I recently quit smoking.
It sucks.
All purpose has been sucked out the window of my existence.
I guess it’s better though.
I’m waiting for my heightened sense of smell to return, and my refined palette…
I guess I will want a cigarette everyday from now on. F–K!
Congratulations! Keep it up – just remember that the physical addiction is completely gone after three days. Anything you feel after that is all in your head.
Try focusing on it in a positive light – you’re not “quitting” or “giving up” anything – you’re escaping from something you don’t want.
And, as I always mention in these threads, this book certainly lived up to it’s name for me. I knocked off a 25-year habit like it was nothing.
Well, you’ll want one every day for a while. You’ll inhale a little more deeply than you need to when you walk by a smoker. Then you’ll want one once or twice a week. Then you’ll not think about a cigarette for a whole week or even a month. Then you’ll surprise yourself one day by walking by a smoker and thinking, “Gah! That smells like ASS!” And then you’ll hate yourself for becoming one of those unbearable ex-smokers.
Wow! That is huge! Sending supporting thoughts your way! Good luck!
And how is this information comforting? I quit a month ago, and still want to smoke. Why? Because I think smoking is great. But, I know it is stupid. So, I stopped.
But I don’t need you to tell me about a book. I tried to stop using the patch, then I realized the patch was more expensive then smoking. Then I said to myself, fuck it.
I’m not escaping from something I don’t want. I’m cutting something out of my life that will be missed. I want to smoke. But I decided I don’t need it, and maybe that’s the point for me. As I pin point my stupidity in starting the damn habit, I leave it behind more easily.
I hope you’re right!
Well, that was my experience. Took me about three months to stop thinking about a cigarette every waking minute of the day. (And you know I’m not exaggerating.) It’s now been about two years and I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke any more.
Actually, about six months after quiting, I found two whole, unmolested cigarettes on my back steps - of my brand, when my husband (the reason for me quitting) was away on a business trip. One of my neighbors must have dropped them. I couldn’t resist. I brought them inside, smoked a bowl, turned on the *Clerks *DVD, and prepared for an evening of private debauchery. I lit one of the cigarettes, leaned back into my comfy couch, took a drag…
…
and puked.
Seriously and literally, I puked. It was awful.
I couldn’t believe that the taste had ever tasted good.
That’s when I knew I was really an ex-smoker.
Yeah, I mostly hear ya…
When I think about starting again, I can’t quite get myself to do it. Which is new for me. I don’t want the morning fog that happens when I smoke too much. But I miss the nice bowel movements in the morning, after a good coffee and a smoke!
That’s pretty much my husband’s experience. I never really smoked regularly, I’d smoke one or two cigarettes in high school to be one of the cool kids, but I never got addicted to it. My husband smoked for a quarter of a century, though, and quit several times before he quit for good. Now he doesn’t like the smell of burning tobacco.
Smoked like a chimney for about 10 years, had to quit involuntarily when 8 months pregnant and suffering from a severe bout of pneumonia. Hadn’t smoked for three days, said, “Aw screw it, might as well quit.” Ate lots of sunflower seeds, had an inhaler for the pneumonia, that helped a ton, (I was still getting hits of something) chewed a lot of gum, other mouth intensive foods. It’s been about 11 years now, still love the smell, not rabidly anti-smoking at all. Just keep on changing your habits, you’ve gone a month already, the hard part is over. Might as well just keep going, that’s how I looked at it.
Damn, I’m glad I never started smoking cigarettes.
Cigars just aren’t the same are they?
If you keep up that mindset, you’ll be smoking agian, soon. I have quit for over a year after reading that book…and truthfully it was MUCH, MUCH easier than I ever thought it could be. My physical symptoms were zero. The book changed (I mean totally changed) the way I thought about and had justified my smoking habit. It was all in my head, and once I got past that quitting smoking was a piece of cake. Really. Good luck!
I smoked. I grew up with two smokers.
I tried to quit a time or two, but it didn’t take.
Then Mom died of lung cancer, slowly, over a two-year period. We were there at her bedside when she finally quit breathing. She was only fifty-three.
I spent a YEAR after that, fighting the craving, buying the damn patches, and eating Altoids by the handful.
It was worth it. Now something ELSE can kill me… and with any luck, it’ll be quicker than lung cancer. And preferably at a much later age.
A commonly held misconception. It’s actually that the body is nicotine-free after 3 days - which actually means nothing. The physical addiction takes 2-3 weeks to get over.
That said, keep it up. When you conquer the demon, you’ll be a better man than me. And that’s saying something. 
I had the same reaction as WhyNot, more or less. I gradually stopped wanting one over time, and found some cigarettes somewhere months and months later. I didn’t even really want one, but I felt bad letting them go to waste (like you, I didn’t quit for my health or anything). I tried one drag of one smoke and promptly threw up in a pretty spectacular fashion. Serves me right for having chili.
It’s been a few years, now. The only time I ever even vaguely want one is when I’m drinking. Then I remember what it feels like to throw up habañero peppers and I get over it pretty quickly.
Here’s a good reason to quit: Oral cancer
I’ve had four oral cancer surgeries; the cancer was caused, most likely, by smoking*. Oral cancer surgery isn’t nice; it isn’t pleasant, and the recovery period is very painful, not to mention the living on a liquid diet garbage.
Spare yourself the misery.
*Opinion of several surgeons.
My sympathies.
Smoking destroyed my ability to paint masterpieces as well.
What he said. I quit 5 months ago and I’m still working hard to persuade myself that I only enjoyed smoking as I was addicted to it. I don’t believe myself at all when I tell myself this, which is a shame as it’s true. No matter how many times I told myself that I loved smoking for the smoking part of it and not the nicotine itself, the only reason I loved the smoking part was precisely because of the nicotine hit, much as I refused to admit that. With hindsight, I was full of BS.
So now, I remind myself every time I see a smoker that it looks stupid and weak, that the smoker is spending huge amounts of money on something that’s killing them and that is anti-social, that the smoker’s house, car, clothes, hair etc stink… if I’m honest, a big part of me will still be screaming back “Nu-uh, smoking is COOL, it was fun to do something DANGEROUS, all the best musicians and artists smoke!!”. So I’ll remind myself again that this part of me is misguided and the peer-lead bit of me from school. It’s the part of me that’s afraid of growing old - smoking was the very last irresponsible stupid thing left over from my irresponsible and stupid youth. Now it’s gone, and I’m old and boring.
Keep telling yourself, everytime you see a smoker - *Hey, I don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to spend the money. I don’t have to waste the time, and I don’t have to have people looking down on me for being publicly addicted and unable to control my own behaviour. * I can’t say that these affirmations work 100%, but they are becomming more automatic now and so therefore are going to help me with my goal of being smoke-free permanently. I’ve given up loads of times before, that’s the easy bit. This is the hard bit, convincing yourself that you don’t love or miss smoking as much as you think. But you have to work at it, it won’t come automatically. If you truly want to give up, put in the work and be persistant.
Allen Carr didn’t work for me but he has very much the same approach - qutting smoking by changing your own ways of thinking about smoking. It’s how you romanticise smoking that’s the problem. Might be worth tracking down a copy for a look. It worked for my husband, who’d been a 40 a day smoker for over 20 years.
Well, now you know how us lifelong non-smokers feel, who have never had any purpose to our existence in the first place. 
I beg to disagree. Just take a look at the glowing recommendations for the Allen Carr book in this thread. The book is perfect for someone in your situation. If you don’t like it, you’ve wasted 15 bucks and 4 hours of reading. But just reading the book is* the* proven most effective way to stop smoking (test qoted in official Dutch government leaflet on how to quit smoking).