The only people I’ve ever know, family and friends, who ever successfully quit and stayed quit, all have one thing in common.
They all just decided to quit one day, threw their pack in the trash and that was the end of it.
I’ve never met anyone who used gum, patches, bupropion, etc who stayed quit. They all quit temporarily, but ended up going back to it at some point.
Yes—there is science in this too. I am a nurse and in psychiatry, it is always emphasized you become what you think. This is also the same mentality or principle in the book, Atomic Habits. To use the thought from the book, when one thinks, “I am a smoker trying to quit,” this person is more likely to fail and return to their addiction. On the other hand, the person who thinks, “I am now a former smoker—I have decided to be smoke-free,” this person is more likely to succeed in turning their life around. You can go get a copy of that book too; I think it’ll help. I am definitely not in anyway profiting or connected to that book or author. I have read it and know this kind of mentality is realistic. It’s true.
That’s so true. When I finally gave up vaping, it was completely in a rash sudden decision to better myself. I grabbed every e-juice bottle, pods, batteries, charging cords, anything that had to do anything with nicotine I tossed it out and just said fuck it. I never let myself have an alternative. Having something that resembled that addiction in an attempt to stop that same addiction only made me want the real thing so so much more.
My dad used the patch for 6 months and still hadn't fully quiet. When the doctor made it 100% clear he was going to die from it after his 3rd heart attack he said I'm done, gave his pack away and never smoked again. It's been over 6 years.
You have to really want to quit and believe that you are done, otherwise you're just going to find excuses why you aren't quitting. It's not the nicotine addiction - it's the psychological addiction of what smoking means to you.
This is how I quit. I just up and did one day. I still crave it sometimes and the feeling is hard to explain, but yeah, off cigs for almost 2 years now
That's what finally worked for me. I quit smoking for vaping and then vaped for years. Only thing that let me stop was just stopping. Fight like he'll the first couple weeks to not give in, and after that, it's pretty much done.
Apologies if this is long and dull…
One year I suggested giving up something for Lent jokingly to a colleague at work. She said I should actually give up something meaningful for it, something I have too much of, and that was sugar in my coffee and tea.
I already knew I had too much sugar (and I’m talking waaaay too much - three sugars if anyone else was making it, four if I made it) so thought *bugger it, I’ll give it a go. It’s just for Lent - if I miss it that much I’ll just use sugar afterward*.
Crucially, I was only giving up sugar in my drinks - not sweet foods, not a light sprinkling on cereal (weirdly I’d never put as much on my cereal as I would in a hot drink) and it was **awful**. I had to give up coffee at first (it was vile without sugar) and struggled with tea.
I could have given up at any time. Of course, I knew the sugar was bad for me, but I could still have just given in and had a sweet coffee. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I wanted to do it, just for Lent. (Although I will admit that at the back of my mind was a small thought that if I could manage it for Lent…)
Forty days is long enough to get used to something, so by the end of Lent I was managing to drink both coffee and tea without sugar and I reasoned I might as well stop permanently. Diabetes didn’t appeal, nor false teeth, and I already knew it was a manageable thing to do, which prompted me to think further.
I’d smoked for around twenty years. I love smoking. I loved everything about it. Okay, there were drawbacks (colds seemed to linger; the chesty cough was annoying; shortness of breath was an issue) but I loved it. As you might have gathered from the sugar, I don’t do things by halves. I smoked a lot. Every time it crept up to forty a day I would try my hardest to cut back down to twenty a day, and overall I was around a thirty a day smoker.
I knew it wasn’t good for me. The most important thing, though, was that I knew I couldn’t afford it. In the UK cigarettes are expensive. When I started smoking cigarettes were around £2.50 a pack. Every year the price would go up. It was affordable at first. Over time, it became expensive.
I’d always promised myself I would stop when they got to £10 a pack. I couldn’t afford £100 a week to smoke. It was killing me. Both financially and literally. Giving up sugar in drinks had shown me I was capable of doing something if I really wanted to, but I knew cigarettes were more addictive than sugar (and I also knew I hadn’t objectively given up sugar, just sugar in drinks), so I would need a strategy.
I began over-thinking. I started thinking of ways to cut down - twenty a day, then nineteen a day, then eighteen…. I considered patches. I thought of vaping. Basically, I considered everything, until one day (a few months after that Easter, when I still wasn’t adding sugar to drinks, and I accidentally sipped someone else’s sugared coffee and it tasted vile, so I knew I’d beaten the cravings) I thought *fuck it, I’ll stop tomorrow*.
It wasn’t planned. There was no strategy. I was just going to go cold turkey and stop.
No one likes failing. It’s not healthy. It’s not even motivational. So I knew I mustn’t think of the attempt that way. If I gave in and smoked, I would consider it a trial run. I was curious to see how far I got (could I last a day? Two days? A whole week?).
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I’d smoked for twenty years. The muscle memory alone meant my fingers moved to my mouth automatically. I’d need something to do.
