Congrats, Denny! It's a good move. Lol -- I've never been a smoker, but back in the day, the best conversations at a party were with the smokers on the back porch. Guess those days are gone.
Good luck Denny. Congrats on making that decision. I chewed up to a can of Copenhagen a day while playing baseball and skiing from age 15 to 23, kept chewing during grad school, and finally quit cold turkey at age 25. Haven't missed it since the first month.
I quit smoking 12 years ago..... this thread makes me want one. The crave never goes away it just gets different with time. The hardest time is months 2-6 when you get bored and feel like you have it conqured. If you ever slip up, concentrate on how shitty that one cig makes you feel rather than the ahhhh feeling of having it. Good job though, keep up the good work.
This. I didn't understand the "I only smoke when I drink" people until I hit college and realized how much I hated the BS douchebaggery at most parties. Convos on the porch are much more fun.
Congrats Denny and handclap problematic, I use to smoke 3.5 packs a day. That's just about chain smoking, usually a cig I put out was still smoking by time I lit up. I was in the hospital for a week and couldn't smoke or I might never have quit. The first week is the toughest. When I got out I was determine to not start smoking again. When I left they gave me the 5 packs of cigs I came with and on the trip home the taxi driver chain smoke the whole way, but I manage to not light up. The form of addiction is addictive as well as others have said. I use to always have cigs in my front pocket so I put sugar free candy in my shirt pocket so I could relieve the urge to reach for my pocket. It took 11 months until I no longer needed to carry candy. Cigs suppose to be more addictive than herion and it was certainly harder to quit than any drug I've taken and that includes pot. What I told myself though was that I wouldn't use anyone or anything as a excuse to start again and I was able to stick with that. For a long time I did have a urge for something once in a while, but I don't even do that after meals any more. I quit the summer of 93.
Hang in there Denny! I stopped in 1989 after 15 years. Decided the second hand smoke was not good for my cats. Previous times as soon as nic fits started so did panic - dammit I need a smoke!!! So this time I did not get rid of the cigs. I had a pack in my purse, a pack in my cart, a carton in the dresser. Said I'd go 24 hours, then have a smoke. Then another 24 hours. After about a week the one daily cigarette no longer tasted good. After 2 it made me sick. After about a month I finally threw all the cigarettes away. Haven't had one since. I chew Trident sugarless gum. As a vice, it's a pretty minor one.
Holy crap MGB, 3.5 packs a day?! Thats some serious smoking. Also how can you compare quiting smoking cigs to quiting pot? Not even in the same league. I have heard the comparisons of cigs to coke or heroin. I can only imagine though, thank goodness. I can say though that quiting smoking for me was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. A couple notes here about quiting. If you notice everyone who quits redirects their anxiety about quiting and their habbit to something else, chewing gum is a big one but I used mints. I also used the patch, which helped and I also kept an unlit cig around that I would look at, smell and take an unlit drag off from time to time. My girlfriend recently quit and she used the e-cig and said it helped alot. I would also suggest adding exercise to your attempts to quit, even if its just regular walks, the better you feel about yourself and the more goals you start to accomplish the less appealing a cig will become. Dont fall in the trap of having a drag once when your drunk, or at a social event, when you quit you quit thats it. I roll my eyes at all the smokers who say "Im doing good, Im cutting back" Thats bullshit and I know its bullshit cause I use to say it. You may cut back today but tomorrow or the next day something stressfull will happen. Quiting is as much about changing how you think about cigs as it is about not having a cig. Think about how bad they make you feel and how gross they smell, not how much of a relief they are. Also everyone who quits has some sort of motivation, like a health scare or fear of not being around for their kids. So focus on whats important to you as much as you can. For me it was that I started to develope asthma, I still have issues with it but it was a blessing because it scared me into becoming serious about quiting.
I haven't used any sort of substitute for smoking (e.g. mints, etc.). I have been doing the things I'd do when smoking, but just not smoking. For example, going for a walk (I used to smoke on my walks). And yeah, 3.5 packs is a LOT. I could barely function if I smoked a whole pack in a day.
As far as substitutes go, when I quit smoking I found that a combination of meth and heroin was enough to keep my mind off the cigarettes. Sometimes, of course, I'd find myself in the Plaid Pantry gnawing on the cigarette packages behind the counter, but once tasers were available the police were able to keep me from consuming too much tobacco, and I got better. I miss those days, though. barfo
That reminds me of the time I stayed up 7 days in a row. I smoked a lot more than 3.5 packs a day then.
