The quitting smoking thread......

[andy_fozzy]

I've tried, and tried, so help me god to pack it in.
But ready to give it another shot!!

Anyone up for it with me?
(Quitting smoking that is!!)

 

[hashcake]

I wish you luck, I really do.
I managed to quit for about 4 months last year and that's a record for me.
A few years ago, my GP prescribed me twice with Zyban and there really is no excuse for not quitting with them as they take away any nicotince craving.
I even failed with them

 

[andy_fozzy]

You're not alone.
I used Champix. Not bad, but I still had to have one in the morning for a few weeks. None all day, just that one.

Dr said that's pointless, as I haven't stopped completely, and took me off them

 

[Marcel]

Allen Carr - The EasyWay to Stop Smoking.

Took me off a 30 a day addiction...boom...just like that.

Best book ever written IMO.

 

[andy_fozzy]

Allen Carr - The EasyWay to Stop Smoking.

Took me off a 30 a day addiction...boom...just like that.

Best book ever written IMO.

Thanks Marcel.
I've read it. Stopped for a few weeks, then started having the odd one, here and there.....
Like Alan said, he makes it so easy to stop, it'll be VERY easy to start again.
And it was

But I agree, amazing man. Amazing book.

 

[hashcake]

Allen Carr - The EasyWay to Stop Smoking.

I had to read that twice because the first time I was surprised that a camp comedian had written a book about quitting smoking

 

[parish]

Thanks Marcel.
I've read it. Stopped for a few weeks, then started having the odd one, here and there.....
Like Alan said, he makes it so easy to stop, it'll be VERY easy to start again.
And it was

Sounds like the same problem as me - it's the habit, not the nicotine addiction that's the problem.

I'm a former ex-smoker Trying to give up yet again. I have cut right down from over 20 a day to around 8. I have one first thing in the morning but then I can go all day without one and it doesn't bother me - no cravings - but when I come home I light up.

I've switched to roll-ups as it's not as easy as just getting one out and lighting it.

The problem with getting help from your Doctor is that they only seem to treat it as a drug addiction and ignore the habit side of it which, the cynic in me thinks, is that the NHS scheme for quitting is partly or wholly a political initiative so that the Govt. can be seen to be doing something about getting people to stop smoking but they don't really want us to, just like they don't want us to stop drinking or driving either, as they depend heavily on all three for revenue.

If you talk to people who've given up you find that one solution doesn't work for everyone - some find hypnosis works, others acupuncture, some just stopped and went cold turkey, etc. etc. One thing about breaking the habit is that habits are connected so, for example, if, like me, the first thing you do when you get up is have a cup of coffee and a fag then have tea or a glass of orange juice instead.

 

[andy_fozzy]

Sounds like the same problem as me - it's the habit, not the nicotine addiction that's the problem.

I'm a former ex-smoker Trying to give up yet again. I have cut right down from over 20 a day to around 8. I have one first thing in the morning but then I can go all day without one and it doesn't bother me - no cravings - but when I come home I light up.

I've switched to roll-ups as it's not as easy as just getting one out and lighting it.

The problem with getting help from your Doctor is that they only seem to treat it as a drug addiction and ignore the habit side of it which, the cynic in me thinks, is that the NHS scheme for quitting is partly or wholly a political initiative so that the Govt. can be seen to be doing something about getting people to stop smoking but they don't really want us to, just like they don't want us to stop drinking or driving either, as they depend heavily on all three for revenue.

If you talk to people who've given up you find that one solution doesn't work for everyone - some find hypnosis works, others acupuncture, some just stopped and went cold turkey, etc. etc. One thing about breaking the habit is that habits are connected so, for example, if, like me, the first thing you do when you get up is have a cup of coffee and a fag then have tea or a glass of orange juice instead.

Wow Parish, that post could have come from me!!!
I've switched to rollies too, for the very same reason!
Actually, I prefer them now to tailor mades.

But same as you, with me it's completely the habit, something which Allan Carr disagrees with in the book.

And I agree 100% about the Dr's etc.
The help I got from them was **** to be honest. Didn't really want to help me at all, as they said I wasn't making an effort. Even though I went from 20-30 a day, to just 1. They were happy to prescribe me Champix though, at almost £8 a fortnight........

Have you read Alan's Easyway book?
Well worth a read. He is (was sorry) an amazing man, and he made some very valid points which really sink in.

