It can be hard or easy; I had it easy. My husband still smokes and he has tried many many things. If you are considering Chantix please read all the warnings. That drug has terrible terrible effects on some people, to the point that there are a lot of suicides related to Chantix use. I am a witness to someone becoming incredibly depressed, someone who had never had depression before. Complete personality change. Terrifying to observe. I agree with whoever said thinking about quitting can be scarier than actually quitting; it was for me. Good luck and if you want encouragement, we’re here.
Of course, if stopping smoking is the goal, that would be pretty effective! 
I don’t have any tips to add, just encouragement. You can do it! I married a 2 pack-a-day ex-smoker who says that quitting was one of the best things he ever did.
This seems pretty cold for a MPSIMS thread looking for help.
Seconding on Alan Carr’s book. That did the trick for me. The most meaningful point was: You think quitting is much harder than it actually is. People don’t quit because they psych themselves into thinking it will be a nightmare. It’s actually not that big a deal – a little uncomfortable for about 3 days, and then you’re free of the physical addiction.
The second-to-last time I quit, I knew it would be a psychotic nightmare, and indeed it was. The time I quit for good, I figured it would be pretty easy, and indeed it was.
Just wanted to say “You f*cking rock!” to anyone here who’s quit (no matter how many times). I’ve watched friends, and my mom, try to quit over and over… I used to give extra credit in my (college) class to any student who quit.
But sorry, I have no handy advice (I quit back in grade school, though I don’t think any of us ‘hoodlums’ were inhaling, because as soon as the kid who was stealing ‘cigs’ for us moved away, we just stopped… and started swiping carrots out of a farmer’s garden instead).
Good for you, OP!
I agree that its almost all mental. I planned to quit smoking when I retired. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I knew that I was only smoking to deal with the stress of working. Smoking was expensive, it made me stink and I really didn’t like it anymore.
I retired. A week later, I had smoked all of my already purchased cigs. That was it. I had a few bad nights with weird dreams. I ate a bunch of pumpkin seeds.
Every so often, I’ll get a random “boy, I’d sure like a cigarette” thought, but it goes away pretty quickly.
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been that easy if I didn’t really want to quit.
Damn, I’ve never had a good reason for the name… but hey, if DC and Marvel writers can retcon any character’s origins (over and over, e.g. Hawkman), then maybe so can I!
Avoiding things I liked just frustrated me. For me it seemed that if I couldn’t go have a beer with people who were smoking or to a picnic where people were smoking, etc., then what was the point of life? So I started deliberately doing those things that most triggered the nicotine urge, and every time I did that and didn’t have a cig, it was a personal victory. And over time it bothered me less and less and just made me stronger in my determination to beat the habit. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t inhale some second-hand smoke and get a contact fix on occasion, but I never lit up. Been free of that shit for 40 years now.
That may not work for the OP, but it’s an alternative method to patches and water and sesame seeds and being miserable.
I have had three friends stop smoking and turn to vaping and two of them are now off vaping.
Chantix and patches work for many.
Now here is some old school stuff- my dad stopped smoking cigs by turning to Doublemint Gum and a pipe. He only smoked two bowls a day but could fiddle with and suck on the dead pipe for hours.
Mind you, that is still tobacco use, but pipes are much safer than cigs and two bowls a day is many times better than two packs a day.
But to the Op- congrats and good luck!
OK, just cause I’m in a good mood, I’m going to share my secret.
Ready??
(Too bad I don’t know how to do a spoiler.)
Anyway, it’s… Dr. Pepper! or Diet Dr. Pepper. Going down, it simulates the ‘burn’ of inhaling a cigarette. I found it very helpful when I quit 33 years ago. Just don’t overdo it, or you’ll spend the money you saved from not smoking at the dentist’s.
Quitting is not a one size fits all thing. Many people fail time after time until they hit the right process. The fact that you quit cold turkey the first time bodes well for you.
If you are already down to ten a day, maybe cut down to nine for however that feels like the new normal. Then cut down to eight until that feels normal, etc. Good luck to you, I see a smoke free future coming your way!
I know you said no nicotine stuff but I thought I’d toss in my story, because then I can make it all about me. As a really heavy smoker back in the day, as in 3 or 4 packs a day when I was drinking, and I drank a lot, the patch worked from day one for me. It was so easy, in fact, that instead of the four different strength patches over eight weeks, I used the strongest patch for a week and had absolutely no cravings so I skipped to the weakest patch for one week and that was it, I’ve never had a craving since then. To help with the what to do with my hands thing, I would save up 5 or 6 pull tabs from beer cans and sort of shuffle them between my thumb and forefinger. Worked great.
