Could you please share your quit smok ing/still smoking story with me? I ONLY want to hear from smokers and ex smokers. If you have never smoked PLEASE don't reply in here. I have tried zyban, the patch, the gum and even acupuncture. I know I should quit but its so hard. The longest I quit for was a month and I was so depressed I started again. The 5 pounds didn't help either. Its like I'm losing my best friend or something. I can't remember doing anything without smoking. I have smoked for 25 years. Wow. I really would like to quit but it hurts so much to stop. (mentally and physically). Last time I quit I think I got over the physical addiction. The mental addiction is what was so hard. I talked myself into smoking again. Are you still smoking? Are you planning on quitting? How did you quit for good? Did you gain weight? Did you quit and then start up again? Any questions answered would be appreciated. Please share your smoking story with me. Do you have any advice for me? What are your plans for quitting? How has your life changed if you did quit? All replies, comments and suggestions from smokers and ex smokers are welcome. Even a simple helpful reply would be appreciated. Thanks. *********************************************************************** 06-23-05, 09:59 AM Sarai Clarebear, I only smoked for 2 years, but quitting was really hard. After 25 years, I can only imagine how you're feeling. The way I quit was to see my doctor. She was willing to help me do it with a patch or something like that, but I said I wanted to try it on my own, first. The advice she gave me was 1) Exercise when I felt stressed or really wanted to smoke (go running, do jumping jacks, etc). 2) Take it one day at a time - and if you slip, don't decide that means that you "quit quitting" - it just means you slipped. I was able to quit without a patch, but that's probably partly because I hadn't smoked so long. Seeing the doctor helped me in some ways because I felt accountable to someone. (Also, it didn't hurt that my parents were sending me weekly letters with newspaper clips about the horrors of smoking and telling me that they'd sooner have me drop out of college than continue smoking... but that's beside the point. Wink )
Anyway, to make a long post short (too late, I guess!), I think you should consider seeing a doctor.
06-23-05, 11:25 AM aminator2002 I'm afraid to say that I am an unsuccessful quitter, but I did manage to go a year and a half. And it was easy once I made the decision to do it... it was also easy to make the decision to "try just one" again.
Try reading a bit on this site ---> whyquit.com
I think this site makes many valid points about why nicotine replacement is ineffective and why going cold turkey is the only way. 72 hours and you will feel much better... I've done it and it's true, but don't forget that your mind will play tricks and tell you that "It wasn't that hard so I'll just do it again". I can't believe what a nasty little drug nicotine is.
Good luck clare! I hope you can do it. Smile
06-23-05, 11:32 AM babthrower I had failed at three serious attempts to stop. At the third failure, I literally sat down and cried. One attempt had lasted two years.
Then one summer I had a cough. Imagine, a beautiful summer day, and I had a cough. Not a cold, not an allergy, just a stupid annoying cough. I decided it was the smoking. I decided I had to quit.
But I didn't quit that day. I thought about it. I thought about the times I would crave a cigarette, and how hard it had been before. I dwelled on the things I hated about smoking: the filthy ashtrays, the film of oily dirt on walls and curtains, the revolting smell. I thought of what I spent on cigarettes, and had fantasies about the nice things I would buy for myself and others when the habit was at last history.
From time to time I'd ask myself, "Had enough yet?"
One day (and this was over two months later) the answer was "Yes." I said to my husband, "This is my last cigarette," and smoked it and flushed the butt. That was nineteen years ago. My lungs and general health are excellent. They wouldn't be if I hadn't quit.
Want to know something amazing? It wasn't hard at all. I didn't gain an ounce. There was no 'void' to fill, as there had been before.
IMO, you have to want NOT to smoke more than you want to smoke. When you reach that point, it's easy. Big Grin
06-23-05, 11:54 AM frankvan I started smoking at the age of 21, for the stupidest reason. Everyone else seemed to be smoking. I smoked for the next 29 years, averaged 3 packs a day. They were a lot cheaper then and practically free in the Army during WWII. By the time I was 50 years old and the family doctor said that I ought to consider quitting because there were shadings on my lungs, I decided to do so.
I developed my own personal theory concerning smoking and it has worked for me. I have been smoke free for the past 33 years, so for what it's worth, here's my smoke quitting method.
