Quitting smoking

the smell has never worried me, even long before i became a smoker (i was a late starter). feel like it is overstated, but mmv i guess

i'm not breathing well lately and it has been affecting my sleep for months now, even when i'm smoking only a couple cigs a day..

I quit when a friend of mine died of lung cancer aged 42. We all have to die, but lung cancer is a nasty, nasty way to do it as I saw first hand.

so far my craving manifests itself as kind of pulsing energy surge, like my insides are electrified. i know a smoke would sate it, but if i change my mentality a tiny bit it's almost like being high or something.

Yes, otm – the first few days after quitting are a trip, confused & charged up. Treated it like a high last time - it's when you rebalance and it gets boring and itchy (the 10000th time you think 'what should I do now, well my hand wants a cigaaa - wait no I've given up') that the temptation comes.

gonna say it again: Allen Carr's Easy Way. I smoked from 1981-2007 and nothing worked to get me off and keep me off and then I read Allen Carr's book. Now it's 2011. Three years and counting, zero desire/urge/cravings: not when drunk, not when on the phone, it's really like if there's a food you lost the taste for - you know you could eat it but why would you since it doesn't appeal.

Just realized yesterday that Jelly Beans sorta taste like Lysol, in similar news.

lol out here we roll with the Jelly Belly 3-lb. bag

Christine there is no smell with the e-cig. Well maybe a slight one almost vanilla-ish

5 days

A month an a half now! I get random cravings every once in a great while, but that's pretty much it. Definitely in the "I don't smoke" mindset now, which is really awesome. Ran around with our dog today for hours, no huffing and puffing or anything.

what tracer says about an electrified surge of craving is amazingly apt. i was off for 6 weeks, back on for two, got v sick last week which, i'm pretty sure, was because of the fags but i'm off for good now. definitely.

my relapse after a six week break produced around 5 seconds of pleasure - the first five seconds of the first cig following the break - after those five seconds of pleasure it was pure joyless addiction. it's not really worth it, is it? really there's not much to be said for smoking!

I haven't quit, but I cut back from smoking up to a pack a day, in my apartment, to smoking maybe 1-3 cigarettes a day, NOT in my apartment. Actually it wasn't even hard. Shows how much of my smoking before wasn't even fun or necessary or anything.

Still have the physical habit, watching movies without anything in my hands is kind of torturous. But it's not the chemical addiction part at all.

Having something in your hands while watching the movies – that is what knitting is for.

lol I've said before that I might FINALLY have to take up knitting if I ever srsly quit smoking.

Yeah I havent fully quit eiter, but I am finding I'm more irritated by it, and its always been easy for me to go 48 hour at a stretch without, and now when I cave its only to have a few in the evening and not half a pack. Sunday nite was an exception and boy did I feel it on monday ugh ow.

xp - lol, if i ever start posting about taking up embroidery it's because i've finally decided to quit smoking

With u on the movie/TV watching thing Laurel, thats one of mine - wine and a cig with the DVD. And, out socially, I find socialising VERY hard if I dont have my drinksmoke to hide behind.

Well let's not be ridiculous, I haven't quit drinking.

Haha :D Yeah ditto - having a non-smoking/drinking new bf is making me cut RIGHT back tho, and thats a good thing (he's not imploring me to, but when I'm drinking and he isnt I'm like... this is a bit pointless).

my ex-bf was a non-drinker, and i never felt drinking was pointless.

I mean when it's just the 2 of us, it's diff when there's others about I suppose.

oh, i can see that. meanwhile -- i've just "celebrated" 20 years as a smoker.

i am developing a great dislike of drinking when my gf isn't. which is good for a number of reasons

srsly, i don't think i could have a non drinking bf.

Mines not a non drinker, but he doesnt seem to overindulge like nearly everyone else i know does heh.

ah that's different ;)

the thing that sucked was that he was also a non-driver.

Some people just don't know how to make themselves useful.

that was my bff's opinion of him as well! She actually said to him one night when we were at a bar, "so you don't drink, and you don't drive, what the fuck good are you?"