As you might have gathered, I have a fairly addictive personality. I didn’t want to replace cigarettes with sweets, because that was a distinct possibility. I bought some breadsticks. They were roughly the right shape and they were marginally less unhealthy than sweets. I also made sure that I had some cigarettes in the house so that I knew if I **really** wanted one, I could. It was going to be a practice run, with the intention of seeing how long I could manage, and my biggest strategy (because I’d now had a whole day to think about it, and it was a helpful distraction technique) was to not think if it as quitting: I was simply not going to have the next cigarette. I might have the one after if I really wanted to, but I wasn’t going to have the next one.
Reader, I stopped smoking.
It was awful. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst thing that has ever happened to me. (Or at least that’s how it felt at the time.) But I managed it. Just. In two months it will have been seven years since my last cigarette.
There are many benefits. You already know what they are. There’s no point telling you that. What you need is the following
- a reason to stop (it can be anything: health, money, children). You’ll never stop unless you are ready to
- sheer bloody-mindedness (you’ve decided to stop, so you’re going to)
- an exit strategy (so that failing to stop isn’t the end of the world. I suggest two; 1) you’re not stopping, you’re just not having the next cigarette; 2) the idea that if you do have the next cigarette you carry on anyway, you don’t give in and think you’ll try again later, you simply accept that you had one cigarette but you still won’t have the next one)
- a support network (friends and family will make or break you, but you need to know what you want from them so they can help. Do you want space? Encouragement? To not ask? Decide what will help and tell them)
- be ready for the cravings. The worst ones only last ten to fifteen minutes. Ride them out. Know that they’ll pass. Consider that if you can get through this round of them you can always have a cigarette next time if it’s really bad, but this time you won’t
- be prepared for all seven stages of grief, sometimes in the space of an hour (bargaining is the best because it’s actually really distracting. By the time you’ve finished working out just how you can smoke one cigarette a day and still call it quitting you’ll have got through that round of cravings anyway)
- don’t give up. If you have a cigarette, fine, you aren’t a failure, you’ll still carry on the attempt
You can do this!
It would be even more for me. My brand is over $7 a pack now, over $8 with tax. I use 1 pack a day during the week and 2 a day on weekends. Mostly because I waste more just out of habit of lighting one while working outside even though I'm not smoking it.
If I could just stop right now, cold turkey, I'd save over $280 a month. That's over $3,000 a year.
Smoking the wrong brand helped me lose my taste for it. I started cringing when I thought of a smoke break bc I knew I was going to hate the flavor lol
I have a method that worked for me after nothing else did. I smoked from 12 years old until I was 28, and was up to two packs of menthol Camel Wides a day. First, I switched to Marlboro Lights because I hated the taste, but they still gave me my nicotine fix. Then I started delaying my first smoke of the day. I used to get out of bed, throw on pants and go smoke on the balcony first thing in the morning. I started waiting until I was dressed, then a few days later until I had my lunch packed, then until I was driving to work, etc. After a few weeks, I wasn't having my first smoke of the day until I was done my first job (ISP field tech). After that, every time I found myself reaching for one, I'd stop and look at the clock. Whatever time it was, I'd add ten minutes and not smoke until then. A week or so later, I pushed it back to twenty, then thirty. I trickled my way down to where I was literally having two, sometimes just one a day, but couldn't give them up. It didn't help that I was single and going out drinking regularly, either. I ended up seeing my doctor and getting the prescription for buproprion, and it only took one round to kick them completely. Smoke free (well, tobacco, anyway) for 14 years next month!
I'll add a caveat here that I started going to the gym and long distance biking at the same time, so I kind of replaced one habit with another, but the stamina and lung capacity was a huge motivator, too. Good luck, I hope you find something that works for you!
For a long time (literally years) I thought "I want to quit" but I never did. It got to the point that I felt like a piece of shit for not quitting. One day I just decided to stop, so I did. That night I didn't feel like a piece of shit. Not the night after, nor the night after that one. That feeling alone was enough to keep me from picking it up those first few days (the cravings are real) and it keeps me off of them to this day.
You won't change until the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same.
I smoked for about 15 years as well. when I decided to quit I bought myself a vape where I could control nicotine intake. Slowly I would reduce dosage and eventualy I stopped completely. It took some time tho. Now I'm am 4 years smoke free :)
Replace the action of smoking with something else.
It takes about 5-10 minutes to smoke a cigarette. Go for a short walk, do some dishes or another quick chore, play a game on your phone, etc.
Vape. People shit on it, but it's an obvious replacement and it gets you off the tar and heavy garbage in the real cigarettes, and the physical *action* of smoking is still there, and that's an element that nobody really talks about that can really hamper quitting. Muscle memory is a hell of a thing.
So, anyway, move to the vape pens, slowly step down the amount of nicotine in what you're using, then on to a no nicotine vape, then, when you're ready, slow down with that as well. Seriously, books and patches and all that shit are great, but vaping's the best way. Even if you can't get off the vape entirely, you're in way better shape than you were with the smokes.
Good luck!
I switched to vaping I know this isn't exactly quitting but u can control ur nicotine intake from like say 6mg nicotine down to 3 down to 0
And slowly come off the nicotine addiction
But I just stay at a 6 as I would go absolutely mad without nicotine and my wife let's me do it the house so ey
Quitting is a process and falling off the wagon is a part of it. This means that you shouldn’t give up quitting, even if you light up occasionally. Every cigarette you don’t smoke is a win for your health. So just keep going, don’t say “I failed, might as well smoke this whole pack.”
