I have been smoking since my college days. I currently smoke about a pack of cigarettes a day.
I want to give up. I have tried to give up. A while ago, myself and my partner tried to give up. We both quit. We went cold turkey, and for a while I felt really good. A few weeks later, after a stressfull time, I had a cigarette. It tasted disgusting, but soon I was back on the habit. We both went back to smoking.
Anyone have any success stories? How did you do it, and what tips can you offer me?
I went and saw my doctor. Doc recommended nicotine patches. My insurance paid for it… since helping me quit smoking now is cheaper than paying for my cancer later.
That, and Altoids mints.
Oh, yeah, and watching my mother die of lung cancer the year earlier helped.
I second the mints.
I used Wintergreen Life Savers.
$1.35 a bag in bulk, went through 2 bags a day the first month, but it was still cheaper than smokes!
Oh yes, and always have something to occupy your hands! I was totally convinced I was going to stop. I made a study of when I wanted a smoke. The only time I HAD to have a cigarette was when I was out - when none were available to me. Therefore I kept my last 1/2 pack, carried them with me everywhere, when I wanted one real bad and the mints didn’t help, I took one out, held it, put it to my lips, but didn’t light it. After about 3 minutes of this insane behavior I could put the smoke back in the pack.
Always carried my Zippo with me too. It had been a part of me for so long, that it felt wrong if I didn’t feel it in my pocket.
Last 1/2 pack of smokes - it was 3 months before I could be without them.
Zippo: was over a year before I stopped putting it in my pocket. It’s still in my dresser drawer, however.
Wintergreen Life Savers: I’m still hooked, dammit!
But it’s over 3 years now without a cigarette!
I took Zyban and took the quit-smoking program that came with the drugs seriously. I also ate more, exercised more, and, whenever possible, stayed away from stressful situations. I avoided other smokers. I quit drinking alcohol for the longest time (about a year or so). I cut back on soda, coffee, and tea. I did a lot of deep breathing. I chewed about a zillion pieces of gum. I prayed about it. And I bragged to all my friends about my will power, thereby making it impossible for me to ever light another cigarette in public again.
I haven’t smoked in . . . wow, I guess it’s been a year-and-a-half, two years? Probably closer to a year and a half. It’s in another thread on this board somewhere.
You really should quit if you can, samarm. You really do feel better after your lungs start working again. I wish you and your partner tons of luck on your next attempts.
A little over four months here and doing fine outside of a few odd cravings.
I chewed on crushed ice for three days straight, and I cut out caffeine altogether for a few weeks. I think that really helped keep down the nervous cravings. I gained a few pounds, but I’m losing them now. I did it cold turkey, but if I had the money I would have used patches or gum. Sometimes the only thing I could do was stop and breathe and think about how my body was healing. I am always trying to think like I never smoked at all. When I have a craving, I try to figure out what’s causing it before I blame nicotine. Sometimes it’s stress, sometimes I’m just tired.
Like Rico, I kept a few smokes from the pack until my three month goal was reached. Not sure why, but I hear it’s common. I tried to avoid situations where I smoked more: I went to bed at a decent hour because I always smoked more late at night. I asked my friends not to smoke in the house at first, but now that I work with smokers it doesn’t bother me at all.
And I had an excellent cheerleader. My daughter was there for me every step of the way with hugs and praise and even her special hand massages. It’s kid magic, ya know. 
The silkquit meter or any other meter is great for encouragement. Tracking your saved funds can turn it into a game. Some people save that money for a special reward after a goal has been met.
I don’t know any special secrets, and it looks like everyone that quit for life had their own method. I just push myself every day and try to give myself praise, as corny as it sounds. Quitting is an incredible task but also an incredible reward-- every day you don’t smoke is a milestone.
Best of luck to you both. I imagine it’s much harder for two people in the same home to quit, but you guys can do it.
Wow, thanks for the tips.
Wang-ka, really sorry to hear about your mother.
I’ll give Altoids a go, they’re pretty strong but I’ll try anything.