I feel a lot better, dudes. A LOT better than I used to. I'm not sleepy by 7pm, I can stay up and stay out, I want to do projects at night, I can dance for AGES, and when I do, I can finally get that feeling where it's my muscle fatigue stopping me instead of my cardiovascular capacity/thinking I might throw up.

It took a while for the shit to work its way out of my system, it didn't turn around right away, but I feel great, and I haven't even QUIT anything completely.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be on your thread for actually quitting. I just turned some kind of corner in the last week or at least noticed it, and wanted to celebrate it for a sec.

Dude pack a day --> 3 a day is huge!

Thanks, Abs! It doesn't even feel huge, I just stopped drugging myself with smokes and booze, which I was doing so I didn't feel things or want things, and turned my life back into DOING the things I want and planning how to do MORE things I want. The health benefits are pretty much just part of the overall lyfe benefits and I'm so thankful.

...and not all nondrinkers stay that way. I am a major example. :-)

good job laurel, im still going without for almost 5 months now. this is the longest i've gone in years. im still swearing by my e-cig.

e-cig is cheating

I stopped smoking once and for all by deciding I wasn't allowed to smoke

e-cig may be cheating but it works.

you're still on nic, though. eventually won't you want to go off the e-cig? then you get nic cravings and the temptation to smoke comes back.

i don't think the temptation to smoke will ever go away if you have smoked regularly for a longer time period. i stopped july 2008. cravings come and go, my burning throat does not seem to go. sorry to have written the same post for almost three years now.

im on the smallest dose of nicotine per cart for the e-cigs, i've gone from 36mg to 2mg. Next step is 0mg. so i haven't been suffering...but what the hell i'll take the nicotine in a e-cig than all the other shit in a real cig.

alex in mainhattan yes - I have come to terms with the fact that I will always to some degree want to smoke and the only way to keep off is I'm just not allowed to

welp.

Doing this as of this morning and I'm scared.

good luck e!

reposting my testimony for you E!!

no sweat. my testimony: I didn't just "smoke for twenty years" - I smoked one to two packs of Winston red packs a day from 1983-2007. then a friend told me she had read allen carr and was thankful to feel confident she'd never smoke again. a while later I ordered the book; that was three years ago; I don't have any desire to smoke now. not when drinking, not when stressed. the desire to have a cigarette is just gone. it fucking rules.

it rules so fuckin hard to be free of smokes. honest to God it is awesome.

Thanks. I want to quit and know I have to at this point but I identify as a smoker and sort of love doing so. For me that's the toughest part. I really can't imagine not being a smoker. That probably doesn't make much sense but I've smoked since I was 17 and it's very much a part of who I am. Right now aside from all the health stuff I'm trying to focus on other positives like all the awesome summer clothes I'm going to buy with the money I'm not spending on cigarettes and while I've managed to have pretty good skin for a smoker up to this point I don't want to start looking old and wrinkly before I have to so this should help that. Oh and not being tired all the time would be nice too. So, we'll see how it goes. I hope I can do this. The longest I've ever quit before is like 3 months.

it rules so fuckin hard to be free of smokes. honest to God it is awesome.

But I like smoking!!!

Oh and I have the Carr book sitting on the coffee table. I'm gonna read it tonight even though I've already quit and he says you should quit after reading it. It should still work, right?

for the love of God get the Allen Carr book because a lot of what you're saying is stuff he will completely relieve you of.

I "loved smoking" too - until a clear argument was made to me: "no you don't - that's what you tell yourself for a variety of reasons"

Oh and I have the Carr book sitting on the coffee table. I'm gonna read it tonight even though I've already quit and he says you should quit after reading it. It should still work, right?

― ENBB, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 9:52 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

smokers tend to invest a lot of energy into persuading themselves that they're really into this activity, they have compelling reasons to do so but get a clear view of it & voila, the enjoyment is actually a combination of conditioned responses & rationalizations

xp yeah just read it!

that book works so well. i quit smoking (also 1-2 packs a day) without even meaning to because my flatmate left it lying around and i read it. i go on and on about it to smokers who want to stop and some listen and read it and stop, but many are sceptical that a book could work, but it does, it does, it does.