Do you consider the occasional cigar “cheating”?
How do you feel about nicotine replacement thrapies (the lozenge, the gum, the patch)?
Have you substituded smokeless tobacco for cigarettes? Do you consider that the lesser of two evils (smoking vs. nicotine)?
I quit 4 years ago after smoking a pack a day for about 17 years. If I knew it would be that easy I would have done it much sooner. That does NOT mean I ever tempt fate, though. I used patches, gum and an inhaler-thing (occasionally) for quite sometime. I just planned on using patches for about 6 months, shaving a little strip at a time off them every couple of days. It only took about 4 months. Lozenges weren’t out yet then. I don’t miss smoking or nicotine. I’d consider smoking anything with nicotine in it cheating. There’s only one thing I’d smoke nowdays if the opportunity arose 
. For the record I didn’t gain any weight either. (I was worried about that).
The only thing I regret a little is that I quit before the hookah bar craze. I think hookahs are really cool and I would have loved to go to a restaurant or cafe and try smoking out of one. Oh well, much nicer to be able to breathe.
The patch is why I don’t smoke anymore. I know it dosn’t work for everyone but it did for me.
Replacing one form of tobacco for another is just dumb, you might as well keep smoking.
In four years I have had I think three cigarettes (maybe it was just two), all when very drunk. That was cheating. I have occasional cigars, maybe 3 a year. That I don’t really consider cheating. There is no way I will ever make cigars a habit like cigarettes. I just like them every once and a while when playing poker. If I ever have more than 4 a year I would be surprised.
Fucking a smoker.
I quit on Thanksgiving Day 1992, and haven’t inhaled tobacco since. I have smoked a couple of cigars in the last 13 years but didn’t inhale them, duh. So it’s not cheating, although it can be torture and I wouldn’t recommend it to the newly smoke-free.
I went from 2 1/2 packs per day to nothing, cold turkey. Yowch. The people around me hurt even more than me!
After smoking for 11 years I quit last May cold turkey. I was up to about 2 packs a day.
Do you consider the occasional cigar “cheating”?
Yes. As well as the occasional cigarette. Quit for good.
**
How do you feel about nicotine replacement thrapies (the lozenge, the gum, the patch)?**
They are tools. However, I still believe cold turkey is the best way ultimately. Do I consider them cheating? No. But if you are using them you shouldn’t consider yourself to have “quit smoking”.
Have you substituded smokeless tobacco for cigarettes? Do you consider that the lesser of two evils (smoking vs. nicotine)?
Yes, til I developed sores in my mouth and that was it. It’s different when you actually see results of your addiction (sores, receeding gums, etc…). Makes me wonder if people who could actually see their lungs turning black over time would still smoke or not. Nicotine is by far the worse of the two. Smoking is the just the delivery.
Nicotine has a physical addiction lifespan of three days. After that, any cravings are purely psychological. If you been off the butts more then three days, then any sort of nicotine replacement isn’t going to do a damn thing for you.
However, even after 15 months sans cigarettes, I’ll still dabble in a cigar every few months. No inhaling, of course.
I dunno. Even if the addiction of nicotine is gone, the joy of a nicotine buzz is still something you miss. Losing that pleasure and the pleasure of the act of smoking all at the same time would have been too much for me: I enjoyed both so very much, and being able to mourn the loss of smoking for twelve weeks and getting past it before I had to mourn the loss of the effects of nicotine helped a lot.
And at the time I told myself that quiting the smoking was the big thing–if I couldn’t live without nicotine (being from a physical or psychological standpoint), I’d just stay on the patch. I didn’t have to, but knowing I had that option helped.
Since then (and I quit a 2-3 pack a day habit my first try), I haven’t smoked anything, nicotine or not, inhaling or not. I loved it too much to tempt myself.
According to my quit smoking meter:
Three weeks, five days, 20 minutes and 2 seconds.
910 cigarettes not smoked, saving $159.34.
Having tried patches, gum, and inhalers without success, I figured I might as well go cold turkey. Well, almost. I am using hypnosis quite successfully so far. It’s only been 3 weeks, but it really, really feels good this time!
Hal, you’re right about the 3-day detox for nicotine, but the withdrawal symptoms can last a week or more.
Cigars, smokeless tobacco, nicotine substitutes: Are they cheating? Sure they are. You’re using one substance to satisfy your need for the other. For me it would be playing with fire. For others, if you can indulge in them without returning to regular smoking, good for you. I can’t. (Damn it…)
After half my life as a smoker, I went cold turkey over a year ago now. Any nicotine would be cheating, and I don’t dare risk it, because I never want to go through quitting again.
Is the occasional cigar cheating? It’s counterproductive to introduce nicotine and tobacco juice back into your body after you have quit. Why torture yourself? If “occasionally” means one cigar per national holiday, then it probably doesn’t matter.
Patches and nickigum are OK by me. I quit long before those were available. Maybe quitting would have taken one or two tries with patches instead of nine without. The drug Effexor is said to ease the quitting, too.
Smokeless tobacco is much worse than smoking. If you’d ever seen a guy with half his face gone from snuff cancer, you’d never touch it again.
4 days, 4 hours of “smobriety”. I went cold turkey, but my wife is using the lozenge. It doesn’t make sense to me; seems to be trading one nicotine delivery method for another one, albeit a less stinky one.
I dipped once, many years ago. The first canker sore scared me too much to ever try it again.
Really not sure how I feel about the occasional cigar. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Thanks for the replies so far. I posted during a craving last night, and the OP gave me something to do with my fingers.
i quit smoking 11/30/98. i used the patch for three weeks to ease the withdrawal from nicotine.
Not inhaling? Who are y’all trying to kid? The damage to your mouth and esophagus (not to mention your stomach and intestine from the amounts you swallow) from the nicotine-saturated juices is as bad, if not worse, than inhaling the smoke.
Smokeless tobacco (guess who coined that little descriptive) is just plain disgusting and every bit as addictive and damaging.
Quit it, leave it behind, grow up.