My first thought was blood circulation when I first started noticing the numbness. I have been back to the Dr. a few times now and they insist my circulation is fine. The Dr. is leaning toward pinched nerves in my lower back. Possibly smoking is causing inflamation. Either way quitting is no longer an option I am afraid.
This was me.
I smoked for 23 years, minus the quit attempts. Longest was a year, to the day. After a few months of that one, I told myself that if I still craved a smoke after a full year without, I’d have one. I did, and got right back into the habit of course.
Quit this time with no nicotine for a month, cold turkey, because I started to get a little coughy/wheezy. I was going nuts again, just like the last time. Then I tried a Swedish Snus on a Saturday night. Sunday was the first day in 23 years that I didn’t crave a smoke, including the full year when I quit. I use Snus now(real Swedish, not American), and don’t have the slightest craving for cigarettes.
There’s just something about a doctor telling you, while you’re in the hospital for respiratory failure, that you have three, maybe five years at best unless you stop smoking.
I was diagnosed six years ago with COPD, but I just kept on smoking. This won’t actually kill me, right? Old people get this and THEY die from it, but I’m 48! I’ve got plenty of time. I didn’t wait to find out if I only have a short time left. I quit that day. My husband still smokes, and I don’t care if I’m called “one of those non-smokers”, it’s a smelly, disgusting habit.
I have supplemental oxygen, and I go to pulmonary rehab. I take what seems like a lot of medicine. I’m getting there, though. Eventually I won’t need the oxygen to function like everyone else does. Someday next spring I will hike with my father in the North Georgia mountains to some Mayan ruins and see what that’s about. He’ll be 77, and if I can’t keep up with him, I’ll never live that down.
And yes, I started smoking at 17. All my friends did. If someone had offered me a deal to quit smoking, I have to honestly say it would depend on when in my life it was offered, because I loved to smoke. Loved.
^ That was my mom. She was adamant that she loved smoking and did not want to quit. When she was forcibly removed from nicotine twice during her heart surgeries the first thing she did as soon as she was physically able to drag her ass out of bed and get someplace that sold tobacco was buy a pack of cigarettes. In both those instances she had gone months without a smoke so the physical cravings were minimal and withdrawal over, it was pure psychological want.
We knew she was near the end and dying when she stopped asking for cigarettes. Which was also about the same time she stopped asking for food or water or even responding to anyone else.
skipping cigars and pipes- the "enjoyment’ is just your body reacting to the fresh drug infusion.
Smoking causes stress, it does not relieve it. The feeling of temporary stress relief you feel is just the addiction knowing it’s gonna get fed.
You may think you enjoy it, but that’s the addiction.
Who is in charge of your life- you or the addiction?
I found Allen Carr’s book helpful, too as well as Joel Spitzer’s material.
But I can tell you, for me, they’re wrong about that part. I still remember how I felt with that first smoke, after a year of being off nicotine. Relieved, for the first time in a year. The only thing stressful was the health concern. I should know - hell, I was there. I consider it the major weakness to the Carr/Spitzer approach: they refuse(d) to concede that nicotine provides any pleasure/benefit, other than the cessation of withdrawal symptoms.
Nope. You’re wrong. In my case, at least. That’s the same tired BS I’ve heard from a hundred other people that think they know my smoking habits better than I do.
If I ever get stressed, I rarely bother with a cigarette - I just smoke it too quickly and don’t enjoy it. Stress has nothing to do with it.
I’m not denying my addiction, but I smoke because I enjoy it. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t smoke. Addiction be damned.
**DrDeth’s **theory doesn’t work for me either. I don’t even think about smoking when I’m at work and I could take a break and smoke pretty much any time if I wanted to. Ditto when I’m out shopping, at the movies, whatever. Unless there’s some chemical thing that happens when nicotine and alcohol are combined(?) I like the smell of a cigarette (though not so much the residue on my or other peoples’ clothes), the feel of the smoke in my throat; everything about it really.
I started smoking in HS, maybe I was 15. I stopped when I was 28, the day I had a heart attack. One of the hardest things I ever did. That was over 50 years ago, so I guess it was worth it.
Sigh. You know at one time they tried to sell nicotine free cigs. No one smoked them. The enjoyment you feel is that of the body knowing it’s going to get it’s fix.
I’ve yet to meet a smoker who wanted to quit. I’ve met many who know they need to quit. But the most common phrase I hear, word for word, is, “I know I need to quit, but, I know this sounds weird, but I really *like *smoking!”
Yep. You and every other smoker. Me too, when I smoked. If you wait until you *want *to quit, chances are that you never will.
