quitting smoking. how did you do manage to stay smoke free?

[christoph1]

Hello everyone,


i have been smoking since roughly the age of 14 (now 31).


i have only once quit smoking. last year around christmas. i had no cravings whatsoever for about 7 days and than i had a beer. i was sold, instantly i wanted a smoke and stupid enough i gave in. since than i was again smoking about 4 - 20 cigs a day depending on whether i am at work, or going out, or doing something else. on some days however i do not smoke at all.


i want to quit for the health benefit. i am exercising, diving and running on a regular basis and noticed that i am really short on breath. i also do fear cancer or any other smoking related disease when i am older. don't want my family and myself to have all these troubles simply because i am to weak to quit the fags for good.


I am now about 3 days smoke free and luckily experience no problems.

how did you handle the cravings after 4-5 days? how to go in a pub without having to smoke?


all tips are highly appreciated.!!!
best wishes for all who are quitting at the moment. lets keep strong and good bubbles!

 

[fbk]

I smoked for 20 years then quit cold turkey. You have to really want to be a non-smoker which it seems you do so you are off to a good start.

I had no problem overcoming nicotine cravings but missed the hand-mouth habit so badly I went crazy. Then I got some electronic cigarettes. You are smoking vapor instead of smoke, you can get e-juice with nicotine in them (but this is also addictive) or you can get nicotine free like I did. After a month or two of blowing fake smoke I asked myself what I am even bothering with that for and have been smoke free for 3 years.

Good luck!

 

[vladimir]

Nicotine by itself is not so bad. My wife quit smoking about 8 years ago, but she never quit nicotine. She uses Nicorette gum, Nicorette inhalers, or Nicotinelle lozenges and has had no discernible ill effects, though doctors advise against their prolonged use. (Any doctor will concede that if the choice is between cigarettes and Nicorette, the Nicorette is much better, even for prolonged use.)

A nice benefit is she doesn't have to leave the dinner table for that post-meal fix anymore.

 

[currier]

Congratulations on your decision to quit.

Your situation rings true to my ears. I started when I was 14. I finally quit when I was 31 (more than 3 years ago now).

I knew from repeated attempts throughout my twenties that the only way for me to quit smoking was to quit drinking at the same time. Give me 4 or 5 pints, and I'm in line at the store purchasing a packs of smokes.

so - that's what I did, had to give up drinking entirely (hell, I had to get off of coffee, too, for about a year). Three years and pleased with the decision, best one I ever made .... but, in honesty, I still know that I can't drink more than a beer or two without cravings ....

one thing a good friend shared with me - "Even when you do succumb and have a few when you're out drinking with your buds, just throw them away when you wake up the next morning. Don't beat yourself up over em. Think of the thousands you HAVEN'T had for the past few months."

 

[christoph1]

I knew from repeated attempts throughout my twenties that the only way for me to quit smoking was to quit drinking at the same time. Give me 4 or 5 pints, and I'm in line at the store purchasing a packs of smokes.

so - that's what I did, had to give up drinking entirely (hell, I had to get off of coffee, too, for about a year). Three years and pleased with the decision, best one I ever made .... but, in honesty, I still know that I can't drink more than a beer or two without cravings ....
."

what you are saying there currier is exactly my trouble. i only need to smell beer and that is it. sounds ridiculous i know. good to know that more people feel like this.
this smoking while drinking method is surely better than nothing.but completly stopping with drinks really seems the only way to go. it is not that much of a deal to me for a while but it would be much nicer if you had said that after a year or so the cravings pass completely....

 

[SeaHorse81]

To all who are quitting, wish to quit, or have quit but are struggling, I offer a very good resource: The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, by Allen Carr.

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking: The Easyway To Stop Smoking: Allen Carr: 9780615482156: Amazon.com: Books

My brother, a highly addictive type in any event, smoked for over 32 years. He quit and restarted four times along the way. He read this book, was able to quit as a result and has never looked back after close to ten years now. He is totally content with being a nonsmoker.

I am a psychotherapist so naturally, I was curious as to what magical powers this book might possess. I went over it very thoroughly and can readily see why it helps so well. It's brilliantly done. The author even encourages you to go ahead and keep on smoking as you begin the book -- there's absolutely nothing but your addiction to lose by giving it a try.

