Quitting smoking!

[Wizardwoman]

Having a real hard time with it. Any tips? I have been an occasional smoker for the past 7 years and I feel now I am more addicted than ever. I have one of those e-cig pens with the liquid nicotine but I just use it constantly and if I switch to lower nicotine I don't feel the "throat hit" and its useless. I feel like Im out of control at this point. I constantly want to smoke either that or a real cigarette.

 

I have tried the gum but it did not help. I don't think the patch will either since its that throat hit I crave so much. I want to quit completely and for years I keep saying I will quit forever but I haven't!!

 

I live with a smoker so I need to be able to resist even when he is smoking and always has cigarettes available.

 

Help!! Is it all just will power? If I can't make myself stop forever, I feel like this will plague me forever. And I don't want that.

[daddids]

Smoking addiction is more of a phychological addiction rather than a chemical one.

 

I started smoking when I was 16 and I quit at 19-20 when I started working out and having a healthy life-style.

I just told myself, no more smoking from now on, and that was that. My gf at the time was a smoker and I told her that if you smoke when we are together we wont kiss and do stuff for the next few hours, and so she did not smoke as much too.

 

For the past 2 years, I started smoking again but only 2-3 cigs a day which I enjoy and do not want to stop.

 

My father was a heavy smoker for ~12 years and one day he said enough is enough, he hasnt smoked a single cigarette every since ( 20 years almost... ).

 

Gums, stickers , e-cigs do not help, it is the will power of a person that can help him quit. If you accept being manipulated by a piece of wrapped cancer, then keep smoking

[cryingalways]

I quit about a year ago and it was so amazingly hard at first.

I cried because it was so hard!

But I did do it, so I'm sure you can too.

I found figuring out your main reason to quit helps-not just "because it's healthier"-for example, mine was that I used smoking as a way to avoid things. If I was sad I'd smoke, if I felt awkward I'd smoke...it was a codependent sort of addiction I think and I was avoiding life by smoking. Life is better than smoking.

Carrots helped. Sweets certainly helped! Always have sweets with you at first for the addiction. Nicotine gum didn't help me at all, I see it as another addiction.

Going to bars and being around smokers won't help at all. But if you do have to just be aware you'll get better over time. The worst part is the first few weeks/months. You'll get through it and you'll have all this time and money you used to smoke to do other things. I honestly was mental for a while it was so hard but you can do it!

[TattyK]

As I write this message, it has been 677 days since I have had my last cigarette. In total I have saved $8,655. I know this, because I have a little tracker on my computer that I started the day I quit, it was free and I found it very helpful especially in the beginning to look at it. It was a mental thing for me, sort of a "look how far you have come! don't give up!" sort of thing.

I tried the gum, it gave me an open sore on my gum. Sick. I tried the patch, even on the lowest dose I still felt like passing out. I didn't feel safe driving a car with one on.

I refused to try the pills, I don't even know what they are called, because I don't like the idea of something altering my brain chemistry to help me quit. The ripple effect from doing so can be unforeseeable.

I also tried those little E-Cigs your talking about, I liked the taste of the cherry and the grape, however I found it was sort of like a tease. I would imagine it somewhat akin to being a drunk, and in the first few weeks of quitting your drinking non-alcoholic beers. You still want that taste of the beer, everything about the beer really, you just can't get drunk. Imagine how frustrating that must be for an alcoholic who is trying to quit, to now have THAT tease.

 

Thats how I felt anyway, about those e-cigarettes. I liked the idea of them, because I got to still keep the "smoking" part of smoking I liked, but I always lapsed a few weeks later. It was just never enough at one point, to be inhaling sugar-water.

For some people its worked great, as have the patches and the gum, you just need to find a way that works for you and commit to it.

For me, that was cold turkey, 100%.

