Stopping with smoking.

I mentioned this elsewhere before. I've known six people who were heavy smokers. Five of them died of lung cancer or throat cancer. Three were all at the same business after I left.
 
Dealing with addiction is an individual thing.

I smoked for 35 years, almost always "roll your own" fine cut tobacco, which generated some entertainment on frequent visits to the US in the 1990s.

I gave up by going cold turkey 25 years ago.

For me, the empowerment to quit was being able to repeatedly focus on the exact reason I wanted to stop. Every time I felt like a cigarette, I conjured up the view of my children watching me gasp for air.

In retrospect, it was easy. The worst of the cravings were over in just a few days.

I didn't plan for dealing with the inevitable improvement in appetite. That was a mistake.
 
SirDice said:
Just quit three weeks ago now. Have been smoking quite heavily, especially the past 3-4 years. Quit cold-turkey, no patches, no gum, no vape, nothing. Only the first few days you're going to have a lot of cravings, be strong. The bigger issue, at least for me, is breaking the habit, not so much the need or cravings.

Had to quit, managed to get my veins so clogged up I started having problems walking. I need to go to a vascular surgeon to clear things up, which will happen next week.
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I must say - this is an achievement ! i tried many times, once successfully ( well it was due to poisoning of smoke ) but started again ( lost brakes in London and needed to go home 30 miles away ) ... now im trying again, but i cant like you ... so i try to slow down marginally - usually pack for 2 days, now pushing for 3 days...
 
How's everyone doing with their quitting or living smokefree? Some posted that they quit very recently. Let's throw some support to saving some lives here!

As I've mentioned before, using some support group or a support forum is linked to higher rates of staying smokefree. Below is a link to an online forum that I used many, many years ago that was so amazing back then. It's a little quieter these days, but it is still active and a very great resource for anyone who wants to quit/stay quit/get encouragement/get educated/or just vent.

https://forums.delphiforums.com/quit_smoking
 
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Going cold turkey is doable but requires really strong determination and then some more. Since you are asking for advice here, you obviously don't possess such an asset. But don't worry, most of us don't either.

Patches work. I know people who did it that way. It worked for me as well, no cravings, and I even skipped the first stage in the sequence. But, in my case at least, the habit was stronger then the need for nicotine. Programming sessions didn't help either (for some reason when something in the code doesn't work, I tend to stop, light up, and stare at the code until the cigarette is done). This is a habit stronger than nicotine sometimes. I do the same now, except I use Iqos with nicotine-free cigarette butts. Nothing is burned, you don't even see the tobacco unless you destroy the butt - it is a small part of the (already short) butt, and stuffed with filters on both sides. It barely smells anything while "smoking", just a slight odor which is not bad either.

Complete quitting would be better, sure, but the fact is, I am nicotine/tar-free for 6 years now, and returning to normal cigarettes is unthinkable. If you ask me to smoke a normal cigarette right now, I can't do it. It immediately tastes awful, just as the first time I smoked years ago. I doubt I would be able to "smoke" an Iqos with nicotine butts as well, and I don't need to do so.

So, I'd say go with patches to get rid of the nicotine need. Make sure you are prepared for that. Develop some will before you give it a serious try, and you will gradually get rid of the nicotine need. Then, if the habit is strong for you, try a nicotine-free solution after that. In my case it was Iqos but it is not the only one, and there is nicotine-free vaping as well (which didn't work for me, maybe the vaping devices are better nowadays).
 
Pap said:
Going cold turkey is doable but requires really strong determination and then some more. Since you are asking for advice here, you obviously don't possess such an asset. But don't worry, most of us don't either.

Patches work. I know people who did it that way. It worked for me as well, no cravings, and I even skipped the first stage in the sequence. But, in my case at least, the habit was stronger then the need for nicotine. Programming sessions didn't help either (for some reason when something in the code doesn't work, I tend to stop, light up, and stare at the code until the cigarette is done). This is a habit stronger than nicotine sometimes. I do the same now, except I use Iqos with nicotine-free cigarette butts. Nothing is burned, you don't even see the tobacco unless you destroy the butt - it is a small part of the (already short) butt, and stuffed with filters on both sides. It barely smells anything while "smoking", just a slight odor which is not bad either.

Complete quitting would be better, sure, but the fact is, I am nicotine/tar-free for 6 years now, and returning to normal cigarettes is unthinkable. If you ask me to smoke a normal cigarette right now, I can't do it. It immediately tastes awful, just as the first time I smoked years ago. I doubt I would be able to "smoke" an Iqos with nicotine butts as well, and I don't need to do so.

So, I'd say go with patches to get rid of the nicotine need. Make sure you are prepared for that. Develop some will before you give it a serious try, and you will gradually get rid of the nicotine need. Then, if the habit is strong for you, try a nicotine-free solution after that. In my case it was Iqos but it is not the only one, and there is nicotine-free vaping as well (which didn't work for me, maybe the vaping devices are better nowadays).
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Interesting... I remember seeing a story somewhere on the Internet about how a guy fired a couple programmers over the fact that they were non-smokers, and would not take the customary smoke break with him!