I decided that substitutes for smoking, like mints, or chewing gum, etc. merely serve as reminders of the things they were supposed to be replacing. And the trick was to "forget" about smoking. In order to break a habit, the trick is to "forget" to indulge it. The longer you go without a smoke, the more remote the memory becomes. The other thing that needs to be emphasized is that smoking is a habit. If you keep thinking of it as an addiction, or as something very difficult, you just keep giving yourself excuses to have "just one cigarette", to cut down on them. Once you yield to the temptation to "cut down" you have just made it more - acceptable ? - to cut back up, and probably will. You can't possibly increase the smoke-free period that way, and that is what you have to accomplish. Two hours becomes easy once you have managed an hour and a half. Two days becomes more do-able when you have managed one, two weeks is easier when you have gone thirteen days. Believe me, the longer you go the less you willthink about it.
I also never told my co-workers what I was doing because I didn't want people testing my ability to resist. As Oscar Wilde said, "I can resist anything except temptation". The whole secret to my method, consists of "forgetting" and you can't forget if you keep reminding. Get rid of the idea that the end of a meal requires a smoke, that a pack of cigarettes has to be on the night stand for a morning smoke, or the last thing at night, or any of the thousand and one things we associate with a cigarette, And when you find yourself thinking about the thing you have to forget, you have to get occupied with something else to do, go and do it. YOU CAN LEARN TO FORGET but not by constantly reminding yourself of what you are up to. Devise your own scheme, but stop deciding beforehand how difficult it will be. If a self-indulgent old fool can do it for 33 years, it can't be too difficult! Lots of Luck!. Wink
06-26-05, 12:04 PM DvdGStwrt Starting when I was 13, switching to the brand name of the Tobacco farm I worked on I got up to two packs of non-filtered a day. Now I am down to 1 pack of filtered a day.
I tried the gum, the patch, cold turkey, and last time around it was the anti-depression medication which ended up carrying some side effects.
Longest time without smoking (in a row) 82 days.
Before that period I had no issues - after I picked up the smokes again I started having some sinus issues - each time I have quit since picking it up appears to lead to more sinus issues.
I have decided not to quit again. Why? because there is no way I'm going to get out of life alive - either way, with a smoke or without I will die.
I also have other health issues that as I get older will make me wish I got lung cancer and died at an earlier age. Something I know is around the corner. Old Age and the attending issues which are 90% certain to reduce the quality of my life got me to thinking that I might as well enjoy what I got today and let tomorrow tend to itself.
Personally I think the Stop Smoking program is generated by a lot of fearful people terrifed of death I also think that it really doesn't matter if you smoke or not - sooner or later you are going to die. Be it from lung cancer or be it from some idiot who failed to see you crossing the street.
Today we smoke out doors (just to keep the walls white Wink) We are careful not blow smoke in the children's and elder's faces - we stand down wind. I can think of at least a doze habits that are far, far much more destructive (and illegal) that I could be doing.
Funny truth. My Father's mother died at 48 from lung cancer - never smoked at all, never surrounded by second hand smoke.
My Great Uncle (Her broter) lived to be 97 years old, smoked 3 packs of non-filtered chesterfields a day and started when he was in his early teens -His health issues were few - very few and not related to smoking.
Funny in a sad way.
06-26-05, 12:26 PM Fritzzs Smoked longer than you and more.... Went onto the pill (forget what it was called, less than 10 days I had no desire to smoke.... I understand that there is now a shot one can get that you will stop "rat now"... O'course, one has to have the desire to quite....
06-26-05, 02:05 PM frankvan
quote: Personally I think the Stop Smoking program is generated by a lot of fearful people terrifed of death I also think that it really doesn't matter if you smoke or not - sooner or later you are going to die. Be it from lung cancer or be it from some idiot who failed to see you crossing the street.
I find it hard to believe that even David believes this bit of sophistry. It really does matter if you smoke or not. Regardless of whether someone's grandmother smoked like a chimney and lived to be 112, or someone of 12 was hit by a bus, everyone knows what the long term effects of smoking are. Lung cancer, emphysema, halitosis, heart and circulatory problems, etc. If you know in advance that you are going to be hanged in two weeks - sure, go ahead and have a cigar or smoke as much as you like. But if you want your food to taste better, your breathing to be less labored, to avoid the very painful health consequences that you almost certainly will incur eventually - unless your're fortunate enough to be involved in a sudden fatal collision, - quit smoking.
