expensive, if one shops around, but it’s still not nothing.

Now, I don’t claim that “Chantix” is some miracle drug. I’ve used discipline to reduce my intake to about the level of ¼ or ⅙ of a daily dose in the past…but I was much younger than. A discipline enhancer, is that drug, I would say. Although admittedly that is a strong term to which I’m not fully committed.

And, no, I have no stake in the price per share of that overpriced drug at all, and am not a pharma rep…just my experience. Nor am I doctor of medicine, although I use this product with the counsel, advice, and of course prescription of my long-time GP.

36

Not really. I miss the idea of it, but I don’t miss actually smoking, i.e. in a situation where I have nothing else to do where I would normally smoke previously, I kind of want to, but even if someone were to offer me one in that moment, I would still decline.

I mostly just lost the will to smoke. I had been cutting down for a while, then the rule was I could only bum, then I went to a numerical restriction that eventually got cut down to one. I could still own cigarettes, but I only had that one per day, and eventually going and having that one became… stupid. So I just stopped.

For a while I kept an unopened pack stashed away that made me feel better just knowing it was there, but after about a year or so I threw that away.

37

I smoked for about 10 years a LONG time ago. After smoking for about 5 years I successfully quit.

After about one year of being a non-smoker, one night I decided to buy a pack of cigarettes. (BIG mistake). Soon, I was smoking 2 packs a day. After about another 5 years I decided to “requit”.

During that time I got a German Sheppard who loved to go on 3 mile walks every night! The smoking never negatively affected my health, but going on 3 mile walks every night made me realize that I got winded a lot more easily, than when I was a youngster. So I quit and it was a LOT tougher than the first time, but I was once again successful.

Do I miss it? Yes but when I think about the consequences of smoking, I won’t go back. (When I quit, I’d often have a “smoking dream” in which I was smoking again. Those have since tapered off but it gives you an idea of how addictive smoking is.)

For those of you that have successfully quit smoking - DO NOT START SMOKING AGAIN!!!

38

I smoked for about 20 years and quit six years ago. I don’t miss them at all. If I pass someone smoking in the street I hold my breath til they’re gone because I find the smell so disgusting.

39

I quit about 25 years ago and am determined that I will never smoke again, very occasionally if I get just a slight whiff of cigarette smoke it triggers the urge to light up, but any more than the slightest whiff makes me queasy, I’d probably vomit if I actually tried to smoke now.

Add to that the price for cigarettes is over $40.00 for a pack of 20 where I live and there’s absolutely no temptation to start

40

Quit about 4 years ago. Pack a day smoker. Never did have a problem with suffering withdrawals. The smell doesn’t bother me yet, though that is slowly changing over time. Every once in a while I’ll have a vague craving for something to occupy my hands and put in my mouth, but no cravings for nicotine specifically. About the only thing I actually miss is the pipe I’d smoke now and then.