Longest time I’ve spent without a cigarette is now, 4 years and 4 months, and I have to vape to do it. I have absolutely no desire to smoke a cigarette at all, but I need to vape to keep that desire at bay. (I often vape nicotine free liquid, so the pleasure has nothing to do with nicotine addiction for me. Plain old Freudian oral fixation combined with the pleasure of deep breathing and tasty flavor.)
I wish you didnt have to vape, but my hat’s off to you anyway. Really fucking tought to quit.
Some heroin addicts have said it easier to quit shooting up than cigs.
Probably for the same reason that alcohol free beer isn’t popular; it’s missing a part of what makes it good.
I won’t pretend the nicotine hit isn’t a part of the enjoyment, but it’s not the only part - in much the same way that I don’t drink pure ethanol if I want to get drunk.
That said, two (anecdotal) stories:
-
Years ago, I used to smoke Marlboro Reds. At one point, I switched (pretty much overnight) to a much lower tar, lower nicotine brand. My cigarette consumption remained unchanged and despite suddenly cutting my nicotine intake by more than half, I didn’t really notice the difference, other than I could suddenly breathe easier.
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Last year, I ended up sick in hospital for just over a week. I was sick enough for the first couple of days that smoking (or indeed, long term consciousness) was impossible, but for the last few days, I was well and mobile enough that I could have got up and dressed and wheeled my IV stand out of the ward and out to the smoking area - a few others on the ward did just that. But, it was January, and going outside to smoke would have been a miserable experience (and probably inadvisable, considering my condition!). So I simply didn’t, I just couldn’t be bothered. I had a few cravings, but I ignored them. Didn’t get that bothered about it. Of course, once I got out and back home where I could smoke in comfort, I carried on smoking again.
I quit more than a decade ago.
I enjoyed the hell out of smoking - everything about it (well, except for the ‘horribly addicted to stuff that leaves you smelling like crap and eventually dying’ parts 
). One of life’s pleasures. I know the theory is that it isn’t pleasureable, or that the pleasure only comes from the cessation of withdrawal symptoms - and I can appreciate why such a theory is useful in getting people to quit - but damn, it just ain’t so. If it was, it would be easy to quit, as the actual withdrawal pangs are pretty mild and only last a coupla weeks at most.
Well, according to my buddies at NA, they said the reason why Cigs were harder to quit than heroin, is that (unlike heroin, unless you live in a very bad area), cigs are sold everywhere, you can bum one easily, there’s always the smell of one being lit, not to mention billboards, magazine ads, friends who still smoke, movies who show smoking… etc etc.
The physical addiction of Nicotine is comparatively mild. But it’s a social drug, unlike heroin. The psychological addition is the hard part.
You know how much I miss it? When someone who’s just been smoking walks past me, I have a very brief, but intense urge to lick them. My wife thinks that’s the weirdest thing ever, but if there’s any group that could possibly understand, it’s the former smokers here. 
This is exactly my problem. As I said upthread, the chemical addiction part of smoking is something I can ( and previously have) beat easily. I get a few cravings, get a bit cranky maybe, but I see it for what it is and ignore it. It passes soon enough.
The problem I have is that it’s a) something I love to do, and b) easy to get hold of.
I’ve found my best success is when I can restrict my access - if I can’t smoke, I won’t usually worry about it. But I can’t have access to cigarettes and not smoke them.
We all have our little vices and habits, things we like to do. Things we’d miss if we had to stop doing them. A glass of nice scotch in the evening, maybe, or a relaxing hour or so doing needlepoint. We can live without them, but our lives would be emptier. I just happen to have chosen the one that’s really, really bad for me. :rolleyes:
Honestly, I really think the “something I love to do” is the psychological addition hitting you.
Yep. Just about the very worst legal habit. Sorry dude. It’s tough. Anyone who sez it’s easy (for everyone) is crazy.
One step might be saying to yourself that the love you think you feel is just the addiction.
You know what people trying to tell me that I didn’t really like cigarettes always makes me want to do? Light up a cigarette. Honest now - how many current smokers lit one up while reading this thread?
I found it much more useful to tell myself, “Yep, you like smoking. Tough shit. You don’t want to quit. Tough shit. This is killing you, like it or not.” And then I got my first ecig.
So, on the theory that I’m not some special snowflake, when my patients tell me they like smoking, I believe them. I don’t try to talk them out of it. Of course they like smoking. Smoking is fucking awesome. It feels good, it’s tasty (when you’re a smoker), it shields you from someone else’s smoke (which always smells worse than yours), it gives you a legit reason to take a 10 minute break every few hours… Smoking fucking rocks, man. Shame about the death thing.
“I like it,” is about as good a reason to keep smoking as “I don’t like it” is to keep not exercising. Grown ups have to not do things they like and do things they don’t like. That’s why we get to buy booze and have sex.
“I like it,” can be completely 100% true…and still not be a reason to keep doing something.
Yep. And you know why that is, right?