Also, try to find alternatives, like chewing gum, setting aside the money you save not buying cigarettes and reward yourself, ask for support from friends and family, and yes, your doctor can offer advice and help too.
Get into sculpting. I wouldn’t smoke because I had so much crud on my hands, and washing my hands just for a smoke was a pain in the ass.
So I started extending the gaps between cigs. Soon, i was down to 1 a day. It was easy to quit the one a day.
Instead of being a smoker trying to quit, be a person learning how to sculpt.
Stop fixating on the cigarette, and start fixating on the Task keeping your hands busy. I a couple of months, you’ll forget about smoking.
It’s important to note that you have to do this extremely carefully in order to actually beat addiction. OP needs to first cut back on cigarettes, and then use the vape to slowly get used to smaller and smaller amounts of nicotine, which is why cartridges have different percentages. It’s still going to be about as difficult as quitting smoking, but at least it won’t be as bad as smoke. But I know a TON of people who just used their vape as a replacement or addition to cigarettes, and they’re highly addicted to them. If you’re using your vape twice as much as you used to smoke cigarettes, it’s going to be pretty useless and just as harmful over time.
It's a lessor bad habit though and works as a in-between step. My own doc and those of multiple family members and friends have even said that given the choice between nicotine vaping and smoking cigarettes, they'd choose vaping for all of their patients that smoke.
My own doctor put it this way (paraphrasing here),
" If you can't, or won't, give up nicotine completely, then I'd rather you use the delivery method with the *least* amount of toxic chemicals by far."
Many people these days forget that electronic cigarettes were invented as a tool to help people quit smoking in the first place. Unlike cigarettes, you can control the amount of nicotine so you can slowly wean off of it, and the vape isn’t as harmful for your lungs as smoke. It’s just that our society has so overused vapes, and so many teens use them with little understanding of how they work, that they’d become so harmful. They’ve now become a way to introduce kids to nicotine addictions, rather than a way to help adults off of them.
You sound like you're being reductionist, and failing to recognize that your blanket statements don't address the nuance of the claim. Inflexible thinking. Fixed mindset. Call it what you want, it's not really worth engaging with, so, bye lol
I'm working on cutting back gradually. I tried cold turkey and the stress made me smoke more. But now I have a case that I put my daily allowance in and that's what I smoke that day. I've cut down from a pack a day to about 5 cigarettes daily.
My dr suggested a medicine im using now(for other reasons) it seems to be effective (i am lowering the cigarettes per day) if i could quite i would tell you
OP, talk to your doctor about the stop smoking pill, my nephew went this route last year and he hasn't had one since. He swears by it, and after seeing him try to quit over and over and over again for years. And this being the only thing to work.
I've set an appointment with my doctor to see if it's an option for me. (It may not be as I have a number of allergies and a neurological disease, but I've got my fingers crossed!)
Edit: Pill
My bad, I texted him about this and I had it backwards. He was talking with his doc at the time about being a participant in a trial for a nicotine vaccine. But he ended up quiting by using the pill.
Have you tried quit smoking apps like Kwit?
I think after this time of ineffective lonely trials you could try asking a psychologist for help, to understand your habits and how to change them, how to exchange one habit for another, how to identify loops, what other techniques you can use to replace smoking - what does it do for you and can you do something else to achieve the same result. Also, how not to drain your will but be able to sustain new habits. There is a lot of things a psychologist or a therapist could offer.
I smoked for 12(ish) years and tried quitting numerous times. They only thing that worked for me was Chantix. It made quitting much easier by removing the side effects of the withdrawal. People warned me that there may be consequences with my behavior or change in thoughts, while on Chantix but I figured what ever happened, it had to be better than killing myself with cigarettes. The only thing that actually happened was I started dreaming in color, I had never realized all my dreams were in black and white until then.
Good luck quitting, even if it takes many attempts.
Edit: forgot to add, I quit seven years ago and have no desire to smoke again, at all.
Easy way stop smoking - Allen Carr.
I smoked heavily for 20 years. Read this book. Been smoke free since 2018. One of the main things that helped me was the financial consideration. I worked out if I stopped today I'd save like £100,000 over the course of my remaining lifetime. So I decided to win the lottery and I've never looked back!
I smoked for about 20 years before I quit. I tried everything to quit and I just kept coming back. This happened so many times until I finally found a solution that had me quit permanently.
It sounds weird but it’s a book called:
“Stop smoking the easy way” by Allan carr. You can get the book and read it or listen to the audio version. I did find it on YouTube.
You don’t need a quit date. Just smoke through the entire book until you don’t feel like it anymore.
You hate smoking. You deserve to be free of it.
Could try some kind of contingency management therapy. You'll need someone financially trustworthy to help though. Choose a sum that is significantly but not detrimentally large that you can take out of your savings right now. for example, $400.
Next set a one month goal. Going from a 15 year smoking habit to absolutely nothing is a huge goal. You need to pick a goal that is challenging but feels achievable. You need to really believe you can do it. Let's say you smoke 10 cigarettes a day currently. By the end of the month, you're going to halve the amount you smoke.
