Quitting smoking

currently trying to quit; wrote this bit of doggerel the other day as a way to resist cravings:

Cigarettes I Have Known:
Marlboro Reds glow in my mind
like flaming rum-soaked raisins;

Bali Shag is heavy, spiced,
mysterious and Asian;

the Camel is a desert smoke,
as crisp and dry as parchment scrolls;

and Pall Malls taste like sandpaper,
abrasive to the heart and soul.

Drum is musty, mulchy, earthen,
a fungus sprouting in the mouth;

Spirits have a caramel sweetness
I thought I could not live without;

Newports greenly colden, shooting
crystals through the stiff’ning veins;

Parliaments have little dips
some people use to snort cocaine;

a Crush was given to me once
by a slender pretty girl—

I gladly sat beside her while
the smoke, and her long legs, unfurled.

Lucky Strikes are what, I’m told,
our boys in Vietnam preferred

(although, in my experience,
they mostly taste like dirt);

Nat Shermans, elegant and brown,
taste less smooth than they appear;

but when I searched for Chesterfields,
I could not find them anywhere.

re: American Spirit smell — take w/ a grain of salt but my ex- used to tell me the only reason she put up with my smoking was that they smelled better than any other cigarettes. told her I used to smoke Reds before that, and her response was "I wish you still did cuz then I'd make you quit in a heartbeat!"

Lucky Strikes remind me of my friends out on the West Coast.

Camel Lights remind me of my ex-girlfriend at christmastime

Oh I smoked camel lights for years before switching to AS in an attempt to convince myself they were healthier. lol.

yay good luck Erica!!!

I think my problem is that I'm convinced I would fail at quitting, so I don't even try.

that's the propaganda sarahel! it is like nowhere near as hard as plenty of other stuff you've probably already done

I honestly don't believe there is anyone who can't quit smoking once they're able to understand that it really is the case that it's not all that hard. couple days of a weird headspace & recalibrating habits. once your understanding of the habit is "a behavior I decided to cultivate," not "a thing that now has THIS DEATHGRIP ON ME," it's like this huge revelation

Bernard Snowy, I think you've convinced me to pick up the habit again with that poem. Also, I didn't know that about Parliaments, but it explains a lot!

j/k re: relapsing of course. I am just going to do what I see as my duty and remind all of you who are trying to quit to stay super-hydrated. Go down to the grocery store and buy a pallet of bottled water or whatever. It'll help.

lot easier if you can go boozeless for a week or two, too

I know I know but priorities, you'll be able to afford way better booze once you get free

in the end, i did quit right around the time i turned thirty and never really looked back. i didn't find it to be particularly difficult for some reason, maybe because i kinda realized that i didn't want to see myself as a smoker anymore. when you're in the middle of a long run as a smoker, you probably recognize the long-term effects on your health but don't really realize how nasty it is on a day-to-day basis until you've been off it for awhile and your system starts to clear up. it's not just in the lungs, it's everything. and as far as it being a part of image, i certainly notice when people who didn't smoke (or i didn't know were smokers) light up a cigarette, but when people who are smokers totally quit, it's really not noticeable and doesn't alter their identity for me because smoking isn't a defining characteristic for someone unless they're a cartoon camel.

i've quit drinking before, when I felt I was drinking to excess, and that was fine. And now I'm at a point where I can drink in moderation and be okay. But I'm unsure whether I can do that with smoking.

i think a lot of it is more psychologically habitual than physically. the whole process of movement and ritual involved w/smoking is itself addictive. and i also think that people who say smoking chills them out might in fact just be chilling out because they're standing around inhaling and exhaling deeply, they might actually chill out rather well w/o a smoke doing just that.

definitely! Or because they tell themselves, "I am taking these 5 minutes to chill out."

how nasty it is on a day-to-day basis until you've been off it for awhile and your system starts to clear up. it's not just in the lungs, it's everything

OK so tell me some of these other things. What specifically is going to be awesome assuming I stick with it, of course.

kinda hard to pin it down but you're not going to feel as winded from physical activity, your skin might be even *better*, cleaner teeth, you will actually taste food better ime because your taste buds will clear up (or open up, idk), your car, clothes, house/apt will smell better (because even if you only smoke outside it's gonna come along with you wherever you go), and i tend to think that w/o smoking as an expected crutch or the ritual you'll go to at the end of every day, you'll have a bit more zest and ambition for future endeavors. that sounds stupid, maybe, but i think it's true. i don't think it's really hard to cast aside once you decide that you are not a smoker but rather you are a person with this smoking thing that you do sometimes. there is a difference.

It is so nice to sit here and not worry about when and where my next cigarette will come.

When I go to the doctor because I don't feel good, he doesn't tell me to stop smoking. Not sure if that was ever the problem in the first place, but now, at least he has to dig a little deeper.

No, I don't have a light. Guess I can keep walking.

I once swore I'd never pay more than $2 a pack. I quit when they were $3.50. I don't know how all you moneybags are still keeping up with this today.

$3.50?! My god. I've been making a list all day of the cute things I'm gonna buy with all this money I'm gonna save. Pretty excited about that part tbh.

Good luck to you.

That would be the most exciting part for me, I think, the previously wasted dollars adding up.