One point he did make was that we (smokers) DO NOT enjoy smoking.
We just think we do. Which he is of course right, but it's something that I just can't get around, as I'm 101% certain I jolly well DO enjoy a fag!!!!!
Which I guess is why I'm still smoking :shrug:
This in turn makes me believe that I don't really want to stop.

 

[Marcel]

It's not just a habit. It's a drug addiction, and the actions of a 'habit' are borne out of that addiction.
Once you understand the drug addiction side of it, you begin to understand that it is the addiction which fuels your behaviour.

You're addicted to a drug, so you convince yourself you enjoy it, just like an alcoholic 'enjoys a drink'. They dont take a sip and go "oof thats disgusting...lemme have another".
The addiction conditions you to keep getting that drug into your body.

It's no coincidence that cigarettes are in packs of 20.
When you have a cigarette, you 'top up' your nicotine levels, you feed that drug addiction, kinda like the heroin addict who drops the needle in a state of bliss.
Half an hour later, the nicotine levels in your body have dropped, so you think you "want another cig"....your body is simply crying out for a topup of nicotine, so you reach for another cig.

Say you get up at 8 am and go to bed at 10-11, give or take work times, and other things...that's one fag roughly every half hour....ie 20 a day

All habits we have created ourselves, theyre not behaviour natural to all humans.
When I go to bed at night and pass the front door, it's habit that I check the door is locked. That's a habit...a habit I started myself. I checked the door each night for a few days...and after so many times it becomes 'habit'....'second nature'...just like smoking does....it's an unconscious decision.....but it was put there by the conscious mind. So how do you reverse that? Simple....Make all your decisions consciously. When you think you want a fag, consciously say to yourself "No I don't want a cigarette now".
That's how you break any 'habit', override it with an opposing conscious thought.

That, coupled with the addiction means its so easy to get hooked on smoking, but once you understand it, it becomes much much easier to break the vicious cycle.

 

[parish]

Marcel, you are indeed correct about the habit being a result of the addiction, but when you are trying to give up the two aren't - for some people at least - necessarily linked, i.e. you can beat the addiction but it's the habit that gets you smoking again (and then you get addicted again, so the whole vicious cycle starts over).

That is the problem I have; I have almost - but not 100% I admit - dealt with the addiction because, if I hadn't then I wouldn't be able to go for 10 hours during the day without a cig, I'd be climbing the walls by lunchtime.

Another example of the habit and addiction being separate issues is when you use patches - or other nicotine replacement systems - that you still smoke. It happened to me and lots of other people I knew. Your body's craving for nicotine is satisfied by the patches, so you don't need to smoke to satisfy that, but many a time if someone offered me a cig I'd take it, light it, and get half way through it before I realized - it was just pure habit.

 

[zooki]

i would but i enjoy it too much at the moment.

 

[Marcel]

parish, what I meant was that the addiction has created the habit, and you can't deal with just one issue, so in that sense, they are linked.

Like you say, you can't just deal with the addiction, because your subconscious behaviour still rules what you do (like reaching for a fag without realising etc). You need to deal with both, and it's actually your behaviour that is the hardest to deal with. The subconscious 'habits' that you have done for possibly years and years, 20 times a day...you need to stop doing...and you can only do that consciously.

 

[frank]

I agree with Marcel about Allen Carrs easy way to stop smoking, if you can go to one of his sessions it really is worth it. I went from a 40-50 a day smoker to zilch in 4 hours. That was ten years ago, no cravings, withdrawals etc, It was a 120 quid well spent. Don't know what it cost nowadays.

 

[Gremlin]

I went from 30/40 a day to nothing using patches, just decided to do and and that was it.
The smokers at work used to laugh at me in the early days, I would run outside and stand next to them taking deep breaths then run back in, a bit of passive smoking really did help
I did find that even 9 months later I was still getting cravings but I resisted and now 13 months later I really don't think I could ever smoke again, the smell makes me feel ill at times.
Whatever you choose takes a lot of willpower, it's never going to be easy.

 

[frank]

I think what would put most smokers off is the smell of their breath after a smoke if they could smell it the same as a non-smoker smells it, especially a heavy smoker, most smokers just can't smell it. Quite honestly it smells like about the same as sticking your nose in a ashtray. It horrifies me to think that my breath had been smelly like that at one time.

It took a few years off the fags before I could smell the difference, now I'm a old fart I can't find a nice young female non smoker to let me test out tasting the difference as the advert used to say.