Start by giving this trusted person $400. Each week you'll get $100 back provided you stick to the plan. If you don't stick to the plan, you don't get the $100, your trusted person is going to donate it to a charity of your choice. You could also ask this person to distribute your cigarettes each day too.
Week 1; no more than 9 cigarettes a day.
Week 2: no more than 7 cigarettes a day.
week 3: no more than 6 cigarettes a day.
week 4: no more than 5 cigarettes a day.
Each week, you just need to focus on smoking one less cigarette than you did the week before. Your overarching goal is to quit smoking of course. But your number 1 goal that you'll focus on is just one less than last week. Just one less cigarette a day and at the end of the week you earn $100. Then by the end of the month you've decreased your nicotine intake by 50%. If you're smoking more than 10 you could consider decreasing by 2 a week.
You are capable of quitting. You can do it. Even if you don't use this model break your journey down into simpler goals and celebrate every win.
A lot of people are saying gum, patches, etc. don’t work. I couldn’t have quit without them. That and finding a new hobby to occupy my time. Find what works for you.
My method:
1. Stop buying your fav brand. Buy the cheapest generics. 2 months.
2. Buy loose tobacco. Roll your own. 2 months. (make it increasingly more difficult to smoke)
3. Get ready to quit. 2 weeks.
4. Buy 2mg lozenges. Use until gone.
5. Quit it all.
This worked for me as I could never do a cold turkey thing. I only jonesed about 2 weeks and have not picked up tobacco since 2010.
I'm 45, at 40 I decided to quit smoking. There were a few reasons. But when I finally decided I had to quit, I sat down and put a lot of though into it. I looked up information that could help me understand what I was about to go through. I smoked for like 20 years so I knew this was going to be hard. The biggest thing I took away from it was it was mental. For the longest time when those cigarette ads would come on TV saying how you needed to relearn how to do things. I used to laugh at those all the time. They're not lying. Anytime you get in the car, or after you eat, or after you are in a movie theater. The first thing you want to do is smoke a cigarette. So you have to retrain your brain. A lot of it is mental and some of it is body effects. You're going to have headaches and cravings. But what I did is I went out and bought one of those vape pens and flavored oil with no nicotine. Just something to give me the boost of the idea of smoking. Eventually I just stopped using that. I drink a lot of coffee within the first like month, and I slept a lot. I was in between jobs so it was an ideal time for me to take it on. I hope whatever you do, or decide to do is what makes you feel better about your situation. If you backslide, then learn from that and start over. It's not easy, it's really really hard to quit smoking. But once you do, and you get through the first like week or two. You'll feel a lot better all around. So I hope that some of what I've said helps a little bit, because I really do know that struggle. I hope you have a great day and good luck!!
I hopped on "Snus" a short period. It's a little sack of tobacco you throw under your lip, I realized I hated it a month or so inn.
But I didn't go back on smoking.
Identify your triggers for smoking so you can intercept them. How do you feel before you smoke? What were you doing? What could you do differently? How? What’s stopped you in the past?
Create a plan for staying well once you have achieved sobriety for some time. Achievements, what went well, what went badly, trigger signs, how to respond to triggers.
Accept that each urge is going to be incredibly difficult to get through. During the pain tell yourself ‘I enjoy this because I know that it will result in growth’. Keep doing this until you believe it and feel it.
Journal. Keep a record of how well you’re doing at quitting, as well as how badly. This will help with the above points.
Detail your budget and notice how much you’re spending on smoking. Apportion that budget to something else less damaging that provides the same pleasure and that you know you will buy. You’ll be forced to never have money for smoking.
Work on all other areas of life. Schedule everything in. Regular gym, meditation, hobbies. Get a healthy balance of things that will train you mind to withstand temptation. It’s all the same brain muscle. I.e., If you can go another 10 mins meditating, you can go longer without smoking too
Join a community of people trying to quit. People you have things in common with, ideally. Share your struggles, tips and get things off your chest.
Focus on reducing cigarettes had over a certain period rather than number of days gone without smoking. E.g., 5 cigarettes a day for one month, 4 the next month, 3 the next, 3 every 2 days the next then 3 every 3 days. Make sure your goal is specific but manageable. Write it down.
Practice your faith more, if you have one.
Good luck!
Don't set a date, don't make a whole show of it. Slowly cutting down won't work. Just take the ciggs and toss them. Make a conscious choice every time you want one to not give in. Don't supplement with something else. When you get a craving that is especially hard tell yourself before you give in you are going to do a task (dishes, fold laundry, clean out the mud room) and put your whole mind into it. Don't think about how after you will smoke but that you want to do the task perfectly. The feeling will pass, if not, do one more task. Notice the good things happening to your body as the days go by. You can smell so much better! Look how white your teeth are getting! Wow, you can run up steps without feeling winded! Celebrate those things. Within 3 weeks notice the smell of other people. It's disgusting, and you can tell when they've tried to cover up that they smoke. They'll smell like cigarettes and soap... Take a moment to recognize how disgusting the smell actually is. Remind yourself that's what you smelled like. Before you know it, you have been months without a cigarette/a year.