Will you gain a few pounds? Quite possibly. Because you'll begin to taste your food more and enjoy eating more. But don't let that be used as an excuse to resume the smoking habit. If you are strong enough to quit smoking you will feel enough pride in that fact to take on other bad habits, such as eating too much of the wrong foods. The benefits of being smoke free are easier to attain than the backsliders would have you believe. Ami and Babs can attest to that, so you needn't believe me. Just don't listen to David's recipe for accepting defeat as inevitable or even desirable. I am 83 years old and have had two triple bi-passes and two stents, so I have no idea if I will live another week. But I am enjoying life to the fullest and, far from being afraid of death, I look forward to it. If I hadn't quit smoking thirty three years ago I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to visit my great grand-children in California last month, or enjoyed whatever years I have left to enjoy in the company of my wife. Wink P.S: As Fritzzs points out there are pills and shots on the market now which may help. I don't believe they are right for everyone, but whatever works is worth a try.
06-26-05, 02:32 PM babthrower Dvd, that's c**p. It isn't just you that's involved. Sidesmoke really is harmful to other people. There's enough garbage in the air right now that we don't need to contribute to it.
If you ever reach the point in your life at which life is not worth living, pull the darn plug. But don't subject yourself to years of puffing and panting with emphysema, possibly in a wheelchair and packing an oxygen bottle, dependent on others for care. To use the fear of terminal illness as an excuse not to quit smoking is highly illogical. And you know it. There's nothing wrong with your logic machine.
But you have to decide to use it. Don't put out faulty reasoning which may deceive others less able than yourself to see through it.
06-26-05, 10:01 PM Kelleygirl I smoked for about 20 years and yeah tried to quit several times in between. It always helped to quit for a while whenever I would get strep throat which a couple of times. And then one day I was blessed. I lit up a ciggie, took a puff, and said out loud "this tastes like ----". And that was it; guess it was my lightning striking me off of my horse so to speak. My mom's quitting was a little more dramatic. She was waiting to see her doctor when she heard from the next room "I told you to quit smoking years ago. Now I'll have to take your larynx out!" Guess there's all kinds of stories to be told. Just don't think of yourself as a failure if you fall off the wagon --- that just makes it that much harder. You're not a horrible person or even a jerk because you smoke -- it's just a habit that you're trying to break. Maybe if you take it day by day and then after a week, give yourself a little reward. By the way, my kids both kept at me to stop smoking -- guess what --they both smoke now!
06-28-05, 01:15 PM gizmogram I've smoked for 35 years and have tried to quit a few times...I finally realized that deep down, I didn't really WANT to, so obviously those attempts failed.
The closest I came was a few years ago when we tried Zyban. It really seemed to do the trick, but something in it really threw me for a loop and I just couldn't continue taking it.
I smoke about a pack a day, a bit more if I'm home all day, depending on what I'm doing of course. I'm in fairly good health, although I know that a few minor problems would disappear or at least lessen (such as allergies and sinus problems) if I didn't irritate them by smoking.
Good Luck Clare!
06-28-05, 11:39 PM dogspit Dearest Clare. I am not reading any of the other replies you've received but wanted to offer you my little "piece of thought". I had quit several years ago, then one day just started up for no good reason. Now, if I go smoke-free till July 31st, I will have gone a year without a cigarette once again. Have I quit forever ? How the &$%# will I know unless I start again LOL. I can offer you those things which helped me.
1) Line up some things to do on the first days of trying to quit. You MUST keep very busy doing things which make your world a little better ( I did laundry, floors, shredding paperwork... anything to keep my mind busy.)
2) To heck with whether you gain a little weight. What makes you appealing has NOTHING to do with a bathroom scale.
3) Make each smoke-free day a "landmark". Make it till bedtime... then wake up with the determination that you are able to make "just one more day". After a while they add up.
4) Above all... remember that failing to quit is NOT failure... failing to WANT TO QUIT is failure. You can do this. I believe in you.
5) I no longer post much on the AP/DP sites... but I did so tonight because you matter to me. Just make it happen. Have pleanty of "chores" lined up to do. Make one day at a time happen, and know that every day without a smoke is a day toward not having that smelly, disgusting and totally unhealthy alabtross around your neck. ~Jim
07-03-05, 09:50 PM SeattleRon I've been smoking since 14. I've only tried to quit once. I made it about 3 months. When I quit I tried cold turkey. I still smoke to this day. None of these gimmicks I really doubt work. Personally I think you really have to want to quit in order to do it. Goodluck ClareBear.
