Today, May 26, marks 25 years since I quit smoking.
I smoked for 17-1/2 years, about a pack a day. Tried the nicotine gum, and that really worked for me. I didn’t fall back even once. It was the only time I tried to quit smoking. You just have to be ready to.
Another thing that might have helped, I selected a certain day as D-Day. May 27 it was, in 1992. I swore I would not smoke beginning that day, starting from midnight. So at 11:30pm the night of the 26th, 25 years ago tonight, I was puffing away, looking at my watch. Ah, 25 more minutes. Another cigarette. Puff puff puff. Ah, 22 more minutes. Another cigarette. Puff puff puff. Right up to midnight. So I ended up making myself pretty sick. That might have helped.
Even with the gum, it got a little touch-and-go there, but I’d say after, oh, 4-6 weeks I was feeling a lot better. Two months for sure.
I’m four years out as of March 25th of this year. It’s only this past winter and spring that I’ve noticed skin tone change, as in color. I almost forgot that I could even get color, as in flushing, blushing, etc. It’s been that long. I have no desire to go back.
For me, it’s been 38 years, since Memorial Day 1979. I did it through “systematic desensitization”, and it took a couple of months. First, I switched to a brand of cigarettes that was slightly lower in nicotine than the ones I had been smoking. When they seemed normal, I then switched to the brand next lower. I kept doing this until I was smoking the brand with the lowest nicotine (at the time, Carltons). I kept smoking them until one day, Memorial Day, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t had a cigarette all day, and I didn’t miss them.
March 1st of this year was 24 years for me. I quit using filters that removed nicotine from the smoke. My then wife and I used them to quit, she started again 2 years later. It’s one of the reasons she is my ex.
Congrats to everyone - it’s a noteworthy accomplishment. Been about seven years for me, and I did it by removing the decision from my smelly hands. My best friend died of lung cancer, and before his father had died of lung cancer, he had made a promise to him to quit smoking. He never did, of course, but when he died I mentally picked up his vow and will see it through to the end. That’s what worked for to quit, and in the years since I’ve gotten more perspective on the whole thing, so have pretty much let it go completely.
It’s a wonderfully warm and fuzzy thing, feeding an addiction, but there are much better ones to be had.
Congrats to all! Smokey rooms make my skin break out in red, sore blotches, and my nose run, and eventually I get a headache. I still get itchy skin and burning eyes just in a room that had been smokey some hours before. I appreciate everyone who quits very much.
I used to think that some people really could quit, but then I guy I worked with quit, after his fifth or sixth try. He had tried smoke-enders, hypnotism, gum, and every possible thing, including stuffing his mother’s homemade pastry in his mouth for an entire weekend, but he just made it through the weekend.
Then he hit the age (46) his father was when he died of a massive heart attack. His mother begged him to quit, and agreed to pay for the new patch, that was available only by prescription. He coupled that with sugarless gum, and made it a week. He had never made it a week before. Then he started something else. He put all the money he would have spent on cigarettes in a jar every day, and if he made it an months, he allowed himself to splurge on absolutely anything he wanted. If he failed, it went to charity. He made it a month.
This was a guy who smoked 4 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.
He quit just about 25 years ago. It looks like he is going to make it to his 75th birthday. His mother died about 15 years ago. He said his one comfort was that it would have been so much worse if she had outlived him.
I no longer believe that some people can’t quit. I think you just have to find the right key for the lock. It might be Chantix. It might be Zyban. It might be patches. It might be gum. But it’s out there-- there are so many options now.
Again, mazel tov to all quitters. Zol ir lebn lang.
Yeah, go stand on a moutaintop and tell God to admire your pretty pink lungs. Let us know what you hear.
Still a proud tobacco user after nearly forty years, along with most of the great intellects of the past several hundred. How can academics exist without tobacco?
Take it one day at a time and eventually you too will hit day 9131 like me.
Today I was taking a look around the University of Hawaii campus, and I passed by the building I was living in at the East West Center on my first smoke-free day 25 years ago. What a journey it has been.
Not completely coincidentally, 25 years ago today, the 27th, was the day I first kissed the future Mrs. Siam Sam. May 25, 1992 was Memorial Day, and we had gone to see White Men Can’t Jump at the old Kuhio movie theater in Waikiki – back then Waikiki had three cinemas, none today – then went to watch the sunset on the beach. I tried to kiss her then, but she wouldn’t let me. Two days later on the 27th, she let me, heh. She did not ask me to give up smoking, but it was a plus in my favor.
Biggest surprises of all for me upon quitting smoking:
It worked better because I made no promises. I’d tried many times before but New Year’s and birthday type resolutions didn’t work. Weirdly, playfulness did (as in “within 48 hours I’ll be climbing the walls, screaming, running down to the nearest all-night convenience store to buy a pack…”). Didn’t happen
Looking for substitutes (a lot of people go this route). Don’t. You don’t need oral or finger twisting tricks. Just go about doing what you like to do the most. No toothpicks, hard candy, gum, hookahs, nicotine-less playthings.
Best of all for me ;): No freakin’ promises. To myself, I mean. If you’re religious, maybe adding an extra prayer a day,–I did that—would help. Something spiritual, between you and God. Cool. What I didn’t do is mess with psychobabble stuff, as in my Superego is now at war with my Id and the Ego is fighting a losing battle to keep these two monsters at peace.
Live. Don’t intellectualize. I’m super-intellectual but I didn’t “go there” when I quit smoking.
End of sermon. I wish you the best of luck.
Congrats to my fellow quitters. It’s been 35 years for me. Yesterday I was out for a walk with my 44 year old daughter. Listening to her labored breathing on a slight incline reminded my why I quit. She’s overweight and smokes, and I really worry about her.
Curious you should say that. I’ve known some of the top mathematicians of the 20th century (Grothendieck, Dieudonne, Eilenberg, Mac Lane, Erdos,…) and met quite a few more. None them smoked. Maybe they once did, but not when I knew them. Had you said coffee, I would have agreed. Erdos famously said that a mathematician was a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
As for me, I quit cold turkey (there was no nicotine gum, nor patches those days) on the day in April 1965 that I suffered a heart attack. So over 52 years ago. For the first ten years or so, I fantasized that I was diagnosed with something that gave me 6 months to live and I could joyfully take it up again. Now I find the thought of smoking disgusting.
Your first test will likely find anomalies which are probably benign, but you will be advised to have a follow up screening in 6 months or so to confirm they have not grown. After that, each scan will be compared to previous scans which will quickly detect any changes which will require attention.
Congratulations, and good for you.