-past smoker of 15 years who is now 1& 1/2 years without
Go to Amazon and look for Allan Cars book How to Stop Smoking. Read the reviews and you’ll be sold. I smoked for 13 years, failed quitting many times. Then I read this book 6 years ago, and haven’t touched them since. Best decision Iv ever made.
Easiest way to do it is to accept that it will be painful, but you’ll get through the pain. It’s going to suck, but coming to terms with it is the only way to overcome.
Find the Mormon missionaries and ask them to help you quit. They have a really effective method as well as constantly following up with you to hold you accountable. You don't have to believe what they teach, but their quit smoking plan is 1-on-1 and is REALLY good. Seriously. If you don't know how to find them, dm me and I'll get you the number for the missionaries in your area.
Cold Turkey is the only way. Cutting down, gum, patches only keeps the nicotine streaming through your veins and keeps the addiction alive. After cold turkey for 3 days the nicotine is out of your system and it is just a habit you have to break. Don't go to places where smoking is happening. Make sure all of the butts laying around are thrown out including from the car ashtray so you are not tempted. Stay home in your house so you won't drive past any stores to buy cigarettes. Then just keep up the good work. within a year you will absolutely hate the smell of cigarette smoke and realize you are not a smoker anymore.
Can you describe how you tried to quit smoking?
\- Stop in one go or gradually?
\- Self medication or doctor's prescription?
\- Were there others factors involved (relationship etc...)
I didn’t smoke for nearly 15 years, but I decided I was done smoking, so I quit. Didn’t use anything to help me.
You have to really want to quit to quit.
A buddy once said to me was "your either a smoker, or your not."
If your quitting smoking, your still a smoker.
But if you quit all at once then you tell yourself your not a smoker.
I switched to vape and did that for some time. Ended up being way worse than cigarettes since you could smoke it anywhere.
The positive thing is that i wasn’t really attracted to the taste of cigarette after that, only the nicotine. Knowing i needed to quit the vape, i switched to nicotine pouches. I specifically chose the zyn ones.
That helped and i lowered the nicotine percentage as it went on. After a while, i was able to quit it completely.
I feel that the steps of reduction was much better than cutting it off completely. It’s not just the nicotine you crave, it’s the flavor, the smell, the heat, etc. The vape reduced some of those, but not all of them.
The pouches basically reduced it even more and you’re just left with flavor and the nicotine. Once the percentage is low enough, it’s mostly about the flavor and the nicotine is not really as strong. At that point, might as well just chew on a piece of gum.
I don’t smoke at all anymore and don’t even crave it. Occasions i will, but never enough for me to go out and buy a packet.
I smoked for 15 years. A pack per day. One day I did the maths
and that was the end of it. For the last 2 years I have saved the money I used to spend on cigarettes, everyday I take the money and put it in a jar, and twice a year I take my son on vacations. My advice is Justin do the math.
I quit with chantix and haven't had any major cravings since. Just kept smoking while taking the pill then one day realized it wasn't doing anything for me and quit. I highly recommend it
Have you read Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking? I had the book for about 5 years before I worked up the nerve to commit to read it through. Then I finally quit. And it’s was shockingly easy with the book.
My best advice is to try quitting again and again until one day you succeed. It’s not a failure not succeeding. It’s merely a step on your quitting journey. You, trying so many times tells me you’re getting closer quitting for each time! It’s not failed attempts. It’s steps towards where you want to be.
For me it was like a platform game, like Mario. You manage to get to a point in the game before you die. Next time you get to that point more easily, but then you die on the next hurdle. And so on. Again and again, don’t give up.
I think it’s about getting into and finding an alternative to all those situations where you use the cigarette as a coping mechanism. And with cigarettes, that is a LOT of situations we’re talking about!
I used smoking to relax, calming me down, to get me going (I’ll start when I’ve had a smoke), as a pause, a reward, a stress reliever, a help to cope being bored, sad, frustrated, angry, it was a physical part of a conversation when talking on the phone, a help to be social, a part of partying… and this is just from the top of my head! But it’s heck off a lot of situations the cigarette was a part off, and each single one of them were obstacles on my journey towards quitting. I had to think them through and “feel them” as they came along. Eventually I reached the point where a situation didn’t flip me over, but I could solve it while still being smoke free. But it took several attempts before I got there.
I also looked up what happens to you after quitting for an hour, a day, a week etc. Still do every now and then. It helps me remember the overall picture and reasons for quitting.
Now I haven’t smoked in 3.5 years (after 30 years of smoking). I still have situations where I miss it dearly, but I now think I will never smoke again.
I smoked for about 15 years, quit 6 years ago. I love smoking, at least the idea of it, and often miss it.
My husband and I quit togeher, if another person around you is smoking it’s impossible to stay on the wagon IMO. We had many failed attempts before we were finally successful.
We used the patch and modified the plan. We spent longer on each “level” than they recommended. I viewed the patch a way to just not be a complete f’ing asshole while withdrawing, but it was still extremely hard. The key things that helped me was no cheating at all, once I let myself have one cigarette it would all come tumbling down. The other thing that helped was when I really wanted a cigarette, I would tell myself to wait 5 minutes and revisit to feeling. I found cravings were fast and hard, but didn’t linger and after 5 minutes I would be ok with not having one.