Rico thanks for the advice. I actually have a Zippo. I’ll see if your tips work out for me.
Mephisto: Good advice. I find I most want to smoke when I’m drinking beer, and other people around me are smoking. Also I like the tips on exercise and avoiding stressful situations.
Rushgeekgirl: I posted before you post went through. Just wanted to say I appreciate the advice. I believe the craving get the worst if there is a stressful situation. For example, if we have a fight, or there is a problem at work. I am willing to try the patches, but I think they will only work with a large amount of willpower - you have to WANT to give up to make them work.
By the way, I don’t have any kids directly, but my partner has kids. Only thing is they are 18 and 19 years old and live away from home. I think we can use eachother as support and for encouragement. As has been mentioned, we need to support eachother, as it’s a tough challenge. Again, thanks for the advice.
I’ll start by saying good luck. I’ve been quit for about four weeks now, give or take a few days. The longest I’ve ever been tobacco-free since I started in highschool. I dropped a pack-a-day habit cold turkey, with no drugs or stop-smoking aids.
How’d I do it? Simple: I stopped taking Paxil at the same time I quit cigarettes. After two years on the happy-zombie pill, the Paxil withdrawal was so awful, I hardly even notices the nicoteine withdrawal. Now, this is not a course of action I would reccomend.
Things that help me stay clean?
Good luck!!
The only thing that was successful for me was this book : Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking.
It took a mental / attitude shift for me to get beyond the cravings and the failures. Every other time I tried to quit, it was hard, really hard, I felt miserable, failed and ended up feeling like a loser. When I tried after reading that book, it was easy and a positive thing.
Give it a go, you can probably find a paperback version in the library, so it’ll be much cheaper to give it a go before you shell out money for patches or gum or drugs. Good luck !
Move to Ireland next year:
Ireland snuffing out cigarettes in 2004
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/world/5070200.htm
Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Smoking
It worked for me, and I know it worked for a lot of Dopers here. I highly recommend it.
My mom gave up smoking after 40 years of it. She went cold turkey, then a week later got the patches. She chewed a lot of gum. The spots on her lungs didn’t hurt her resolve. 
But she did it! She was the last of 4 in my family who kicked the habit.
I got pregnant. I had the worst chest pains everytime I lit up, so I quit. If I hadn’t had a relapse over Christmas when my sister-in-law from hell was staying, it’d have been 3 years this month. Oh, and believe me I’m suffering for my sin. The day after I stopped I got bronchitus and it’s just now going away.
My husband is just getting over pneumonia which has forced him to quit. He’s chewing nicotine gum like a mad man and boy is it pissing him off!
Hypnotism, circa 1984, 3/4 pack a day plus tobacco pipe smoking (an artifact of a failed attempt to switch to pipe smoking, I added the new habit and kept the old).
One session. Walked home, took remaining packs from carton, 3-4 pipes from pipe rack, couple bags of pipe tobacco, pipe cleaners, various packs of matches, and took them to back yard. Doused all with kerosene and lit and watched them burn. Melodramatic but significant. Never smoked again. Never wanted to smoke again. (Physical withdrawal lasted perhaps a week, went for long walks and drank lots of coffee at first).
Less than two weeks later I was completely comfortable sitting in a bar surrounded by smokers, neither wanting one myself nor feeling any kind of revulsion or aversion to cigarette smoke or smokers. It just became irrelevant.
My wife and I stopped on the same Friday last August. We’d both run out of cigarettes and money, and neither of us wanted to dig around for change to buy more. So we stopped cold turkey.
Here it is almost six months later and we both are still non-smokers. We didn’t use hypnotism, the patch, substituting mints for cigarettes, or anything else like that. I wish I had words of wisdom as to how we actually did it, but I don’t. It probably helped that we didn’t allow smoking in the house to begin with; we’d go out back to smoke.
It doesn’t bother me now to be around smokers. I guess I’m lucky that way.
However you do it I hope that you find a way that works in getting you off the habit.