Makes me wonder if he was looking for smokers among programmers or for programmers among smokers... Less and less programmers smoke these days, at least in part because smoke does have a damaging effect on electronics, too. And among the declining number of people who do smoke, how easy is it to find someone who actually understands how to code?
 
Pap said:
Going cold turkey is doable but requires really strong determination and then some more. Since you are asking for advice here, you obviously don't possess such an asset. But don't worry, most of us don't either.

Patches work. I know people who did it that way. It worked for me as well, no cravings, and I even skipped the first stage in the sequence. But, in my case at least, the habit was stronger then the need for nicotine. Programming sessions didn't help either (for some reason when something in the code doesn't work, I tend to stop, light up, and stare at the code until the cigarette is done). This is a habit stronger than nicotine sometimes. I do the same now, except I use Iqos with nicotine-free cigarette butts. Nothing is burned, you don't even see the tobacco unless you destroy the butt - it is a small part of the (already short) butt, and stuffed with filters on both sides. It barely smells anything while "smoking", just a slight odor which is not bad either.

Complete quitting would be better, sure, but the fact is, I am nicotine/tar-free for 6 years now, and returning to normal cigarettes is unthinkable. If you ask me to smoke a normal cigarette right now, I can't do it. It immediately tastes awful, just as the first time I smoked years ago. I doubt I would be able to "smoke" an Iqos with nicotine butts as well, and I don't need to do so.

So, I'd say go with patches to get rid of the nicotine need. Make sure you are prepared for that. Develop some will before you give it a serious try, and you will gradually get rid of the nicotine need. Then, if the habit is strong for you, try a nicotine-free solution after that. In my case it was Iqos but it is not the only one, and there is nicotine-free vaping as well (which didn't work for me, maybe the vaping devices are better nowadays).
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Remember also, it's NEVER a good time to quit. It's a common trap in psychology of addiction.

The ONLY good time to quit is NOW.

The trick around this is to pick a specific date and time to quit and stick to the plan.
 
By the way, for those who already quit and are having cravings and urges sometimes, just remember that most urges pass in 5 minutes. So give yourself 5 minutes - it's much more manageable to go through cravings knowing they will end so soon. This 5 minute "rule" made all my cravings seem like nothing. I knew I can survive 5 minutes, you knew it's just a temporary thing, it was so easy. Otherwise, you just feel like the cravings last forever, that there's nothing but suffering, that you won't survive the cravings because you don't think about them ever going away and you don't focus on how short they actually usually are. To be honest, it was actually kind of FUN to watch cravings dissipate just as quickly as they appeared within a couple minutes, it was the coolest trick. [This doesn't include the initial withdrawal for the first 2-3 days when things are a little bit more intense, but also only last a couple of days].

I hope this lifehack saves someone's life :)
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I just remembered something. When I was 19 years old, I was riding with some work friends who were all smokers. I asked how they got started and it got around to them trying to get me to start. I remember them trying to teach me how to inhale. When I did it once, I recall my lungs feeling so stuffed up I immediately stopped and never thought about trying again.
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I hear you! When I was around age 16, peer pressure to smoke was a huge factor. I did not cave-in since I was not one of the "cool kids" anyhow. Also, I was only 17 when my mother died of a smoking related cancer, she was just 60 years old. That ensured that I never smoked a single cigarette in my life.
 
To answer canihazsekooriti, I quit 11 years ago and haven't smoked since. As mentioned early in the thread, I needed a drug to help me, and took it longer than one is supposed to, but eventually I was able to quit. For a few weeks afterwards, I'd have occasional cravings, but my wife's praises (unusual even then) helped a lot. Several years later, I had to spend time in the hospital and I was SO glad I'd quit by then. I am so glad that I managed to quit, all these years later, and wish I'd quit long before that--or better yet, never started.
 
scottro said:
To answer canihazsekooriti, I quit 11 years ago and haven't smoked since. As mentioned early in the thread, I needed a drug to help me, and took it longer than one is supposed to, but eventually I was able to quit. For a few weeks afterwards, I'd have occasional cravings, but my wife's praises (unusual even then) helped a lot. Several years later, I had to spend time in the hospital and I was SO glad I'd quit by then. I am so glad that I managed to quit, all these years later, and wish I'd quit long before that--or better yet, never started.
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I know, it's quite an intense feeling that we've lost so much time, money, health to smoking. Don't be mad at yourself though, be mad at the tobacco industry, at the health industrial complex for not banning smoking, well knowing it causes disease and kills quality of life.

I still don't understand something - can someone beam me up? Why is it still legal to blow the 400 carcinogens in smoke in a child's face?