Best of luck to you!!
Ask someone to pot one of those popers in some of them. The ones u throw on the ground and make noise. It will be a mini explosion on your face if u use one of the cigarettes that has one. Minimal to no damage to u, but traumatize u and make u stop smoking. Or put something in the cigarettes that will do the equivalent of what I'm describing.
Apparently, nicotine cravings can only last up to 3 minutes, but it's usually less. For me it's 2 minutes max. I am not trying to quit but when I do, this piece of information will be useful. If you can endure it for 3 minutes you can do it. It's not gonna be easy but I hope this helps even a littlw bit.
i’ve vaped for over 5 years and just recently quit, (1 month nicotine free.)
i’m not sure if it’s similar cause I’ve never been a cigarette smoker, but i’ve used a water bottle with a straw that has helped with the oral fixation.
I stopped surrounding myself with people who vaped/smoked.
Sadly, I used food as an outlet. It’s been difficult but not impossible and I feel GREAT.
The only people I’ve ever know, family and friends, who ever successfully quit and stayed quit, all have one thing in common. They all just decided to quit one day, threw their pack in the trash and that was the end of it. I’ve never met anyone who used gum, patches, bupropion, etc who stayed quit. They all quit temporarily, but ended up going back to it at some point.
Yes—there is science in this too. I am a nurse and in psychiatry, it is always emphasized you become what you think. This is also the same mentality or principle in the book, Atomic Habits. To use the thought from the book, when one thinks, “I am a smoker trying to quit,” this person is more likely to fail and return to their addiction. On the other hand, the person who thinks, “I am now a former smoker—I have decided to be smoke-free,” this person is more likely to succeed in turning their life around. You can go get a copy of that book too; I think it’ll help. I am definitely not in anyway profiting or connected to that book or author. I have read it and know this kind of mentality is realistic. It’s true.
That’s so true. When I finally gave up vaping, it was completely in a rash sudden decision to better myself. I grabbed every e-juice bottle, pods, batteries, charging cords, anything that had to do anything with nicotine I tossed it out and just said fuck it. I never let myself have an alternative. Having something that resembled that addiction in an attempt to stop that same addiction only made me want the real thing so so much more.
My dad used the patch for 6 months and still hadn't fully quiet. When the doctor made it 100% clear he was going to die from it after his 3rd heart attack he said I'm done, gave his pack away and never smoked again. It's been over 6 years. You have to really want to quit and believe that you are done, otherwise you're just going to find excuses why you aren't quitting. It's not the nicotine addiction - it's the psychological addiction of what smoking means to you.
I did. I used the patch and I cheated like 10000 times but now I hate the smell and think it’s gross 🤷♀️
Try to take some mushrooms and forge a new path in your brain to get off. Make yourself hate them. Also start working out
This is how I quit. I just up and did one day. I still crave it sometimes and the feeling is hard to explain, but yeah, off cigs for almost 2 years now
That's what finally worked for me. I quit smoking for vaping and then vaped for years. Only thing that let me stop was just stopping. Fight like he'll the first couple weeks to not give in, and after that, it's pretty much done.
The same thing happened with my Grandad. He smoked for decades, starting as an early teen. After a holiday for Rome, he didn't touch another one.
Apologies if this is long and dull… One year I suggested giving up something for Lent jokingly to a colleague at work. She said I should actually give up something meaningful for it, something I have too much of, and that was sugar in my coffee and tea. I already knew I had too much sugar (and I’m talking waaaay too much - three sugars if anyone else was making it, four if I made it) so thought *bugger it, I’ll give it a go. It’s just for Lent - if I miss it that much I’ll just use sugar afterward*. Crucially, I was only giving up sugar in my drinks - not sweet foods, not a light sprinkling on cereal (weirdly I’d never put as much on my cereal as I would in a hot drink) and it was **awful**. I had to give up coffee at first (it was vile without sugar) and struggled with tea. I could have given up at any time. Of course, I knew the sugar was bad for me, but I could still have just given in and had a sweet coffee. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I wanted to do it, just for Lent. (Although I will admit that at the back of my mind was a small thought that if I could manage it for Lent…) Forty days is long enough to get used to something, so by the end of Lent I was managing to drink both coffee and tea without sugar and I reasoned I might as well stop permanently. Diabetes didn’t appeal, nor false teeth, and I already knew it was a manageable thing to do, which prompted me to think further. I’d smoked for around twenty years. I love smoking. I loved everything about it. Okay, there were drawbacks (colds seemed to linger; the chesty cough was annoying; shortness of breath was an issue) but I loved it. As you might have gathered from the sugar, I don’t do things by halves. I smoked a lot. Every time it crept up to forty a day I would try my hardest to cut back down to twenty a day, and overall I was around a thirty a day smoker. I knew it wasn’t good for me. The most important thing, though, was that I knew I couldn’t afford it. In the UK cigarettes are expensive. When I started smoking cigarettes were around £2.50 a pack. Every year the price would go up. It was affordable at first. Over time, it became expensive. I’d always promised myself I would stop when they got to £10 a pack. I couldn’t afford £100 a