It’s like snapping your fingers and suddenly finding yourself relaxing in a Day Spa with cold cucumbers resting over you eyes for the next ten minutes after you lit that beautiful cancer stick puppy up. And then you put the thing out and it’s back to reality.
I quit 3+ years ago. Still miss it.
Wow, yes, you need to stop. Try vaping, the gum, Chantrix, anything. We are behind you!
Are you taking too much B6, like from a melatonin supplement, perhaps?
See your MD, soon.
The pleasure is from the drugs, the nicotine, yes. It’s insidious.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but quitting smoking was an absolute cakewalk for me when compared to dealing with more serious addiction issues. I will definitely grant that everyone is different, but whenever anyone says that cigarettes are harder to quit than heroin, I generally just assume they’ve never quit heroin.
I have heard the same concept about alcoholism – if there was a heroin store on every corner and commercials on TV showing people shooting up, and all that, it would be a lot harder to quit. And I get that…but I’d rather quit smoking 20 times than kick opiates once.
I’m not disagreeing with you, either…but you are literally the very first person I’ve ever heard say so. Regardless, it’s not a competition, and I’m very much glad that you quit both!
While we’re all sharing:
1968 - College dorm lounge. Non-smoker has to defend herself re. NOT smoking (“I’m allergic”)
1969 - I began smoking
1987 - bought a nice car with leather interior. Vowed not to smoke in car.
1989 - both parents die of lung cancer
1992 - I quit by using a quite deliberate nicotine OD. Woman with whom I worked ( a very flighty type) states she quit and still has serious craving 7/24. I cannot understand that. Once I OD’d, I developed a distinct dislike of the smell.
2004 - google the name of ‘the one who got away’ all those years ago. Find obit. Lung cancer in mid-forties, dead of brain cancer at age 50 yrs, 5 months.
Yes, I enjoyed smoking and even the patches didn’t completely remove the craving, but I know people who still swear that there is something intrinsic to the ‘cigarette experience’ that they enjoy immensely. I simply feel sorry for them.
At this point, everyone knows smoking is bad for you and, if you still smoke, you REALLY should stop - if not for yourself, then for the people who care about you.
I quit because I wanted to learn to fly, and I once tried skiing at a resort at 9000’ MSL and had trouble getting enough oxygen to my brain and muscles.
And the sight of my parents wasting away and too weak to stand was quite dramatic.
So, once more:
Please quit
And yes, my NA buddies said everyone’s experience is different. Not doubting yours for a moment.
I quit about 7 years ago when I turned 40, mostly because I couldn’t justify the expense any more, and my father-in-law’s early death from lung cancer three years ago helped underscore that it was the right decision, but I still miss it hugely, giving up was tough because it was such a pleasure. I can’t go back, though, not even one, because I know the patttern, it’ll be one with a beer, then two, then five, then half a pack, and in a week I’ll be a full-time smoker again.
I was exposed to second hand smoke for so long as a child that it made no sense not to smoke in the household I grew up in. My dumb ass stepdad chain smoked 2 packs a day when he wasn’t drinking and probably more when he was. My mom smoked at least a pack a day. I started smoking when I was about 14 on an opportunistic level when I could sneak a cigarette out of their packs. When I wised up enough to see how horrible my stepdad’s cough was ( I actually thought he was going to die more than a few times) and that I didn’t want to turn out like that it was too late to avoid addiction so I smoked for several years off and on.
I would quit smoking for a year or two at a time and then have moment of weakness and thought, “I can handle just one.” I found out quickly that the chemicals in cigarettes were like crack and “just one” turned into a pack a day within a week.
I finally quit for good about 11 or 12 years ago and I couldn’t be happier about that. For one, my kids have never seen me with a cigarette in my mouth so I won’t look like a hypocrite when I tell them not to smoke. I do occasionally smoke a cigar, but it is completely different than smoking cigarettes. There is no chemical reaction when I smoke a cigar and therefore I don’t think about the next one when I put it out.
I’m shocked that the shear cost of cigarettes doesn’t deter people from starting these days.
Its not an answer to the OP’s original question, but I truly wish I had never picked up a cigarette regardless of the second hand smoke that I was exposed to. Its amazing to me that I have no adverse health effects. My stepdad probably had a severe case of emphysema 20 years ago when he was in his late 40’s. As far as I know he is still alive, but I can’t imagine how horrible his health is these days.
Maybe I just never liked smoking THAT much. 
Really though, I think our brains are hardwired with the desire for certain substances over others, and for me the level for nicotine is just not as high as some people’s, while other substances were sky-high. Some people are lucky that they never try the substance that their brain is wired to crave over all others.