I also started to google these cigarette companies, find out who owns them, goggle them, see how much money they make, see pictures of the lavish lifestyle they live, I became enraged looking at the wonderfully rich and lavish lives these people have, all because idiots like me pay RIDICULOUS amounts on their product, and we can't help ourselves. I envision them on their boats, or in their mansions, or whatever I envision at that moment, and I picture them laughing,laughing at how dumb all these people are, they are struggling to pay their bills and all the while lining THEIR pockets with money! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA............... For some reason, that mental imagine combined with rage really fuelled me. It really made quitting something that was more about, screw you, no more, you can go to hell....I made it about spiting them as opposed to "quitting" something. This was something that worked for me.

All I can say is that you are going to find this pretty damn near impossible to do if you live with a smoker. My husband and I both smoked, he did for longer then I, however it was actually HIM that said we need to seriously quit. We were in our late twenties, started in our teens, so over 10 years for both of us, and he was starting to worry about his health. His father was a smoker and had heart issues, and died instantly in his early 50's. His uncle had a heart issue not too long ago, but caught it early. We had him checked out, and his heart is fine and does not seemingly have this defect, but it weighed heavily on him. Not to mention he was working as a welder at that time, so the combination of the environment plus smoking was NOT healthy.

So with this in mind, that my husbands health is on the line, I agreed to quit with him. To do this with him. To hold each other accountable. We had tried to quit together in the past, but we always ended up excusing the other one because you wanted to have a cigarette yourself, but this time we didn't do that. We quit, that was it, we made it an open arena to vent feelings or talk about smoking or whatever we needed to do that resulted in us not having that cigarette, and just riding through the craving, together.

 

 

I also found tic tac's to be a GODSEND. I had the worst cravings when I was driving, and I anytime I had a craving I would pop one. Sometimes I had 3 or 4 boxes of them in a day, but at least they are only 2 calories each and don't have aspartame or sucralose in them. I didn't put on weight, and I managed to get to a point where I was only having maybe a box or two a day, then only a box a day, then only a half box, then only a few.....and they are WAY cheaper then a pack of smokes too lol

 

Now I can honestly say I can't really remember when I last had a tic tac...I might of inadvertently ruined that for life.....but it was worth it

 

 

Good luck to you, whatever you do, just take it one day at a time and do what you need to do to get through the moment.

[lostandhurt]

Google "smokers pics before and after" and see what it is doing to your complexion.

 

You know the health risks but have you added up the actual costs in $$ each year?

 

This may also help you realize it is an addiction that has a huge hold on your body, not just your mind.

 

My father smoked over 25 years and was an alcoholic. He was trying to dry out for the fourth time when the D T's caused him to have a heart attack. It took them 22 minutes to bring him back and by that time he was brain damaged so badly that there was nothing left of my father except his body. While visiting him early on I noticed he would raise his hand to his mouth from time to time so I thought he was coming out of the vegative state. The doctor explained to me that it was just his body trying to smoke, trying to get a nicotine fix. He was gone but the addiction still controlled his body. Of course as soon as the doctor said that to me I knew he was right, it was the same two nicotine stained fingers he used to hold his cigarette with.

 

It is a terrible addiction but it can be beat. The sooner you start the easier it will be. Go see your doctor and have them help you get a game plan going which has to include a support system like any addiction.

 

Best wishes

Lost

[Seraphim]

I quit almost 30 years ago. I just woke up feeling like crap after smoking two packs the night before in a bar . I looked at the new pack and pitched it. Cold turkey and that's it. My dad did the same thing after smoking from 15 to 39.

[chitown9]

I think that your partner needs to quit smoking also. Make it a team effort. It is important that you both quit because of the dangers of second hand smoke. You might have a chance of not getting COPD if you both quit...so do whatever it takes. You will save tons of money. Taxes on cigarettes just keep going up and up. I quit by going cold turkey after smoking more years than I want to recall. There was a time I could not imagine ever quitting, but now I cannot imagine what I ever saw in those nasty, smelly cigarettes. chi