When I decided it was time to quit, I realized that I would have to get out of my normal routine. So I set my quit date to coincide with the start of our vacation. Worked like a charm. Couldn’t smoke in the airport or on the plane or in any hotel. When we got back home (10 days) I had kicked the habit and haven’t had one since.
Probably won’t work for you in this circumstance, but it certainly worked for me.
The usual advice:
- Set a quit date in the near future.
- Minimize being around people or events that would prompt you to smoke
- Anticipate cravings and have an alternative available: healthy snacks, coffee, etc.
- If you smoke within 30 minutes of getting out of bed, your addiction may be more significant and things like decreasing nicotine patches might help
- You can do it! Write signs that say this and place them around your house and places you smoke. Think of the money you’ll save and the health benefits.
- Reward yourself for your success. Cravings may last as long as a month and if you can do that you are golden.
- Consider giving money to something you hate if you can’t do it - as another incentive
- Tell people who are going to be supportive
OP, if you are the sort of person who would like this: post your “I’m going to stop smoking” date and we will helpfully encourage you in our own unique ways.
This sounds like how I feel just knowing that I have medication to help me sleep-- I sleep better knowing I have something I can take if I can’t sleep. I don’t lie there worrying about what to do if I can’t fall asleep.
In regard to what to do with your hands: if this is really a huge deal for people quitting smoking, I have lots of suggestions, because I have helped autistic people find stims that work. What I mean is, that many so-called “high functioning” people (a lot of them don’t like the term, but I don’t have a better one) are prone to hand-flapping if they get stressed, and want something more acceptable to occupy their hands, that relieves stress in the same way. A lot of things I have come up with, along with them, would probably be good ways of keeping your hands occupied.
I can post them, or PM them to you.
I used to smoke three packs a day and was horribly addicted, especially to nicotine. After many failed attempts I finally found a strategy that worked for me. I personified the addiction in the form of Freddie Kruger, a demonic horror character from an old film called “Nightmare on Elm Street”. In the film, Freddie Kruger wouldn’t die and he kept coming back to terrorize people, over and over.
Once Freddie became my addiction my job, to save myself, was to make him die and the only way to do that was to not have a cigarette. Every time I’d crave a cigarette I’d imagine Freddie just over my shoulder whispering in my ear trying to make me smoke to save himself. Every time I resisted he shrank and lost power, but he also got more desperate. He pleaded with me more, pushed me more, but then I hated him more. Hate was my motivator and as I extinguished his life by not smoking I saved my own. My battle with him was tangible and engaging and I took pleasure in watching him slowly shrivel, disappear, and die.
I haven’t smoked in thirty years.
Seriously get the Alan Carr book, it really does work.
I walked passed the book many times in the store. Finally read it and I did not smoke for three months! I gave the book to someone else, don’t make that mistake, hang onto for a year!
It’s a short, quick, easy read. It will reverse a lot of things about smoking that you’ve internalized and think you ‘know‘ about smoking. For instance, don’t say you’re ‘quitting‘ or ‘giving it up’, that sounds harder and more difficult than it needs to be. You’re just ‘stopping’ smoking. It’s filled with many useful tidbits that will shift your thinking about how hard it is, truly!
While I went back to it, and had to go another round to get truly done, I know three, life long smokers who read the book and NEVER smoked again.
Why wouldn’t you try something so simple if it makes it much easier? And it REALLY does!
I smoked for over 40 years and a number of those years fairly heavily. At my worst about 30 cigs a day. In the late 90s and early 00s as smoking became more socially unacceptable I did cut back to around 15ish a day. My wife had quit not long after our first grandchild was born and banished me to the garage to smoke when I was at home.
I used to carry my smokes in a nifty cig case that held around 15. In the fall of '06 I made a conscious decision to make sure there were at least 2 left in the case at the end of the day. After a few weeks I put two fewer in the case each day and made a conscious decision to make sure there were at least two left in the case at the end of the day. The “purpose” for the “two extra” cigs was to make sure there was something there in case I “had to have it”. I very seldom did. I continued this gradual reduction over the balance of the winter.
By late winter of '07 I literally had a “one cigarette a day” habit. It was smoked between 1 and 3 pm. One day (at my wife’s urgings) I stopped altogether. I thought I would go “stark raving mad” without that one. I broke down and had one after having zero for about 5 days.
That was it. That was March of 2007 and I have not had one since. Shortly after quitting I developed a horrendous cough that lasted about 6 months but that’s long gone now. Since quitting two people I’ve known have died of lung cancer, both life long cigarette smokers. That cigarette case would sit on the back seat of my car with two unsmoked cigarettes in it for about 2 years.
I’m 68 now and have no after effects of smoking that I know of so I’m hopeful they won’t develop later in life.