 

[Nod]

This might help...

Mum smoked for many years - 20 or so a day.

On Easter Monday, she woke up early with a coughing fit and a blinding headache, went into Dad's room (she had moved due to her cough...) asked him to phone the doctor and collapsed. 999 got an ambulance and they took her to hospital where she was diagnosed with a sub-arachnoid hemmorage. A Platinum coil filled the aneurism and the bleed was stopped.

After a month she was out of the brain specific ward and was moved to another hospital for more recupperation. The bleed had left her extremely weak and unable to walk - even sitting up was a struggle. Many years of 20 a day and an enforced bed rest made pneumonia almost inevitable and so it was for mum. The first bout responded well to the antibiotics and she started to recover a little. Until the next bout struck. Back to the antibiotics.

A slightly unfortunate side effect of the antibiotics was that they also killed off all the good bacteria in mum's gut, leaving behind the perfect environment for a rather unpleasant one to get a good grip - Clostridium difficile. A month later she was dead. A week ago was the funeral.

While the ultimate cause of death was the C. diff. there can be NO doubt that the major contributor to the original problem and the pneumonias afterwards was the smoking.

So, it's NOT just a case that you could cough yourself to death - it could lead to you basically 5h1**ing yourself to death with a tube up your nose for feeding and a nappy at the other end.

Still want that ciggy?

 

[Proglam]

I woke up on 4 Jan 08, made my coffee, went outside for my morning smoke. Just felt that I'd get sick if I lit up. So I didn't. Thought, OK, will have one later. I didn't.
Haven't had a smoke since.

Haven't had a craving. Nothing, Nada.... just no desire to light up at all. My doc's amazed. Never heard of something like this before. Habit & adiction broken just like that. And I wasn't even thinking about stopping.

 

[Cobra]

A slightly unfortunate side effect of the antibiotics was that they also killed off all the good bacteria in mum's gut, leaving behind the perfect environment for a rather unpleasant one to get a good grip - Clostridium difficile. A month later she was dead. A week ago was the funeral.

Condolences to you and yours Nod

not to make light of that but giving up is easy I have done it many times
On the "gum" I got close to quitting but found I was actually spending more money on the gum than fags, so I gave up the gum.
Plus it "pulled" a couple of my fillings so there was that expense and pain as well.
I did ask my Dr a few years ago for "help"
He said stop putting them in your mouth and lighting them ( thats true!)
Never really had a lot of faith in Doctors

 

[Nod]

Like Proglam, I gave up just-like-that. It was a budget day and my brand went up to £2.50 (IIRC) so I gave the rest of the pack to a co-worker and haven't had a ciggie since.

That was many years ago but still, if I'm having a drink or 2, I could kill (or die...) for a fag! (FTR, I was on about 20 a day at that point, having cut down from 30-40 per day a few years before.)

 

[JasonPC]

Like a couple of other people have mentioned, I just stopped one day for no particular reason other than the fact that I just didn't want one. That was about two years ago. Nowadays I get no cravings at all but I do have the occassional ciggy or cigar when I feel like one. Funnily enough, I enjoy my one or two a month now much more than when I was a 'proper' smoker.

 

[Urban Grimshaw]

It's not just a habit. It's a drug addiction, and the actions of a 'habit' are borne out of that addiction.
Once you understand the drug addiction side of it, you begin to understand that it is the addiction which fuels your behaviour.

Spot on. You really need to understand it and be prepared to give it up. If you quit still wanting to smoke you're never going to do it. I stopped at the beginning of this year and after the initial couple of weeks of what feels like a nervous breakdown, I never missed it.

I do seem to have started again in recent weeks - one curious smoke leads to another and blah, blah. Oops.

Along with the Allen Carr book, this site is muchly helpful:

http://www.whyquit.com/

 

[Jaco]

Stopped about 5 months ago I had been on rollies for a while but was getting fed up with the stained fingers and the mess of bits tobacco everywhere so just went cold turkey.So far so good definately feeling better for it but take one day at a time and hopefully soon start putting money aside from smoking towards getting a camera as now getting the bug

 

[Ladybird]

I gave up about 4 years ago, was really hard though, cut down slowly and then finally threw last two away! Willpower and stick with it!!!!! Good Luck!


or




Get someone to kick you in the **** each time you light up? That will soon make you want to quit!