So I never touched a cigarette until I went through my divorce and started working 70+ hours a week, when I was 36. I will be 38 in December. I hate the taste, I hate the smell, I hate everything about it except it calms me down. In the last three months I've developed a serious smokers cough, from a bad cold, that the congestion never really went away.

Today instead of buying a new pack of cigs I decided to smoke the rest of the pack and quit. Well just now was that cig...

Im not a habitual person, so I'm hoping the mental part will be easy, and Im sure the next 24 hours will be the toughest, physically. I quit for a month about a year ago, and it wasn't that bad... however I was only smoking a pack a week then... I am up to a pack every day and a half to two days... Unless I go out drinking... which I could easily do a pack a day, or more...

I took off work tomorrow, to have a long weekend, and I plan to keep busy working around the house. I also plan on chewing a lot of gum for the mental part of keeping my mouth busy. I think the hardest thing will be going out with the girlfriend and her friend to the bar tomorrow night... Drinking and smoking is my pet peeve...

Anyway any advice would be great... I'm looking up sites for advice for quitting as well.

 

Make it difficult to "re-lapse." Don't put yourself in situations where friends will be out smoking and you can bum one for a month or two. For me, once I'd given up completely for a month with zero cheating, I tried to take a puff and it made me sick.

Try to cut down on coffee / booze / the things which really accelerate the cigarette-wanting portion of the brain, at least for now.

Cinnamon sticks or fancy toothpicks you can buy which are soaked in "herb root" or whatever (very bitter) didn't really work for me, but other friends swore by them when they quit.

 

Well, you've got the hardest part beat, and that is doing it for yourself and not someone else. When I quit after 10yrs or so a long time ago I removed myself from any drinking or bar/party type situations for a month or two just to get it completely out of my system. Even well over 10yrs later I'll get a whiff of one occasionally and it'll smell real good, but most of the time I don't like the smell. Just like when I quit pills 18yrs ago, I just tell myself I don't know about tomorrow, but today I'm not going to do it.

I do smoke some good cigars, and have a humidor chocked full of them for the weekends. I probably average one every two to three weeks, so they are definitely more of a treat for me. Also, don't do like a lot of folks and just get a new addiction with chewing tobacco or nicotine gum, as those are worse to quit than cigarettes.

 

Good luck with it, I know it's hard but if you can pull it off you be better for it in the long run.

I am in the same boat but with weight. I know I am at the age when it's gonna go down hill fast, visited some gyms, bought some new equipment, hell a new cross fit place opened up less that 200 ft away and I have to stare at their billboard every time I leave our place....

 

I also have to work on my weight... 260 6' 4"... Im a good 60 over where I want to be.

 

Glad to hear it, I hate to preach to people about it but when you have gone through what I have it's hard not to. I smoked for 38 years and was having throat problems and stopped and 3 years, after I stopped they ended up cutting me from ear to ear and removed my voice box and half of my neck to get it all and had to take my right pectoral muscle and put it in my neck to fill the void and now breath through a hole in my neck, all thanks to cigs. I have not had one in 7 years now and to be honest there is not a day goes by that I don't think about wanting one. I don't think it will ever really go away it's just something you have to learn to deal with. My brother just had a lobe of his right lung taken out 5 weeks ago and is going through hell with the craving for one. It's more the habit of having it in your hands and I took a wooden dowel and drilled a little hole down the middle and painted it just like a cig and he uses it to hold and puff on and told me the other day I need to make them and market them.lol

After what I went through and still go through having to go in every 4 weeks for surgery to keep my throat open so I can eat some things but not anything normal really and still have a feeding tube sticking out of my stomach you would think I would not even think about one but I still do and always will im sure, the power of the cig is worse than any drug or booze in my book.

 

Well Im hoping in the year and a half of smoking I didnt fuck myself up too bad... What you went through sounds scary fucked up...

 

It's really in your genes , I know a man that just turned 91 last month and has smoked a pack a day for 60 years and drinks a pint of whiskey every night and is the most healthy person I know but the flip side of the coin is I know people that only smoked 1 year and ended up with cancer. My family had a history of cancer so that put me in a high risk I guess.

I was going to post a pic of me on the table getting the muscle put in my neck for the scare factor but didn't want to gross everybody out, it's in the AD section.