Seriously. Every time I've had a craving today (which has be surprisingly infrequent) I've bookmarked something I'm gonna get instead of smokes.

best of luck e

Thanks guys the support is nice and now I'll feel like a real ass if I don't stick with it so this is good!!

i have high expectations for next time we hang out :)

If it goes anything like it did for me you'll eat some hummus or a satsuma or something else really plain in about three weeks' time and it'll taste like nothing else on earth ever did.

lol if you start back again u gettin sb'd

lol

xxp - speaking of which, I'm gonna msg you on fb now about that

It is so nice to sit here and not worry about when and where my next cigarette will come.

this was a big one for me. no longer being a slave to the smoke break was worth no longer being able to take one (in the very few situations where I actually enjoyed interrupting what I was doing to go outside and have one). I also got sick to death of always planning my cigarettes. I never liked buying them in bulk, so I would constantly be counting them to make sure I didn't run out after a certain time and have to leave the house to get a new pack. Then I'd worry when a friend had to bum one ("omg am I going to have to run to the store later? should I just go now and get it over with?"). That constant low-level stress adds to the pile, and it's so nice for it to be gone.

other benefits of quitting:

- no longer giving my money to Big Tobacco (how could I bitch about evil corporations when I was funneling my hard-earned cash to the evilest of them all?)
- no longer dreading long car/plane trips
- no longer dealing with mooches on the street
- being able to smell and taste things better (this actually helped me lose weight after quitting because I realized that vegetables tasted so fucking great)

I thought the hardest thing about quitting would be missing the culture of smokers. The smoke pit at work, the self-identification. I won't front: One of the biggest reasons I started smoking to further differentiate myself from the popular or "good" kids (and later on adults). Since I quit, I look at smokers as self-destructive fiends; pathetically sucking on their cigarettes just to maintain a normal feeling. I don't miss the social aspect of it at all - and haven't since about two weeks after I quit.

thread revive yesterday gave me the wherewithal to turn four hours without a cigarette into 24. feeling really good right now. i've been meaning/"trying" to quit for a year. the past few months my half-hearted attempts have been jettisoned by cigs being this "fun"/"escape" part of my life and schedule. aerosmith's posts above made me realize that, of course, this is total bullshit! feel like i've had to peel back all of the ingrained rationalizations for smoking i've built up over time, and letting go of this one might be just enough to quit for good.

Gotta do this soon. I'm too old for this shit.

OK so still going.

Btw you know what's a great deterrent? Reading stories online about ppl not all that much older than you that died of lung cancer. Basically scaring the shit out of myself. It seems to be helping tho.

every time i go without cigs for awhile and my sense of smell clears up, it feels like all these neural pathways that haven't been lit since i started smoking go off and i'm like "OMG high school" or whatever

kiu E!!

it's been a little over 8 months for me. smoked a pack a day easy. i just went cold turkey and never looked back. i gotta say it was pretty hard for me at first but it got better and better, where now i really don't even think about the things. I'm able to hang with friends who smoke and all that with no problem.

may have already said this but my strategy so far has been to chew lots of gum (just regular trident, not nicotine gum), eat twizzlers and drink coffee like a fiend. and then when all that isn't enough and my brain starts bouncing against the walls of my skull and I just need to get away, I step out for a short walk around the block at the briskest pace I can possibly muster.

my neighbors must think I'm crazy. but at least I'll still be crazy when they're all dead, mwahaha!

one thing i did was get myself a bag of dirt w33d and rolled doobs up to smoke a few times when i needed something jsut for the action of it.

yeah, this thread (and other things) have inspired me to seriously cut down from 1 1/2 packs a day to ideally half a pack? less than that? Right now i feel like all the joy has been sucked out of life and i feel crappy. How long does this last?

That's sad! Do you have things to look forward to in your day BESIDES cigarettes? Maybe you need to create little incentives for yrself that aren't smokey-centric. I don't know what. 10 minutes of nap or meditation? A walk outside even if you have "too much" to do?

Oh there are lots of things I like doing that don't involve cigarettes! Yesterday I made a mental list of these things. But right now I just feel defeated and powerless. I'm hoping this is just a temporary withdrawal thing?

It is!!! I've been doing some reading into it this morning and depression and lethargy are definitely withdrawal symptoms.

Did it say how long they last?

I think about a week or two. After that, it's all about not having cigarettes while drunk.

Oh, but just cutting down may not really ever get the sad out of your system. This is why I think gums and patches are BS.

I think I was already depressed and lethargic FROM smoking & boozing so I didn't rly notice that stage? I kinda skipped over it and then it seemed like all of a sudden I was feeling really good.

gums and patches are great tools for people who 100% want to quit, yet need to disrupt their smoking routine before dealing with the nicotine withdrawal. I used the patch to quit 16 months ago. Some people have expressed surprised that it worked for me, but I find that those people aren't truly ready to give it up yet. The patch can only do so much.

one thing i did was get myself a bag of dirt w33d and rolled doobs up to smoke a few times when i needed something jsut for the action of it.

― Aerosol, Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I'd just straight up want a cig if stoned, just like if I was drunk or high on anything else. It's a trigger.

been doing really well except for the 1-2 cigs per day i've been stealing from my bf. the fact that he smokes makes it easier for me to cheat. if i think about it as an opportunity to manifest my decision to quit more often maybe that will help. my runs the past few days have been so much easier and better, and i've already noticed a big improvement in general well-being. got stoned last night, which is usually a trigger for chain-smoking, but i only had two cigs. feels like an accomplishment, or at least indicative of a change.

anyway, sorry for blogging here, just typing this all out in an effort to gear up for the weekend.

congrats! How much were you smoking before you decided to quit?