This is nothing like EnginNerd’s inspirational post I ran 50 miles yesterday, but I felt like sharing. A year ago I could not imagine myself not smoking. Then I had a weird episode with a dizzy spell that just scared the hell out of me. I suppose it was lucky that it coincided with a physical I had scheduled the next day. Turns out I had slightly elevated blood pressure (although the doc says the dizzy spell may or may not have been caused by this). Everything else checked out fine, but the BP combined with the dizziness was enough to make me put down the smokes for good. I still miss the ritual, but I have no desire to take it up again. That reminds me, I’d better call my life-insurance guy and get those premiums lowered.
Congrats! It only gets better. And who can afford the damn things nowadays?
Tupug (4 years smoke-free)
Congratulations!
I went cold turkey myself 2 years, 4 months and 7 days ago. Still think about it wistfully every so often, but think of the money we are saving.
Congrats!
Congratulations! Don’t you feel a hell of a lot better? Keep your guard up, I know of 2 people who quit for 5 years and started again. I’m up to 3 years, 10 months.
My one-year anniversary was on the 16th. I’m so glad I’m done with all that nastiness! Yay you, yay me, yay us!!
I feel better just knowing that I’m not doing that to my body anymore. When I was smoking I never had the illusion that I wasn’t hurting myself (except maybe in the wilder, crazier days), but I did it anyway. I’ll never say never again, but age and progress in other areas is knocking some sense into me and I feel like I have a handle on it. Any temptation I may have is minuscule compared to the sense of accomplishment I have.
That’s good for you, I hope you buy a large cup of coffee from Starbuck to celebrate 
Was it just the dizzy spell that was the last straw that enabled you to quit or did you find other useful things to help you?
Woohoo! Wishing you a lifetime of continued success!
It’s funny, I quit coffee (for now, anyway) too. You know, a cup and a cig. Oddly enough I’m not tempted when I’m having alcohol, though. To answer your question, it was almost entirely the dizzy spell, but I’ve got kids, so that was a big motivator to really make it happen.
Two week anniversary for me. Had quit once before, last year in fact, for four months but started up again out of boredom. My mindset was “I’ll just see how far I go”, which worked for a time, but didn’t get me committed to quitting, and in fact I really just could not see myself never having a smoke again. This time I’m doing it for fitness and detox reasons, as part of a lot of life changes since I got back from Iraq. Took a lot more steps with this, more preparation, replaced it with a rigorous cardio routine as a lot of ex-smokers do.
I got to say tho, it’s not immediately true that you save money. My food budget has just exploded. In the past my attitude was always “if I got smokes I’m good to go” vs. now when eating once in a while sounds like something to prioritize. Munchies help against cravings as well. It’s probably just as well, tho, since I usually load up on pretzels and apple slices so I’m probably better off this way.
I’ve found that sometimes when I get those late nite cravings a bottle of Guinness really helps.
Never had a taste for Guiness, but I know what you mean. I find it interesting that quitters find it difficult to abstain from smoking when they’re having alcohol. My take is that I had to condition myself to not crave cigarettes when drinking, because otherwise I’d have to quit that too, and someday perhaps I will, but I still enjoy a drink now and then. Making it a reward (initially), rather than the Achilles heel helped me to not break my streak.
I can’t tell if I’m saving money either, because in my household, there’s always some unexpected expense, some apparatus konks out, somebody had some medical procedure that insurance decides they’ll bill us for 7 times, grandma can’t watch the kids so it’s off to day-care, et cetera. It’s always been like that, but if you’re a smoker, you just make room for the cigarettes. If the budget was tight, I would sometimes buy rolling tobacco and papers. It was cheaper, and I enjoyed the change from my regular brand.
As for the food budget exploding, that’s not really true for me, since I always ate more than I should, and have recently begun a self styled weight-loss program, so I’m eating the same things I ate before, only less (self-congratulatory OP to come next year). I probably did try to compensate the absence of cigarettes with food at first, and Doc did say that he would rather I weigh 350 pounds than smoke, but come on, that’s just ridiculous. I can’t let that happen. I have been overweight since I was about 11 (45 now), so I have had to look at quitting smoking as a springboard to a lot of better things.
Don’t get me wrong, I was a BIOTCH to be around the first week or two. But it gets easier if you realize you went without a cigarette for two weeks, remember how you used to feel if you went without a cigarette for two hours? Your’re on a roll, dude, don’t stop now – kept me going.
