Quitting Smoking [Archive] - Echoing the Sound

GibbonBlack

03-15-2013, 11:29 PM

Friend of mine put it like this: "I stopped smoking 5 years ago, but I'll always be a smoker. I love the taste, I love the smell, LOVE IT. It's like being an alcoholic. I want one right now, but I won't, I just want to come outside and stand next to you while you have one."

That's exactly how I am. I quit a year ago but I still love the smell and taste. I just don't crave it enough to actually smoke. With me I literally got bored with the idea of smoking so I stopped. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as bad as everyone says.

Fixer808

03-15-2013, 11:39 PM

Yeah, it's weird. I was seeing a nurse last year, and... uh... a roller derby girl this year, both of whom disapprove of it. But it's weird. When I was with/am with ex/her I didn't really think about smoking. Dunno why, but since both the ex and current live out of town I wish they'd both live in town, maybe it'd help!

Jeez, the past/present terms were getting annoying...

Jinsai

03-16-2013, 12:09 AM

I quit smoking and I'm over it. Fuck that shit. You really just need 5 days without it at all, and you'll be fine sticking with it. It seems so difficult to go five days without a cigarette while you're addicted to it, but just suffer through it. Occasionally you'll walk by someone smoking and it'll remind you that you used to be a smoker, but if you've been away from it long enough, it won't make you want to smoke, it'll just bother you and remind you why you quit.

jessamineny

03-16-2013, 10:03 AM

The choice of the patch is good. When I tried with nicotine gum, all it did was constantly remind me that I wasn't smoking (because I was feeding my addiction in the same manner, but with just another delivery method).

I carried around a drinking straw. Held it between my fingers, chewed on it... sort of like a kid and a security blanket.

I gave myself a project (painting my apartment) so that I would have something to focus on.

When I got a really bad craving, I just white-knuckled through it, convincing myself that it would pass, and tried to distract myself. Usually in 5 minutes, I'd be OK.

I didn't go out to a bar for an entire year. YMMV. Many years later, and even though smoking is outlawed in bars here now, I still carry mints with me and keep popping them (just as I would have lit cigarettes).

Consider changing routines that involve trigger times... upon waking, after meals, etc. Try getting in the shower immediately upon waking. As soon as you finish a meal, try cleaning up the dishes and going for a walk. That sort of thing.

Dra508

03-17-2013, 05:58 PM

When I got a really bad craving, I just white-knuckled through it, convincing myself that it would pass, and tried to distract myself. Usually in 5 minutes, I'd be OK.

THIS. Everyone seems to be a bit different as to how you handle the physical addiction part, whether you cold turkey or use a patch. I used the wellbutrin and the commit lozenge. I sucked on those things for a while too. The best advice I got which is exactly what jessamineny did: "Put distance between urge and action". When you want one, go do something else. The urge WILL pass.

Good luck slave2thewage.

Harry Seaward

03-17-2013, 06:12 PM

I've been quitting on and off for over a month now lol. As of now, it's been four days, but I've had a can of Skoal connected to me pretty much 24/7. Last night I ordered some starter vape kits and nicotine juice, so I'm going to try that out. This is lame.

allegro

03-18-2013, 12:11 AM

You're obsessing about it. The key to quitting is refusing to think about it. Ever. Otherwise you are holding onto it like a friend. it's not your friend.

Jinsai

03-20-2013, 01:20 PM

the only thing that worked for me was to quit cold turkey. The patches and e-cigs and gum just made me miss it, and they dragged out the period where I was addicted to nicotine.

allegro

03-20-2013, 07:06 PM

I smoked a pack a day for over 20 years and quit a few times for about a year each time via group hypnosis but I ended up smoking, again.

I quit in October of 2000 for good, using cold turkey and the patch. I say that because I didn't notice the patch actually "doing" anything physically but it convinced me, psychologically, that any withdrawal symptoms was strictly behavioral since the patch was taking care of the physical addiction. I did the 21-day Nicaderm program. Only problem I had, initially, was itching (under patch area) but that went away after a few days. And some crazy dreams from the patch, whoa. But I was very satisfied with the patch because it allowed me to work on changing my behavior while not being all edgy from withdrawal.

johnhenry

03-21-2013, 01:07 PM

Just wanted to hop onto Jinsai's point above with this anecdote: I have two friends who went the e-cig route and both relapsed serially until one finally went cold turkey (and succeeded) and the other got emphysema (and hasn't). The "cold turkey" friend was actually the heavier smoker though for fewer years.

Cold turkey doesn't have an amazing success rate but in my experience, one isn't ready to quit until one literally quits. From there, as allegro said, you stop treating your slavemaster like a friend and get on with life.

I'm one of those assholes who has been smoking for years and never got hooked, but I've had problems with other... er, substances, so I do empathize. When I was finally done, and knew it, I just quit. You suffer, endure, and emerge a much freer person.