Smokers are addicts and do not quite have the ability to understand that they are basically engaing in bioterrorism. Blowing 400 carcinogens with every exhalation into OTHER people's lungs is frankly terrorism. And some people might treat smokers as the evil and justify doing really bad things to smokers behind their backs. But smokers aren't the culprit. Nicotine salts is the most addicting chemical there is out there and is sold legally and knowingly with carcinogens.
 
canihazsekooriti said:
Don't be mad at yourself though, be mad at the tobacco industry, at the health industrial complex for not banning smoking, well knowing it causes disease and kills quality of life.
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I think that is a bit misguided. Sometimes it takes being pissed at yourself for not realizing just how detrimental to your own health the smoking habit really was, and what you were missing out on while engaging in a habit that amounts to bioterrorism on yourself and others.

Yeah, nicotine can be plenty addictive. I never smoked, but I am a caffeine addict - I don't function well unless I have a cup of strong coffee in the morning. The point is about addiction, not the substance to which one is addicted.

As for health industrial complex - back in the day, they were clueless about how bad smoking is. It was relatively recently that they connected the dots between smoking and cancer, and managed to build a solid case. It was not that long ago that biochemical pathways for cancer were identified and shown to be a direct cause, rather than a mere coincidental correlation. If all smokers were eating cucumbers the day they died, the tobacco industry would happily try to present THAT as the cause of death for a smoker rather than an unrelated coincidence. It did take doing proper scientific research before the tobacco industry could be backed into a corner and forced to admit that smoking ruins health.
 
astyle said:
Yeah, nicotine can be plenty addictive. I never smoked, but I am a caffeine addict - I don't function well unless I have a cup of strong coffee in the morning. The point is about addiction, not the substance to which one is addicted.
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Caffeine pills are cheap :p I take 400mg in the morning and 200mg every 4+ hours or so.

I'm into nicotine for the energy boost; I have a dry herb vape and use pipe tobacco with it ($5 for a bag). I prefer that for being cheaper and more natural than PG/VG/candy e-vapes, but the taste isn't at all pleasant (pretty sure one hit would discourage anyone from starting smoking :p)

I've tried cold-turkey quitting both at the same time and got to about a week a few times. I like the idea of not needing to take either for general energy, but I feel stuff might hit the ceiling at random and I'd like to be at some baseline of energetic to handle it. During the weeks I stopped using both I caught up on sleep and felt more relaxed, but I got bored of not having the energy spike. I tried smoking a cig after using the dry-herb vape for a while and didn't like it; there's an ashy aftertaste along with being more-harsh overall, and seemingly the nicotine hit is quicker from vapes.

Overall I'd like to quit using nicotine and caffeine.

I've heard caffeine and nicotine can act as neuroprotection for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. That makes me think there's some benefit to them, but I'm not sure how that balances between not using either and doing something else.
 
I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there are armies of shills - sometimes hiding in plain sight, lurking in all sorts of unexpected places/forums, and highly trained - who will justify smoking and other gruesome addictions ad infinitum. Tobacco industry is particularly known for it.

Each smoker in the US generates maybe 70,000 USD of revenue over the lifetime of that ONE smoker. That's not even adjusting it for inflation. So they are trying to protect their income stream (that's based on addiction and disease) in slithery ways. Each smoker will also become a patient generating even more revenues for the health and pharma industries.

Please quit smoking now. Smoking kills is not a hyperbole. Please don't be a walking sack of money to some creeps. Get that beautiful tremendous quality of life and health that every human can enjoy back. And please stay quit for good and never bend over if you already reclaimed your health and life.

Please help someone else, too. Even if you help just one other person, it makes a HUGE impact. If everyone helps just two other people to quit smoking, we have an exponential multiplier effect that will help us all win in a landslide.
 
canihazsekooriti said:
I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there are armies of shills - sometimes hiding in plain sight, lurking in all sorts of unexpected places/forums, and highly trained - who will justify smoking and other gruesome addictions ad infinitum. Tobacco industry is particularly known for it.

Each smoker in the US generates maybe 70,000 USD of revenue over the lifetime of that ONE smoker. That's not even adjusting it for inflation. So they are trying to protect their income stream (that's based on addiction and disease) in slithery ways. Each smoker will also become a patient generating even more revenues for the health and pharma industries.

Please quit smoking now. Smoking kills is not a hyperbole. Please don't be a walking sack of money to some creeps. Get that beautiful tremendous quality of life and health that every human can enjoy back. And please stay quit for good and never bend over if you already reclaimed your health and life.

Please help someone else, too. Even if you help just one other person, it makes a HUGE impact. If everyone helps just two other people to quit smoking, we have an exponential multiplier effect that will help us all win in a landslide.
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Yeah, I'm a walking sack of money for FARC-sponsored coffee farmers in Colombia... because I buy Colombian cofee beans by the kilogram. And I'm addicted to caffeine, so I buy coffee from FARC on a regular basis.
 
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