This will really blow you away: the Institute of Medicine (IOM) stated that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year in hospitals as a result of medical mistakes. That means that medical errors are the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S., responsible for more fatalities than AIDS, car accidents, or breast cancer. http://mm.meetingsnet.com/ar/meetings_wakeup_call/index.htm
Where then is the great Ban on the private auto, Staircases, Ladders and showers and most criminally Doctors?
How many do die from second hand smoke? http://www.smokingaloud.com/ets.html Says the claim is 37,000 to 53,000 per year, however if you read further and study the numbers they drop significantly, especially when the Who comes out that there is no significant (like 1%) chance of related illness from being around a smoking person. It also covers things like omitted data….
The argument is that even one person lost to second hand smoke is a disaster of unimaginable proportions, but nobody seems to care about the loss of life through other means which take hundreds, thousands of lives per year. This is unbalanced, illogical and faulty application of reasoning. Those who wave about health issues that MAY take place (no guarantee on those BTW) are restating the same statistics which are biased, uninformative and are based on to many variables to render a scientific (real) answer.
The way the statistics are handed to us preclude getting real numbers. Being told that there are 50,000 smoking related deaths per year in the USA does not tell you anything about the statistical chances that you will be one of that 50,000 people.
Or is it 50 thousand, 350 thousand, 10 billions? Who knows – it appears that there is contention in the ranks on the numbers there. When all else fails they send you percentages based on the assumption that you know how many people smoke in the USA or know who they polled or who they researched. Lord help us if they drew their statistics from folk who lived by the Love Canal – the cancer statistics would be a little off on the cause, now wouldn’t it?
How many people are smoking? In the United States, an estimated 26.3 million men (25.2 percent) and 21.2 million women (20.7 percent) are smokers. Even at 350,000 dead per year (USA) that is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of smokers. Do the Math: 47,500,000 – 350,000 means that there are 47,150,000 smokers still walking.
The numbers also include variables which are erroneous at best. The way things are stated, the way the numbers are gathered are at best biased: http://www.smokersclub.com/memwrit.htm
There is a wide variety of illnesses chalked up to smoking which falls under this very broad definition of Smoking Related Deaths. The statistics include once upon a time smokers, say a 80+ year old man who smoked for a few years in his 20’s, and a lot of assumed cancers and other illnesses which in the state of California can be caused by breathing the fumes of gasoline, fumes from the sub-flooring, drinking the water, and a lot of other things.
Nobody asks when these people keeled over – was it in their 20’s or in their 70’s and 80’s? Nobody knows exactly what caused X cancer in Mr. Jones who happened to smoke – was it really those tobacco products or was it the amount of Roundup sprayed in the crops to kill off the weeds? We all consume large quantities of pesticides, herbicides, and other nice chemicals all of which have been found to cause cancer in laboratory rats. Smoking is the least on the long list of chemicals in even the non-smoker’s house which MAY kill them.
quote: While smoking has been clearly identified as the cause of many diseases and other health problems, as described above, it has also been observed to reduce the incidence of some diseases (endometrial cancer, Parkinson's disease, ulcerative colitis, hypertension of pregnancy(4) and Alzheimer's disease(147,148)). This is known as a 'protective effect'.
Just things to make you go ‘Hmmm’.
07-06-05, 03:48 PM frankvan Hmmmm. A Public Service Announcement ?? Roll Eyes
07-06-05, 04:08 PM Fritzzs There is an underlying theme about quitting smoking....................................
More than anything else, you---------------
YOU HAVE GOT TO HAVE THE MENTAL ATTITUDE THAT YOU REALLY WANT TO QUIT....... WITHOUT THAT, CHANCHES ARE YOU WON'T.......................
07-06-05, 04:20 PM babthrower David points out that man is mortal... Big Grin
True. True that more people are killed in auto accidents than by smoking.
Quit driving? Could do. But there's a pretty serious loss entailed.
Quit smoking? What does it cost you?
And it's not deaths only. Emphysema is a miserable, debilitating condition. It can ruin your quality of life in later years. You can spend your later years, as I do, active and having a fair amount of fun, because I have excellent health. Or as I would have done, if I hadn't quit: housebound, possibly in a wheelchair, lugging a can of oxygen around, at the least unable to walk out to the mailbox without pausing to catch my breath several times.
And sidesmoke does cause others distress. Ask any asthmatic who is allergic to tobacco. Their freedom, their everyday enjoyment is limited if they are around smokers.