And finally, I have to say that the culture moving to being less tolerant of smokers probably has had an influence as well. It’s just way too inconvenient to hide anymore. Pat yourselves on the back. You did it. You sniveling needling goody-two-shoes finally broke another one. :p:D
Congrats, Simmerdown! It’s been five years for me. Technically, 5 years, 17 days, 1 hour, 34 minutes. Not that I’ve been counting or anything.
Congrats on your year, Simmerdown.
Am I the only ex smoker who misses it desperately?
I quit seven months ago. I long for a cigarette every damn day. I don’t feel any happier or healthier. My appetite has increased tremendously an has never gone back down. I’m so tired of being hungry all the time (not to mention the weight gain). It’s worse than nicotine cravings were and the fact that I’m trying to get pregnant is the only reason I haven’t started smoking again. It’s harder to get up in the morning, too. I’ve quit twice before, I never stopped missing it either. And always with the appetite.
I did have my first cold in a decade that didn’t get into my lungs, which is something.
Sorry, I don’t mean to rain on your thread. I’m just sad because ex smokers always seem so jubilant about being ex smokers. I keep hoping eventually, if I go long enough, I’ll feel that way too.
I’m almost to 6 years - Aug 20th I think.
Sometimes I still want one, Obsidian. I have smoked one here and there when I’ve been drinking, but never really started again. My (85-yr-old) dad lives with us and smokes in the garage. Sometimes it smells really good! But it doesn’t taste good anymore, and the ones I’ve smoked while drunk get put out very quickly.
I gained weight, too, but my doc said he’d rather I was fat than smoking. I’m working on the weight.
Hang in there, everybody!
congrats! People like all of you inspire me to keep with it!
No worries, Obsidian, in my opinion sometimes that’s what these threads are for. There are things about smoking that I DO miss. I did it for 28 years, so I, like many, have an emotional attachement to smoking that will never disappear. For example, The Smokers were always cooler and more fun to hang out with than the Non-Smokers. The Cigarette was a friend you could always count on no matter how bad things got elsewhere. You understood all the “Last Cigarette” songs. better than anybody. And yes, to me it still smells good, too. But for all that, I always understood smoking to be a rather irrational pursuit (not that I don’t have others), and one that has been impossible to argue for from a health perspective. I feel lucky to have had what I consider to be an unexpectedly easy time of it (quitting). I wish the same for everyone else, but I know it’s not always that way.
One thing my doctor(s) always told me, though, was that you will never be successful in quitting unless you WANT to quit. That’s why I couldn’t do it 3 years ago when my wife convinced me to go on Wellbutrin–I failed miserably because I wasn’t ready to quit, and it was really someone else’s decision. The decision has to be your own. Perhaps what helped me was that, during my smoking years, I often reminded myself that someday, I would make that decision.
Don’t beat yourself up for having a tough time of it.
Hang in there Obsidian - I had some serious jones-ing going on for at least 18 months after I quit, and to this day, I’ll still have a stray craving. But I reminded myself of why I wanted to quit - for me, it was about my own personal health, but also about about my kids. I didn’t want them to grow up around a smoker, even thought I always smoked outside. It also helped that my wife probably would have done bodily harm had I started again.
When you hit 1 year, you’ll feel great about the accomplishment. Awesome - plan a reward for yourself for every anniversary up to your 3-year (I got a PS3 for my 3-year). Once you hit 3 years, hopefully you’ll be golden.
I wish I had an easy answer on the weight gain - it’s a serious self-image problem for me now. But my doctor put it like this: “So you’ve gained 30 pounds since you quit. Even though you should lose weight, you’re still at less risk than if you had kept smoking and not gained the weight.”
Glad to hear it. I am lucky in that I never picked up the habit. My whole family does though, my little sister even picked it up. Nasty things cigarettes. I’ll smoke a rollie or a natural cig once in a blue moon and I enjoy a good cigar now and again, but never been addicted.
Congrats to you, watching my family I know how hard they are to put down once you get the ritual programmed in.
It’s hard with my family because the family life at my parents house revolves around the smoking table. My wife was kind of excluded because she was pregnant and the cigarettes were making her sick.
I passed the year mark this July. Not a day passes that I don’t want one bad, and I still make smoking gestures all the freakin’ time. What’s funny is I found quitting easy-- no relapse, no weeks of moody hell, no munchies, I just… stopped. Chose not to do it anymore. But I was hoping it would stop being a conscious, constant choice at some point.