Wretchedest

03-21-2013, 01:30 PM

My wife and i just quit.

To be fair, i only started two years ago when i quit weed, so for me it was pretty simple. I had to wrestle with it at first but ultimately it wasnt difficult. My wife was pretty worried though, her mom smoked ilwhile she was in the womb. But she found it easy too. No headache no patches gum or whatever. Wierd i guess.

I did ween myself a bit.first i cut myself off from buying packs. I could only bum smokes. And from there i tried to phut it to where i only hit other peoples cigarettes. It was pretty moochy, but that was part of the deterrent.

Sutekh

03-31-2013, 07:02 AM

I quit 2 and a bit years ago after smoking 24+ a day (royals come in decks of 24) for about a decade, tried and failed to quit after pretty much every packet in the last couple of years of it.

I can't remember exactly what happened but one night I ran out of cigarettes, but it was late so I just went to bed. Early start & long/busy day, didn't have a chance to buy anymore. Got home late and became occupied with things, got to about 24 hours since I'd had one, my mrs was working late & on her way home, I asked her to pick me up a pack & she forgot. By then it was like 1am so I just went to bed.

And yeah... so that was me straight into day 2, so I thought I'd stick with it.

One thing I will say... cold turkey all the way. It is correct you shouldn't feed the obsession component of your addiction by fussing around with nicotine delivery systems.

Another thing that really worked for me - but seems against conventional wisdom, is to not avoid smokers and smoky situations - they always say you shouldn't drink when you're quitting - I say you should have a couple of drinks every night and actually push yourself into tempting situations. You can't get over things by avoiding, you have to get used to staring a cigarette in the face until your mind accepts it is no longer relevant to you. You ARE going to be stood with smokers or drunk off your arse at some point, so be prepared rather than hope for the best

Pretty sure I've said all this before but if it helps anyone along it's worth the waffle!

edit - and another thing, that really satisfying feeling of having a cigarette after a slap up meal is one of the first things you stop missing. Only saying because I used to love that one & it was one of the things that scared me about quitting. Also hangovers are much more bearable when you haven't smoked 24 cigs the night before (they added to the discomfort more than I'd realised)

Clownboat

03-31-2013, 09:11 AM

The thing that helped for me wasn't knowing that I was doing it for my health or because I should be doing it, because those reasons rarely work.

When I was 17 or so, my family was going through rough times financially and I needed to get a job to help. My dad urged me on, saying that if I got a job, he would quit smoking. Being that he was approaching age 70 and already had really bad health problems (he'd had three heart attacks in his life, among other things), that was an awesome promise. I landed a job interview at Walmart, and he drove me to it and dropped me off. When I got out of the car, he said he'd be over on the other side of the parking lot, because he had a promise to keep. He showed me the pack of smokes and smiled at me.

I didn't end up getting the job, but he still never smoked a cigarette again after that.

He ended up passing away a couple of years ago, and one day I thought about this story because it'd never really dawned on me before. He quit for me when he didn't even have to. So I quit, too, and having a reason like that made it a lot easier.

allegro

03-31-2013, 09:25 AM

Aw, that's really nice, Clownboat.

The only thing I want to add to this discussion is the suggestion that people be open-minded about various quit methods (patch, drug, ecigs, cold turkey, etc). Just because one worked (for now) for YOU doesn't make it the "right" or "correct" way, and saying negative things about other quit methods isn't helpful in this discussion, nor is it scientific.

When my stepdad was in the Intensive Care Unit after having a heart attack, the hospital physicians put him on the nicotine patch. My stepdad had smoked for nearly 50 years, and after that he quit forever.

So, whatever finally WORKED was the "right" way for him.

My stepdad and I had done group hypnosis twice together. When he got out of the hospital after bypass surgery, he took me aside, handed me a nicotine patch, and told me to hold on to it just in case I decided to quit.

SEVEN months later, with the worst hangover of my life, I got out that patch and I never went back. I quit drinking for a year, too, and I've stayed away from hard liquor ever since. (I sometimes have a glass of prosecco.) If you want to stop poisoning yourself, you might as well quit ALL the poisons. Addicts often trade one addiction for another.

I had a "quit smoking" workbook that I had been studying before I quit. which included a lot of self-analysis and which helped a lot toward behavior modification when I finally quit.

IMHO, behavioral modification and self-analysis is a big part of successful quitting.

http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/documents/nurse-wellness/files/QuitWorkbook.pdf

aggroculture

03-31-2013, 09:35 AM

I quit smoking for good about 2 1/2 years ago. My personal philosophy on quitting smoking is this: if you still want to smoke cigarettes, you will find it very hard, if not impossible to quit. You shouldn't try to quit if you want to keep smoking, because you won't be able to quit. I tried to quit about six years ago - did two years without - and then, with the drinking and smoking when I was drinking, started smoking full-on again.
I could only quit when I really physically did not want to smoke anymore. When I hated smoking, when it made me feel sick. When it was only the addiction that was keeping me smoking. When I did not want to smoke anymore.