You’ll only be able to take my cigs away from my cold, dead, nicotine-stained fingers. I started around sixteen, which was roughly 20 years ago, and I have no regrets. In that 20 years, I have never even tried to quit, and I can’t imagine what would make me quit now. I would refuse the OP’s offer without hesitation.
Yes, I am aware it’s killing me. I don’t care. A lot of people thing it stinks, I still don’t care. I am an adult using a legal product, and anyone who doesn’t like that can happily take a seat on my extended middle finger.
Mithrander’s giving free prostate exams!! 
I’ve quit IV morphine, dilaudid, demerol, and fentanyl. And oral opioids too. I’ve also quit chewing tobacco.
The withdrawal from opioids was a LOT worse than the withdrawal from nicotine. But staying away from nicotine has been harder, in the long run, than staying away from opioids. I have had many more cravings for nicotine, many more relapse dreams involving nicotine. I still have moments of craving for nicotine much stronger than any feelings I have for opioids.
That’s the sort of experience I’ve heard echoed by others at NA meetings. But it’s not a rule or anything.
IMMV.
QtM, opioid free for over 25 years, nicotine free for over 18 years.
As long as it’s not that filthy cigarette-stained middle finger. :mad:
Even after the antismoking movement was in full swing, Canadian radio personality Peter Gzowski gave an unusual rationale for not quitting his 4 pack a day habit: he insisted the tax he’d paid on cigarettes all those years would more than cover any socialized health care costs if it made him ill. Just before dying of emphysema at 67, Gzowski admitted he’d been wrong.
I used to be a call center jockey and didn’t want to quit. Until I started running out of breath prematurely in the middle of my sentences. I wasn’t even 30 yet and knew I had to quit, although I still didn’t until I met a man who’s highly offended by and/or allergic to cigarette smoke. I gave up smoking (for 40 years is our deal–once I hit 70, all bets are off) before I moved in with him. We’re married now
Long story short, I don’t think I’ll ever lose my intrinsic fondness for the habit. My e-cig is adequately satisfactory these days. But if it weren’t for the pesky health effects (and OK, meeting my husband), I’d still be a smoker today.
- Congrats. Seriously. I’m at about 7 and 3.
- I’ve had a similar road (no IV) and once I made it through the first few days of quitting smoking, I never looked back. No dreams, no strong cravings. I’ve had lots of opiate dreams…and lots of cravings. I did quit smoking right before my son was born, so I felt like I had a strong reason to quit and stay quit.
Again, I think our minds are wired for different substances, and I think I just never really developed that strong of an attraction to nicotine despite years of smoking. Opiates, though…they sunk their teeth in fast. I feel bad for anyone who has that tough of a time quitting smoking…because, from other substances, I know the feeling.
Okay, if it’s not the addiction to nicotine, then what is it that is different about the experience with nicotine-free cigarettes? With non-alcoholic beer, the claim is that it tastes bad, which is plausible due to alcohol solubility.
(Though I think that, with modern flavor science, they could come up with something better–if people were interested. Plus I know way too many people who talk about how bad certain beers taste but keep drinking them. Most people aren’t beer snobs.)
I miss him every time I turn on CBC radio. Fuck cigarettes.
I smoke. Without apologies and without guilt, and without any intention to stop. If you want to be afraid of things that greatly impact your health, then be afraid of your own DNA.
The most sickening thing about smoking is the insidious carry-on. It’s legal. Do it or don’t do it - just shut the fuck up about it. Or at least replicate that same relentless and pious nagging to everything else that other people do with which you may not personally agree.
Yada yada cancer blah blah blah - I, as no doubt many people, know numerous cancer deaths unrelated to smoking. And here’s a surprise - perfectly healthy people have been known to just simply drop dead.
I smoke because I love to, and being an adult gives me free reign to do pretty much whatever I like whether other people consider it fucked up or not. The most idiotic aspect of smoking is the ridiculous legislation it entices. No smoking on the street within 4 metres of where food is served? Fuck that logic when every ten minutes a bus spews its fumes all over your kale and quinoa salad
Like every other city dweller in the world, I am subjected to 40,000 chemicals on a daily basis - in the air, in the water, in my general surrounds. I drive a car. I get up every day without any guarantee it won’t be my last, so I don’t know what monopoly non-smokers think they have.
I have no idea what will get me in the end, but I do know it won’t be Parkinson’s or motor neurone disease.
I choose the life I lead, and whatever consequences those choices bring are part of that story that began when I got here and will end when I’m not.