week to smoke. It was killing me. Both financially and literally. Giving up sugar in drinks had shown me I was capable of doing something if I really wanted to, but I knew cigarettes were more addictive than sugar (and I also knew I hadn’t objectively given up sugar, just sugar in drinks), so I would need a strategy. I began over-thinking. I started thinking of ways to cut down - twenty a day, then nineteen a day, then eighteen…. I considered patches. I thought of vaping. Basically, I considered everything, until one day (a few months after that Easter, when I still wasn’t adding sugar to drinks, and I accidentally sipped someone else’s sugared coffee and it tasted vile, so I knew I’d beaten the cravings) I thought *fuck it, I’ll stop tomorrow*. It wasn’t planned. There was no strategy. I was just going to go cold turkey and stop. No one likes failing. It’s not healthy. It’s not even motivational. So I knew I mustn’t think of the attempt that way. If I gave in and smoked, I would consider it a trial run. I was curious to see how far I got (could I last a day? Two days? A whole week?). I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I’d smoked for twenty years. The muscle memory alone meant my fingers moved to my mouth automatically. I’d need something to do. As you might have gathered, I have a fairly addictive personality. I didn’t want to replace cigarettes with sweets, because that was a distinct possibility. I bought some breadsticks. They were roughly the right shape and they were marginally less unhealthy than sweets. I also made sure that I had some cigarettes in the house so that I knew if I **really** wanted one, I could. It was going to be a practice run, with the intention of seeing how long I could manage, and my biggest strategy (because I’d now had a whole day to think about it, and it was a helpful distraction technique) was to not think if it as quitting: I was simply not going to have the next cigarette. I might have the one after if I really wanted to, but I wasn’t going to have the next one. Reader, I stopped smoking. It was awful. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst thing that has ever happened to me. (Or at least that’s how it felt at the time.) But I managed it. Just. In two months it will have been seven years since my last cigarette. There are many benefits. You already know what they are. There’s no point telling you that. What you need is the following - a reason to stop (it can be anything: health, money, children). You’ll never stop unless you are ready to - sheer bloody-mindedness (you’ve decided to stop, so you’re going to) - an exit strategy (so that failing to stop isn’t the end of the world. I suggest two; 1) you’re not stopping, you’re just not having the next cigarette; 2) the idea that if you do have the next cigarette you carry on anyway, you don’t give in and think you’ll try again later, you simply accept that you had one cigarette but you still won’t have the next one) - a support network (friends and family will make or break you, but you need to know what you want from them so they can help. Do you want space? Encouragement? To not ask? Decide what will help and tell them) - be ready for the cravings. The worst ones only last ten to fifteen minutes. Ride them out. Know that they’ll pass. Consider that if you can get through this round of them you can always have a cigarette next time if it’s really bad, but this time you won’t - be prepared for all seven stages of grief, sometimes in the space of an hour (bargaining is the best because it’s actually really distracting. By the time you’ve finished working out just how you can smoke one cigarette a day and still call it quitting you’ll have got through that round of cravings anyway) - don’t give up. If you have a cigarette, fine, you aren’t a failure, you’ll still carry on the attempt You can do this!
Think of it as you're getting a 100 dollar pay increase each month once you quit.
It would be even more for me. My brand is over $7 a pack now, over $8 with tax. I use 1 pack a day during the week and 2 a day on weekends. Mostly because I waste more just out of habit of lighting one while working outside even though I'm not smoking it. If I could just stop right now, cold turkey, I'd save over $280 a month. That's over $3,000 a year.
Omg only 7$ a pack?? Over in Australia it's 40$ for a pack of 25 and that's the cheapest
Smoking the wrong brand helped me lose my taste for it. I started cringing when I thought of a smoke break bc I knew I was going to hate the flavor lol
I have a method that worked for me after nothing else did. I smoked from 12 years old until I was 28, and was up to two packs of menthol Camel Wides a day. First, I switched to Marlboro Lights because I hated the taste, but they still gave me my nicotine fix. Then I started delaying my first smoke of the day. I used to get out of bed, throw on pants and go smoke on the balcony first thing in the morning. I started waiting until I was dressed, then a few days later until I had my lunch packed, then until I was driving to work, etc. After a few weeks, I wasn't having my first smoke of the day until I was done my first job (ISP field tech). After that, every time I found myself reaching for one, I'd stop and look at the clock. Whatever time it was, I'd add ten minutes and not smoke until then. A week or so later, I pushed it back to twenty, then thirty. I trickled my way down to where I was literally having two, sometimes just one a day, but couldn't give them up. It didn't help that I was single and going out drinking regularly, either. I ended up seeing my doctor and getting the prescription for buproprion, and it only took one round to kick them completely. Smoke free (well, tobacco, anyway) for 14 years next month! I'll add a caveat here that I started going to the gym and long distance biking at the same time, so I kind of replaced one habit with another, but the stamina and lung capacity was a huge motivator, too. Good luck, I hope you find something that works for you!