Good luck to all considering quitting. Life after cigarettes tastes sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o much better. Nicotine is a real dangerous, horrible drug, still far too normalized in our society.

allegro

03-31-2013, 09:52 AM

Life after cigarettes tastes sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o much better.
Smells better, too! I had NO idea how much smoking had screwed up my sinuses and my sense of smell. It's also nice not COUGHING all the damned time. And I get sick a lot less.

Dra508

03-31-2013, 10:14 AM

Smells better, too! I had NO idea how much smoking had screwed up my sinuses and my sense of smell. It's also nice not COUGHING all the damned time. And I get sick a lot less.
When I smoked, I had to blow my nose every morning when I woke up. Within days of quitting, that went away. It was quite amazing.

Jinsai

03-31-2013, 03:02 PM

I quit smoking for good about 2 1/2 years ago. My personal philosophy on quitting smoking is this: if you still want to smoke cigarettes, you will find it very hard, if not impossible to quit. You shouldn't try to quit if you want to keep smoking, because you won't be able to quit.

yeah, but the real truth is that nobody really wants to keep smoking, at least not after they've been addicted to it long enough and have had to deal with some of the shitty side effects. They just convince themselves they can't deal or function without it, and that they prefer to smoke when comparing it to the feeling of the withdrawl. It gets hard to remember what life was like before picking up the habit of smoking, and it can be hard to believe that the addictive pangs will eventually completely go away.

And yeah, it's strange how widely accepted nicotine is, but it's not just our society. It's pretty much around the world, even if it's steadily changing.

It's been almost two months since I quit smoking, and the last thing I want now is a cigarette. Even when I rarely feel a fleeting temptation it's easy to shut it off by just reminding myself how guilty and horrible I'd feel if I gave in.

aggroculture

03-31-2013, 03:11 PM

I'm not sure about that. There was a time when I found real pleasure in smoking, in nicotine. It gave me a pleasant buzz, a nice break from the world. It felt good to smoke.
Then things changed.
I realized I needed to quit when I moved into a non-smoking apt. Before that, my first cig of the day would be on awaking. But in that apt, my first cig of the day was when I left the house. That cig, smoked several hours after being awake, depressed me, made my previous good mood drop significantly. My body was telling me to stop smoking. From then on smoking started to become less and less pleasurable, and when I quit for good, in Nov 2010, smoking was an entirely horrible experience for me. I hated the act and the feeling of smoking at that point, only doing it for the addiction.
Why do something that you hate? Because you feel unable to say no to it?
A friend of mine stopped because he refused to continue being a slave to that addiction, which is a great way of putting it.
The physical withdrawal doesn't last long: a few weeks maybe.

allegro

03-31-2013, 03:44 PM

Slavery, absolutely.

When I left the house, I had to be sure that I had a lighter on me and enough cigarettes and a purse to put it in, and when I went to bed at night I had to have enough cigarettes for getting ready in the morning and the drive to work and if I had 5 cigs I'd get anxiety about if that was enough so I'd buy cartons so I wouldn't worry about that, and then I'd go to parties where nobody smoked anymore and I'd be standing on a porch outside in 20-degree weather getting my nicotine fix, and even with all that, I couldn't face NOT smoking.

But then, after I quit, I'd have nightmares (for YEARS) that I was smoking again and I'd think OH GOD I GOTTA QUIT AGAIN, I FUCKED UP! And then I woke up and I realize that it was just a dream and I was SO relieved ugh.

I smoked when I had PNEUMONIA, I smoked after oral surgery when they told me not to (then I got dry socket and it was my fault), I smoked on planes back when the last 3 rows was the smoking section (ha!) and it was stupid, ugh. Worse than heroin.

Jinsai

03-31-2013, 03:58 PM

But then, after I quit, I'd have nightmares (for YEARS) that I was smoking again and I'd think OH GOD I GOTTA QUIT AGAIN, I FUCKED UP! And then I woke up and I realize that it was just a dream and I was SO relieved ugh.

I had one of those dreams a couple nights ago. They suck. I have a feeling that sort of nightmare will always happen every now and again... right alongside the "oh shit I forgot to study for my finals and they're today" nightmare.

allegro

03-31-2013, 04:06 PM

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-wisdom-your-dreams/201207/dreams-and-recovery-addiction

hellospaceboy

04-03-2013, 08:26 PM

I quit after 14 years of smoking a pack a day. I used Chantix, I had to take it for about 6 Weeks, and with it I had no cravings at all. It's been 3 years of being smoke free.
The other thing that helped me a great deal was taking up running; but I assume any kind of physical exercise would work. It was really helping with stress and it was something I couldn't do as a smoker.

allegro

12-07-2015, 05:56 PM

By the way, elevenism, there's this thing called a nicotine inhaler (http://www.nicotrol.com/coupon). It requires a prescription. See Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/quit-smoking/multimedia/nicotine-inhaler/img-20008731). I used this for six weeks (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/quit-smoking/multimedia/nicotine-patch/img-20008689).