I used the gum. Unlike your opinion of the patch, you don’t have to want it to work… it does work… Of course, you have to want to quit in the first place or it is nothing more than an excersize in futility. Two years ago I made the choice to quit smoking, bought one pack of the gum, and didn’t even need to finish that… I’m sure, like most smokers, when you are sick you don’t really feel like smoking, and then when you DO smoke again you feel very light headed… You get the “rush” from having lit up… Well, with the gum, you get so much nicotine in your system that you feel like that a thousand times over. You get sick to your stomach if you even try to smoke. They had estimated three or four packs of the gum would be required… I used 40 pieces from a 48 piece pack and gave the rest of it way… You see, the gum tastes revolting (Mint flavor my arse) and you don’t want to use it any more. Unlike AHunter3, however, I am repulsed by the smell of smoke now. I can’t stand to be anywhere near it. Best of luck to you. I hope you find what you need to put cigarettes behind you for good.
Just quit. It’ll improve your chances. IIRC, the average smoker quits 7 times before they quit for good. It took me 8. I’m into the begining of month 3, and I am convinced that this is it, I’m done. (Just that attitude alone is a new thing to me)
One important key for me, was I didn’t quit with anyone. It’s the first time I quit without my wife. I now realize that it was a crutch to quit with her, and I was secretly gleeful everytime she caved (As I knew she would). I just told her a month ahead of D-Day that I was quitting then. Never mentioned it again. And quit on D-Day. I laid off the beer for a couple weeks (It’s like having peanut butter without Jelly, Fred without Ginger, Ying without Yang. But I’m pretty used to it now) I certainly had some stress, but after I made it over that hurdle, my resolve was actually strengthened. Man, I got sh*tfaced that weekend, and still didn’t smoke ahem, cigarettes that is. It was my once a year guy’s weekend after all, I must be allowed some fun 
Oh sure, I may have had the advantage of walking pnuemonea the week after I quit, and I was foolish enough to not see a Doc about said pnuemonia for a couple weeks, but it sure made me lose interest in smoking. So, catch pnuemonia right after you quit if possible .
Best of luck. We all do it different. You just gotta figure out how you will do it. I always thought I wanted to quit, but in hindsight, this time is the only time I really did.
Non smoker here checking in with useless nonsense. WHAT, YOU WERE EXPECTING A GREAT FLASH OF INSIGHT FROM ME ALL OF A SUDDEN?
Having a father die of lung cancer when I was nine really changed my views on how cool smoking it. Watching a brother die from complications (amongst other more complicated things) emphysema just two years ago, is something no person should go through and, subsequently, every teen ager should be phyiscally present at bedside for.
Also, hanging out with the old people that were my parents friends who started smoking during WW2, and listening to their phlemy coughts and stink of smoke was also another cure all for me.
I read an interesting letter to the editor of Reader’s Digest ( I think it was for December, possibly November. In response to a Stop Smoking article which, now that I think about it, was in Nov.) From a man who said that because of the ad campaigns of the pharmacuetical companies, we are now lead to beleive that we cannot quit smoking unless we have the nicotine patch or gum. Apparently, many people are getting addicted to those products as well. He went on stating after X amount of years of a 1 or 2 pack a day habit, (like 40 years) he quit cold turkey. I don’t beleive everyone has the stamina our ability to stay away from something so addictive as tobacco/nicotine, but his words about how the pharmacueticals are ‘training’ us to *need * help to quit was an interesting one.
Another sidebar, one neighbor had smoked for twenty five years, and stopped after accupuncture. She was so desperate (this is before the patch and gum came out), she went to this guy that came highly recommended. He did some pokes in her ear lobe for about a half hour and she has never had a craving. She did state that she was a crying mess for about a week afterwards, but it beat smoking.
Make a plan and stick to it. Good luck. ** YOU ARE STRONGER THAN THE NICOTINE. **
i’ve often wondered why there isn’t a Smoker’s Anonymous .