I am sick of being a smoker! Recently, my ciggies taste bad and I have begun to equate smoking to playing the slots, since every once in a while, you get the smoking experience you want, but the rest of the time you are just chasing it (I’m not much of a gambler, but on my honeymoon in Vegas, we set aside some money to play slots for a couple hours. We only went $40 above our budget ;)).
I have quit twice before: once for almost 5 years and once for 6 months :). I have decided to do a full detox. No pot or alcohol for a month, since these are primary triggers for me. Another motivation is that I want to begin looking into options for working with animals and animals do not react well to tobacco (even the tobacco residue on my fingers can impact my ferrets).
I bought some patches and will start with them once my last pack is gone. I worry about what to do with my hands (this has been my main issue in the past). Any suggestions?
This is what I did to quit smoking: Bought a brand new pack and left them unopened in my car (driving was a trigger). Then I dared myself to smoke – to open that pack.
An oldie but a goodie is “You Can Quit” by jocelyn rogers (iirc)
The patches work well, but the gum is also good for those “crisis” moments where all you get is tunnel vision and a bad craving for a ciggie, since the patch is a steady time release. I found myself rubbing the patch, though I have no idea if this increases absorbtion. There are also other anti-anxiety prescriptions. All of the smoking subs work but ought to be used in conjunction with a smoking cessation program. That might save money, too. I would suggest choosing a date in the future - a realistic date, and start planning for that. Quitting is easy, staying quitted is another.
Don’t wear the patch overnight. Guar-anteed weirdo, bizarre nightmares. What to do with your hands? Better learn to exercise - “pay yourself first” - because you’ll have more energy and will want to eat anything that isn’t nailed down to compensate.
Don’t try to be the hero and give up 3 things at once
No hero action here. I don’t drink that much, although the same cannot be said of my other vice ;), and I get overwhelming compulsions to smoke when I engage in these activities, so that is why I am going to try to cease and desist for a month.
It is impossible to quit smoking if one’s desire to smoke is greater than one’s will to quit. That might sound pedantic but it’s not that quiting smoking is so hard, it’s that not quitting is so easy. It’s waaaay too easy to just “have one more smoke”, “Ok, after this one”, etc…
This is how you quit smoking: Want it bad enough. Sit there on the couch and twitch. Lay in bed and pull your hair. Someday it will be over and you will have quit.
Then, don’t say to yourself, “Hey, that was actually pretty easy. I could do that at will.” and then start smoking again as a reward and knowing that you can, in fact, quit whenever. Don’t start again. Ever. Smokers never really become non-smokers, they just happen to not smoke. Relapses don’t occur when you smoke again, they occur when you decide to jump in the car to drive to the store to buy some smokes.
This is so true. It’s a conscious decision that is made in the mind long before lighting up. “F%@$ it, I need a cigarette. I deserve a cigarette. Poor, poor, pitiful me.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt to stay away from alcohol and bars and similar situations for a while. One time, I had one lit up and halfway through before I knew what happened. It’s a habit too, apart from the addiction.
I am now in my seventh week off cigarettes - the longest I’ve gone in a long time.
I used Chantix. My doctor recommended it, and I admit that I had doubts about whether it would work. I didn’t quit at the point that the directions said I should have. But partway through my third week into them, I realized that a)the cigarettes were tasting really nasty and b)I didn’t want the ones I was smoking. Both of these combined meant I took one or two drags off each before I put it out.
That seven weeks us from the time I came off cigarettes, not the time I started Chantix. I’ve been off the Chantix since this past Saturday. What the drugs did was help me get through the physical so I could focus on the mental - and both aspects were my problems.
I still have moments - today, I’ve wanted a cigarette off and on all day long. Now, I don’t get one, but that doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally want one. Wanting is not the same as having, though.
Seriously, good luck - you can do it.
Much good advice. I have been told by many - and have passed it on to many also: that chewing Wrigleys Doublemint gums helps a bit. That brand, that flavor.
I quit for three years after reading the book. I read the book in one sitting, and I’d describe it as a mild form of brainwashing or self-hypnosis. There’s a lot of repetition in the book. Bad style, but it works.
Basically, Carr’s book convinces you that it’s easy to stop smoking, that you won’t feel deprived, that you’ll enjoy life just as much as a non-smoker. There is nothing to “give up” and a lot to gain, and there are no advantages to smoking. He says that fear is what keeps us from trying to quit.
He debunks all of our reasons for not quitting and our notions about how hard it is. He explains how each cigarette guarantees that you’ll want the next one, because smoking isn’t a habit, it’s an addiction to nicotine.
After you read this enough times, if you’ve done what he says and kept your mind open, you believe it, and that’s really all it takes. I had no withdrawal symptoms – just a wonderful feeling of freedom from smoking. I didn’t have to smoke anymore.
It’s important to realize that for many, smoking is something they have done constantly for decades, for at least most of their entire adult life. Every day, from morning to night. Think about it. What else does someone who smokes cigarettes domore than smoking?
Another ploy to watch out after making the break is for a sort of creeping conditional smoking or negotiating as it were, with oneself e.g. “I only smoke on special occasions/weekends when drinking/at night, but never, never at dusk.” sorta thing. This might “work” for a little while, but soon… Or, “It’s OK. You’ve proved you can quit. Why not reward yourself with a nice smoke?” You can see (I hope) how difficult it can be to maintain your newfound status as a smoke-free person. Even a couple years later, I would have dreams where I found myself smoking in the dreams and was very upset with myself upon awakening. Or happy, that I really hadn’t.
melangell, I strongly recommend you buy and read that book. It totally changed my life. I thought I would never quit; I had no willpower. The Carr book showed me I didn’t need it. It’s funny - I was just thinking about the book on the way home tonight. I was remembering putting out my last cigarette just before going to bed and thinking that I couldn’t wait to get up the next day and be a non-smoker again. And crying tears of joy the next day that the nightmare was over. That was nearly 8 years ago. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t reflect on how great it is to be done with smoking and thank God for that book.
I used this book by English writer Gillian Riley. It has the most surprising approach to quitting - she advocates using no aids, you carry around cigarettes after quitting, you actively cause yourself to crave cigarettes to then resist the craving. The psychology behind all this is very clever and prevents the belittling approach of most addiction therapies. Since I don’t believe in medical models of addiction I found her approach compelling and gave up with no problems at all. Since I did as she said and didn’t modify my behaviour - going out drinking, having smoke breaks at work, sitting around with cigarettes and ashtray - it was 6 weeks before anyone noticed that I’d quit.
The method is so affirming it is actually fun. Everyone I pass the book on to has the same experience.