Edit: See also this (http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/07/17/the-golden-rule-of-habit-change/). Applies to "hand-to-mouth" -- be it eating, smoking, nail-biting, whatever. You have two things going on: (1) habit (hand-to-mouth) and (2) addiction (nicotine). You will have to tackle the habit on your own by using "substitutes" or "distractions" or calming methods like breathing exercises; lots of people use nicotine replacement while tackling the habit because it's hard to withdraw from nicotine at the same time (although nicotine withdrawal, technically, only lasts about 4-5 days and the rest is just psychological cause-and-effect programming). Others use gradual nicotine withdrawal (4-6 weeks, not months) while doing behavioral modification.

elevenism

12-07-2015, 06:05 PM

By the way, @elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), there's this thing called a nicotine inhaler (http://www.nicotrol.com/coupon). It requires a prescription. See Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/quit-smoking/multimedia/nicotine-inhaler/img-20008731). I used this for six weeks (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/quit-smoking/multimedia/nicotine-patch/img-20008689).
i thought about going that route, and i think it might have worked just as well, but the vaporizer was readily available and i like the flavors.
please don't misunderstand me. i'm NOT saying that vaping is safe. Like you said, nicotine is nicotine to your heart.
but i do believe that it's safER.
and as a "stop smoking" aid, i think it's a GODSEND.

I am very happy with the progress i've made. It was damned hard to switch from the cigs to the vape in the first place.
And i've lowered the nicotine level from 4.8 to 3.6 to 2.4 and now 1.6.
I don't think it's like switching from likker to beer. I think it's like kicking heroin with a suboxone taper (something i MAY have done ;) )

Also, for the first time since 1994, i can fucking BREATHE. I don't cough shit up all the time. It's wonderful.
And the end is in sight. I already have .6 juice for when i feel that i can make that leap.

allegro

12-07-2015, 06:15 PM

And the end is in sight. I already have .6 juice for when i feel that i can make that leap.
If you can quit in a month, I'll believe it. I"m glad you're doing something about it, but ...

Again, you still have to get rid of the "habit" of smoking. The addiction part is being controlled by decreasing the nicotine. But you're not doing anything about the habit. Eventually, you're not going to have that "hand-to-mouth" anymore and you're going to have to do without it. And right now you're not doing anything about that, at all, really. And lots of people end up replacing it with eating or drinking. And that's not healthy, either. Ultimately, the goal is just stopping the hand-to-mouth, totally.

I quit drinking and smoking, totally, at the same time. Best thing I've ever done.

Eventually, after a year, I could have a glass of bubbly once in a while. But I come from a family of addiction. This WHOLE FUCKING BOARD is filled with people who kicked heavy addictions, dude. Heroin, crack, meth, alcohol, but they just don't talk about it.

Ryan

12-07-2015, 06:22 PM

allegro

12-07-2015, 06:23 PM

I've never done any sort of drug or smoked, the only thing I've ever thought I was was an alcoholic. I've since realised I'm more
like Randy Marsh and just "really really really like beer". I can stop and start whenever.

I wish I knew who Randy Marsh was ... :o (runs to Google)

edit: Ooooooooohhhhhhhhh okay!
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/southpark/images/b/b7/RandyMarsh1601.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120312054955

allegro

12-07-2015, 06:33 PM

I don't think it's like switching from likker to beer.
What's the proof in Vodka? Average is 80.

What's the proof in Beer? 10 to 14.

Ryan

12-07-2015, 07:16 PM

I wish I knew who Randy Marsh was ... :o (runs to Google)

edit: Ooooooooohhhhhhhhh okay!
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/southpark/images/b/b7/RandyMarsh1601.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120312054955

http://youtu.be/enisEolQXnw

perceptionnexus

12-07-2015, 10:01 PM

I quit about 2 months ago using a vape mod and chantix. I was a 1/2 - full pack a day'er for about 16 years. So far, so good....

I actually had been quit for just over a year at the beginning of this year, but ended up starting again after my wife started suffering some intense mental health problems and ended up in the hospital. For me, this was a winning combination. The chantix took care of the nicotine cravings and made cigs taste like dead moose ass, and the vape pen fills my freudian need to suck on something and then have smoke come out. I just make sure to get the vape juice with no nicotine.

Good luck to anyone trying. Seriously, you can do it! :D