 

Quitting is the best thing you could do. Talking about quitting is the worst. I was a two pack (minimum) a day smoker. As soon as I woke up i'd fire one up and not stop all day. I finally figured out what I was spending on smoking and quit soon after. I went cold turkey. I figure as more a mental game than physical addiction. I craved a smoke after a few days but just never gave in. I did the gum and other things here and there, but it's all mental. You just have to decide you're not going to do it. It's like blowing some guy.....You don't want to, so you're not going to. Start looking at that cigarette like a big swolled up blue veined throbber and you'll never want to put another on in your mouth.

 

LMFAO that's one way of putting it. You can ask Disney what it did to me, we have met several times. The cigars will still get you even though you don't inhale them they will still give you cancer of the mouth tongue and lips. My engine builder just had a 3rd of his tongue cut out and they had to pull all of his bottom teeth and dislocate his bottom jaw and cut the jaw muscles so the radiation wouldn't screw them up , he just started chemo & radiation this week for the next 5 weeks. They should outlaw the damn things but that will never happen, hell someone told me in NYC they are $11.00 a pack now up there.

 

This ongoing thread has some good info in it, including some of my saga: https://www.theturboforums.com/threads/355637-Chantix?
As well as this one from Cox a bit further back: https://www.theturboforums.com/threads/335333-Quit-smoking?

As of today, I'm 5 years, 2 months, 5 days, and saved $20,702.81....and I smoked 1.5pks/day for almost 20 years.

The thing I tell everyone that asks and I can't stress the most is that everyone is different and what works for one person will not necessarily work for the next, so people that say "XXX is the best and what you should do" is retarded. If it was that fucking simple, millions of people wouldn't struggle with it and literally die trying. Therefore the best thing anyone can do is keep trying until something does work and not be discouraged when something doesn't because frankly, most successful quitters don't do it on their first attempt, and probably not their 3rd or 4th either. Giving up trying is way worse than smoking itself.

Good luck.

 

Don't look back. I quit 13 months ago cause of the expense; hell I woke up on a Monday and said shit I can't afford smokes today, never mind the rest of the week. I haven't bought a pack since. Still puffed once and a while, especially with a few drinks in me but now I can't even consider it. The gf smokes still and it smells nasty. I work with a smoker and can't stand when I gotta work next to him while he's ripping butts. Do I want one 10x's a day still? Hell yes! But it'd take a lot to get me going again, especially within $1 of 10 bucks a pack now. Bad enough I'd stop and get a pack, a red bull, and a handful of bs junk food each stop, average 15$ twice a day, and I could have a pretty damn sweet ride with that kind of payment every month. I can go about a whole week living off $20 now for whatever thats worth lmao

 

Congrats on quitting hope you stick to it good luck to you!

 

Damn a week on a 20 spot, are you a hermit. lol shit I couldn't make it 30 mins on a 20 .

 

I quit 14 years ago. Best thing I ever did for myself. There is some sound advice in this thread.

Don't put yourself in situations that trigger a craving.
Don't try to substitute it with another habit. Unless it is going to a gym. (worked for me)
Keep busy.
I used to chew on straws and stuff like that to help with cravings.

My marriage issues and divorce caused me to gain some serious weight and I almost picked up smoking again. Once I started to place a priority on myself it was much easier to stay away from cigs and get back in shape. At one time I was down 100lbs but have started to put some muscle weight on instead of trying to lose more.

 

I'm the poster boy for avoiding smoking cessation crutches.

I quit smoking (pack and a half a day for ~20 years) six years ago by substituting Nicorette gum.

Well I chewed the nicotine gun for the next four years. It wore on my teeth and jaw, was not much cheaper than smoking, and I was ingesting around 4X what I did when I was smoking.

Switched to the Nicorette spray mist two years ago and still use it to this day. Costs me around $25 for two days, still ingest around 50mg of nicotine per day so I'm no less addicted.

I've easily spent $25-30K on nicotine since I "quit" smoking.

 

Just throw that shit away and man up, or as our Aussie friends would say Harden The Fuck Up !!

 

That's how turbofreek gave up the cigs

 

You will need to cut back on the drinking if your ever going to quit smoking . They go hand in hand .

 

One of the hardest things for me is wrenching on the car, i always had a cig when i was working on a car.

Here's a good deterrent , my brother 2 weeks after having a lobe of his right lung removed.

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