By the way, the author was a five-pack-day guy before he quit. He then spent the remaining years of his life in smoke-filled rooms doing seminars for other who wanted to quit. He was lost several years ago to raging lung cancer, and worked until his very last day try to help others.

 

[Diver0001]

Hello everyone,

I've never been addicted to smoking but it seems to me that every addiction has pretty much the same cycle and the same solution once the physical dependency has been tackled.

Namely, turning this



into this:



The trick, and it can be really REALLY hard, is that no matter HOW hard it gets, you have to supplant whatever "healthy habit" you decided upon in the place of "ritual".

That means doing two things very consciously.

1) figuring out what the ritual is
2) deciding well ahead of time what "healthy behaviour" you will supplant in the place of "ritual" when you feel a craving.

It's impossible to stop the trigger. In your case, every time you drink a beer for the rest of your life, you will have that trigger (using your own example). You can avoid some triggers (ie never drink beer) but you must be aware that when you drink beer, that's a trigger. It's good to make a list of your triggers to you can be mentally prepared for it BEFORE it happens.

It's impossible to stop the craving. Addiction changes your brain. Some things get hard-wired. The cravings will become less intense over time (attenuation effect) but they will never completely go away. As the cravings become less intense, it's easier to not move to ritual but in order to make the cravings less intense you have to bite the bullet. Your doctor might have some ideas (medication, acupuncture, acupressure, yada yada yada) that will help you control the cravings just enough to not slip into ritual but it's going to be a fight and there's no getting around that.

The most unnatural thing in the beginning is to NOT go into ritual and to supplant whatever healthy thing you decided on in the place of it. For example, with smoking, the ritual might be to grab your pack of smokes and head outside to the garden. Just the act of doing that is part of the ritual and just heading to the garden (or wherever you usually smoke) will already trigger your brain to start giving you the "good feeling" that you get from using... then after that it's just like a water slide. you're in it and you're going all the way down.

So the key is to NOT grab your smokes and head to the garden. You must decide on another habit so you can "survive" the craving until you can control it enough to move on.

For example, you might install a dart board (just a wild idea here to illustrate the idea) in your house and when you feel the trigger and the craving, instead of grabbing your smokes and going to the garden, you go to the kitchen, get a glass of water, and throw darts for 10 minutes.

Two things happen then. (a) you're creating a new ritual that takes place of the old one, and (b) you're not feeding your craving. So the craving will be just that LITTLE bit less intense the next time. You might become very good at darts (which will, in itself give you a good feeling) before you don't need it anymore to survive the craving, but eventually you'll reach a point where you can basically ignore it and move on.

I know that sounds mechanical, but in fact, that is the entire mechanism from healing from an addiction (any addiction) in a nutshell.

Hope that helps.

R..

 

[christoph1]

excellent !
hartstikke bedankt voor de uitgebreid uitleg (much thanks for the thorough elaboration )! that is really interesting and i am curious how long it will take me to completely replace the ceremonie of smoking ( already have some ideas ). it really can’t be that hard.....

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I used to smoke years ago cigarettes cigar and even pipe once in a while. Tobacco's a bitch worse than heroin they say.
Then I managed to quit smoking because the phlegm it caused in my throat became a nuissance. Instead I picked up chewing Copenhagen which is even worse in many ways. It's insideous because it can be done incognito, there's no smoke, and you get a hell of a nicotine buzz, twice or more that of cigarettes and a chew lasts much longer. I've managed to quit by replacing the addiction with excercise and also because my teeth are starting to decay from it. The fear of mouth cancer also plays a role in quitting. However, at one of my accounts where I go to paint signs all the guys there chew and when I get there the first thing I want to do is bum a chew from one of them. The craving is overwhelming and I find myself unable to not get a dip. As soon as I leave I don't even think about it or want it anywhere else I go.
That place and country music are my triggers because I used to listen to country way back when I chewed regularly. I need to learn to break those triggers.
I never think about or want a smoke ever again so I guess that's good. It's been at least 30 years since I've smoked.

 

[drbill]

No question it is difficult to do and congratulations to you for quitting. I had to do it twice as well. I gave in to the craving two years after I had quit the first time, but the second time (nearly 40 years ago!) I was determined and made it. I have no specific tips other than to stay tough. It is hard. But I certainly wish you all the best in succeeding.