I thought we had a sorta-recent thread on quitting smoking but I can’t find one. So I’m starting a new one.
Just want to get it out there that after 30 years, I’m going to quit smoking. I actually quit about 15 years ago but started back up in 2017 when I got on city council and was around a guy who smoked, and I was very stressed out. Last time I used Wellbutrin and it worked but it did induce panic attacks so I don’t want to try it again. Also I am “on paper” as a non-smoker for insurance purposes so I can’t really ask my doc for help.
I’ve been struggling with money lately and hustling to make more. And I’m like “why the hell am I blowing $400/mo on this shit?” I could make $400 a month if I quit.
Also I’m in peri-menopause and I find most things to be dumb and annoying and blah, so now I’m finding smoking to be dumb and annoying.
I’m not telling my friends because none of my friends smoke. I’ve never had smoker friends. I know my friends would LOVE for me to quit and be really rah-rah about it but I’m not in a rah-rah mood.
I do have one smoking buddy at the city (not the original guy from 2017 - he has moved on). We smoke together outside the bar after council meetings. We keep talking about quitting. As it happens, he said he’s going next week for laser treatment to help him. So if I’m going to lose my one smoking buddy, what’s the point? We’ll still be buddies.
So I’m telling you guys about it, just to get it out there.
Turns out I already have Allen Carr’s “The Easy Way To Quit Smoking” book. Past Me must have been a bro and bought it for Current Me. Thanks, bro! I’m already 1/3 through it this afternoon and I think it’s going to be a great help!
So yeah, wish me luck. I think I’m ready for real this time.
Well then, I wish you best of luck, and I think a combination of desire to do so, along with the more concrete “Save me them big BUX!” is a double whammy of motivation, so here’s hoping!
Quitting’s easy. I’ve done it lots of times.
No, seriously, I haven’t smoked in many years and don’t have any tips to give you, but I’ve heard good things about that book. Wishing you lots of luck, and cheering for you.
Buy all of your snacky stuff now. You won’t be trustworthy at convenience stores for a while.
Salted pumpkin seeds helped me a lot. The salt made my mouth feel puckery so I didn’t want to smoke and dealing with the shells kept my mouth busy.
I was able to do it which means almost anyone can. It didn’t take the first couple of times, but it has been over 8 years since I last smoked tobacco so I’m optimistic it is finally sticking.
Good luck and don’t beat yourself up if you slip once in a while. Just get up and start over, you will save so much money and will feel much better. Plus, food will start tasting better intense. Oddly enough, sweet things went away with the tobacco because they were just too strong.
When I quit smoking I drank a lot of Dr. Pepper. It gives you that satisfying “burn” going down to replace the sensation of inhaling smoke. You may want to try Diet Dr Pepper though so you won’t gain as much weight as I did.
Ooh that’s a good idea. I remember when I quit before I tried vapes for a bit and I quite liked the burn sensation that some brands gave me.
I like the ritual of going outside for a smoke, while I’m here at home working. I was thinking about leaving a Gatorade out there for me to sit and sip instead, but a nice bubbly Diet Dr. Pepper would be good too.
Cold turkey is the only way. I smoked for 25+ years. I quit a dozen times. I tried drugs (prescription). I tried gizmos to help wean you off of smoking. All failed. The one that worked, just stop. Commit to it. You simply must be dedicated, in your head, to quitting. If your heart and mind are not all-in on quitting chances are you will fail.
In my case it was another cost hike in cigarettes. When they got to $10 a pack I was done (a pack/day habit…sometimes more if out drinking). Roughly a $4,000/year habit (give or take).
The first week is the worst. Second one too. But it does get easier if you can get over that first hill (which is not easy…I know).
Good luck! Consider buying yourself some luxury you would like with the money saved after not smoking for two months. It might help.
Same thing for me. I finally quit in 1982. Ten years later I was at a doctor’s office for a long-overdue checkup. She asked me if I smoked and I proudly told her that I had quit ten years earlier. She says: “Good for you! You’re halfway there!” Huh? Says I. Turns out it takes 20 years after you quit for the damage that’s been done to be undone.
What helped when I quit was to do everything that I always did when I craved a smoke: have a cup of coffee, have a few beers with friends, etc. Every time I was able to abstain felt like a major victory. I just figured that if I couldn’t still enjoy life without having to stick a cancer stick in my face, then what was the point? Smoke free now for 44 years.