07-06-05, 04:25 PM clarebear Thank You everyone for your responses. (I love you dawg!)
David
I certainly hope a teenager on here doesn't take your post to heart. Your posts could be construed as encouraging others to smoke. It does sound as if you are justifying your own smoking Smoking is not that bad and possibly good for you? You are smarter than that.
07-07-05, 11:52 AM DvdGStwrt I am not encouraging anyone to smoke. I am laying out the other side of the argument - as one would think others would have done in the interest of fair play.
Personally I want Clare to stop for her own reasons, say like she is tired of butts and ashes all over the place, or maybe she is tired of nicotine white walls - or maybe she wants to save that $4.75+ per pack and buy something nice.
Those are reasonable reasons to quit - not scare tactics designed to make people try to quit (when they really don't want to). I want Clare to quit because she wants to - not because she thinks she must - people who think they must quit a thing instead of want to quit a thing usually end up relapsing
If she quits fine great - dandy - more power to her.
Actually if a teenager wants to smoke, fine there too. I happen to live in a country where individuals have freedoms - we have the freedom to select to off ourselves with a slow poison if we want too.
I doubt that a kid will start smoking over what I say – that happens when they are handed one and then the problems start.
07-07-05, 12:21 PM frankvan
quote: Actually if a teenager wants to smoke, fine there too. I happen to live in a country where individuals have freedoms - we have the freedom to select to off ourselves with a slow poison if we want too.
I think one can find better ways to defend the virtues of freedom than the above nonsense. Hypothetical case: Willie, age 13, smokes because he wants to. His Uncle Joe points out how Aunt Ethel is forced to carry an oxygen tank wherever she goes, Cousin Carl smells bad because his clothes and furniture and house are smoke-saturated. Perhaps someone takes him to visit a lung cancer patient or two. Does this intrusion on Willie's freedom prevent him from "offing himself with slow poison" ? If so, it is a result devoutly to be wished. What one wants can sometimes be altered when one becomes convinced that it conflicts with one must do in order to grow older.
07-24-05, 10:52 PM dodgecity Smokers and ex smokers ONLY. Advice/comments/help i used to smoke two packs a day. one morning i woke up and started coughing i could not stop, thats when i grabbed that pack and tossed them out the window. two years now no smoke's YAHOOOOOOOO. i smoked for 31 years started when i was ten. now i tried to smoke one one day and man o man it made me kinda sick. so no more for me. now i dont have to smoke around the kids . i allways tried to not smoke around them, now its easy not to. its in your head you got to wake up and say NO MORE SMOKING. then just thow them out and dont ever look back. thats my story. my wife and kids love me more now. ( i noticed that i dont drink as much anymore too.) Big Grin
07-28-05, 01:07 AM gizmogram Good for you Dodge! That's what it's all about!
09-12-05, 11:19 PM Wildflower63 I am going to ask you the same question asked of me. Why do you want to quit smoking? Is it for your health, your children's, it's just bad for you?
If your reasoning is anything but this type of thinking, you aren't going to quit smoking successfully. Why? Your reasons aren't right, yet.
Why is it that you want to quit smoking? I will tell you exactly what's wrong with this picture, just as soon as you give an honest answer.
09-13-05, 02:01 AM Dwight I "quit" a couple of times (once for over a year) before having a heart attack. When I woke up in the hospital nearly a month had gone by with no smoking so the physical nicotine addiction was gone. While I laid in that hospital bed I had no desire to smoke at all...all I ever thought about was getting out of the hospital!
I went to physical therapy once I got out of the hospital. At one class a nurse asked if any of us in the room had smoked. All seventeen of us in attendance raised our hands. More than anything else, that brought home to me the fact that smoking does indeed lead to health problems. Heart disease in my case.
Oddly enough I still think about smoking occasionally. Just the other day when I walked into a convenience store the thought passed through my mind that I could buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke just one. But of course I could never smoke just one, so I didn't buy that pack.
My wife still smokes and even though she is careful to not smoke in front of me, and she tries hard to keep the smoke odor to a minimum, I still smell it on her breath and on her clothes. After smoking myself for some 35 years, I had not realized how strong and offensive that odor is. I know that other people nagging me to quit smoking never had any effect on me, so I don't try to convince her to quit, even though I'm conviced that she would be much better off if she did quit. If she decides to quit, I will give her whatever encouragement that I can.
Good luck with this and I hope you are able to quit.
Dwight
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