I actually signed up here years ago because of a similar thread. I had given up smoking using Gillian Riley’s How To Stop Smoking And Stay Stopped For Good and found it such an effortless experience that I thought I should suggest it to whoever it was that was seeking help. Like you I had had the book sitting around for years and finally read it.
I assume that her method is much like Carr’s. After dispelling all the BS that you believe about smoking it gets down to a simple little understanding - you can smoke if you want to but you don’t want to and if you have one cigarette you have started smoking again. She encourages using no aids at all and not even telling people that you are quitting. In the early days you carry cigarettes around with you and just carry on normally just not smoking them. I was going out for cigarette breaks with the smokers at work and no-one even noticed that I wasn’t smoking, just standing around talking. You even take out a cigarette once in a while and taunt yourself with it because you are learning to deal with the craving.
From memory it was only at all difficult for a few days. After that it was honestly quite amusing watching my habits trying to trick me. I recall standing around waiting for a train and, on hearing that it was late, thinking, “I can have a cigarette to pass the time.” I burst out laughing at the realization that I was treating smoking like an activity akin to reading a book.
I found the whole experience very uplifting and used the same understanding of addictive thinking to give up drinking years later. It was a similarly effortless process. I still, once in a very rare while, find myself reflexively thinking about lighting up a cigarette. It is only ever the briefest sensation but it makes me chuckle.
So good luck and I hope your experience is as enjoyable as mine turned out to be.
I haven’t had a cigarette in almost 15 years but I admit I still get a craving for one on occasion. Once I caved (maybe five years ago) and took a puff off a friend’s cigarette they were smoking and I was relived that I did not enjoy it at all (so easy not to fall back into it but it took some years to get there…how long I do not know).
My brother was a four-pack-a-day smoker for decades, getting up every hour of the night to feed the habit. He had to quit cold turkey when he suffered some mini-strokes and a doctor told him that another cigarette would kill him. He said the cravings were really bad and he was constantly reaching for his shirt pocket.
I quit in 2008 and switched to vapes (which I still use). I HAD to go outside since that was how I always did it before and my brain wouldn’t accept it otherwise. That only lasted until the first day the weather was shit.
Up until about a year ago I was a one pack a week smoker, mostly when drinking or one right before bed. Then I was tested for heart disease and found that I had 30% blockage, so I decided to quit both smoking and drinking before it got any worse. Not really missing either in the slightest. The money saved and the improved health vastly outweigh the pleasure of smoking to me.
I started smoking in 1970. I ran out of cigarettes around October 15, 2016. I haven’t smoked since then. I’m still a smoker, I fear. Oh, did I mention I had a stroke on Sep 7, 2016? Frankly, I’ll admit I was beginning to psychologically work on giving them up before then. Then I was in a hospital with no smoking. A nurse offered and I accepted the “patch” to wean me off smokes physically. Now, between the time I told my roommate to call me an ambulance and them taking me out on a gurney I managed to pack a bag. Clothes, chargers, phone and tablet, an unopened box of smokes, a lighter, and my wallet. Back to the patch.
At what I call the “Peak” of my stroke my right arm and hand did NOT work at all. My right leg barely worked and my right foot had “dropped”. After 8 days getting tested and evaluated in the local hospital I was wheeled in a wheelchair with my bag and placed in a minivan for a trip to another hospital 40 miles away for “Intense Rehabilitation”. The first hospital offered 45 minutes of physical therapy and 45 of occupational therapy twice a week. The new one offered 1.5 hours of each every day. On the ride to the new hospital I was sorely tempted to ask the driver to pull over to a rest stop and let me catch a smoke but I resisted.
So, 3 weeks later I was declared “Modified Independant” and sent home in a wheelchair with a quad cane and a transfer bench for the shower. So I was back home with 3 packs of smokes left. I couldn’t just toss them away; they went for $8 a pack then. When I was a boy, they sold at my dad’s store for $0.34 a pack. So I smoked them. I ran out Oct 15ish and haven’t smoked another since. For demotivation, although I had dumped out the ashtray on my desk but left the dirty thing on my desk for 6 months.
For a time, I had some AA folks as roommates. I adopted some of the AA attitudes… If I never have that first cigarette, I’ll never need that second pack. I’m “Smober” and wish you luck.
Huh. I was at 19 years last month and my primary care has never indicated such. Regardless, I’m not going to take it up again.
@ZipperJJ and others, I wish all the best for you all - it was one of the toughest things I’ve done, in part because I didn’t really want to quit. I ultimately did with chantix - which worked really well for me. I admit there are days even now I miss smoking, but that’s a mental thing, not a physical craving anymore, thankfully.