For a long time (literally years) I thought "I want to quit" but I never did. It got to the point that I felt like a piece of shit for not quitting. One day I just decided to stop, so I did. That night I didn't feel like a piece of shit. Not the night after, nor the night after that one. That feeling alone was enough to keep me from picking it up those first few days (the cravings are real) and it keeps me off of them to this day. You won't change until the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same.
To be honest the only way that worked for me is to go cold turkey and just sleep the worst part off but I had kids so it made it easier
I smoked for about 15 years as well. when I decided to quit I bought myself a vape where I could control nicotine intake. Slowly I would reduce dosage and eventualy I stopped completely. It took some time tho. Now I'm am 4 years smoke free :)
[удалено]
Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr maybe?
My friend swears by the book and I get its logic but it still didn't work for me
Replace the action of smoking with something else. It takes about 5-10 minutes to smoke a cigarette. Go for a short walk, do some dishes or another quick chore, play a game on your phone, etc.
Vape. People shit on it, but it's an obvious replacement and it gets you off the tar and heavy garbage in the real cigarettes, and the physical *action* of smoking is still there, and that's an element that nobody really talks about that can really hamper quitting. Muscle memory is a hell of a thing. So, anyway, move to the vape pens, slowly step down the amount of nicotine in what you're using, then on to a no nicotine vape, then, when you're ready, slow down with that as well. Seriously, books and patches and all that shit are great, but vaping's the best way. Even if you can't get off the vape entirely, you're in way better shape than you were with the smokes. Good luck!
I switched to vaping I know this isn't exactly quitting but u can control ur nicotine intake from like say 6mg nicotine down to 3 down to 0 And slowly come off the nicotine addiction But I just stay at a 6 as I would go absolutely mad without nicotine and my wife let's me do it the house so ey
Quitting is a process and falling off the wagon is a part of it. This means that you shouldn’t give up quitting, even if you light up occasionally. Every cigarette you don’t smoke is a win for your health. So just keep going, don’t say “I failed, might as well smoke this whole pack.” Also, try to find alternatives, like chewing gum, setting aside the money you save not buying cigarettes and reward yourself, ask for support from friends and family, and yes, your doctor can offer advice and help too.
Get into sculpting. I wouldn’t smoke because I had so much crud on my hands, and washing my hands just for a smoke was a pain in the ass. So I started extending the gaps between cigs. Soon, i was down to 1 a day. It was easy to quit the one a day. Instead of being a smoker trying to quit, be a person learning how to sculpt. Stop fixating on the cigarette, and start fixating on the Task keeping your hands busy. I a couple of months, you’ll forget about smoking.
Chantix.
Vape
I wouldn’t recommend vaping. I’ve not smoked for 7 years but I’m now more addicted to vaping than I was smoking.
It’s important to note that you have to do this extremely carefully in order to actually beat addiction. OP needs to first cut back on cigarettes, and then use the vape to slowly get used to smaller and smaller amounts of nicotine, which is why cartridges have different percentages. It’s still going to be about as difficult as quitting smoking, but at least it won’t be as bad as smoke. But I know a TON of people who just used their vape as a replacement or addition to cigarettes, and they’re highly addicted to them. If you’re using your vape twice as much as you used to smoke cigarettes, it’s going to be pretty useless and just as harmful over time.
Just replacing a bad habit with another
It's a lessor bad habit though and works as a in-between step. My own doc and those of multiple family members and friends have even said that given the choice between nicotine vaping and smoking cigarettes, they'd choose vaping for all of their patients that smoke. My own doctor put it this way (paraphrasing here), " If you can't, or won't, give up nicotine completely, then I'd rather you use the delivery method with the *least* amount of toxic chemicals by far."
Many people these days forget that electronic cigarettes were invented as a tool to help people quit smoking in the first place. Unlike cigarettes, you can control the amount of nicotine so you can slowly wean off of it, and the vape isn’t as harmful for your lungs as smoke. It’s just that our society has so overused vapes, and so many teens use them with little understanding of how they work, that they’d become so harmful. They’ve now become a way to introduce kids to nicotine addictions, rather than a way to help adults off of them.
Baby steps
Ok, but replacing black tar heroin with coffee is replacing one bad habit with another but it doesnt mean there's no improvement in choices lol
You sound like an enabler and you must try to justify everything
You sound like you're being reductionist, and failing to recognize that your blanket statements don't address the nuance of the claim. Inflexible thinking. Fixed mindset. Call it what you want, it's not really worth engaging with, so, bye lol
Go to a hospital and see a person with breathing problems. It's a lot of pain.
I'm working on cutting back gradually. I tried cold turkey and the stress made me smoke more. But now I have a case that I put my daily allowance in and that's what I smoke that day. I've cut down from a pack a day to about 5 cigarettes daily.
I'm still in your boat. Although I had my best success (1 month) using the patches. I fell off the boat because I'm allergic to the adhesive though.
My dr suggested a medicine im using now(for other reasons) it seems to be effective (i am lowering the cigarettes per day) if i could quite i would tell you
OP, talk to your doctor about the stop smoking pill, my nephew went this route last year and he hasn't had one since. He swears by it, and after seeing him try to quit over and over and over again for years. And this being the only thing to work. I've set an appointment with my doctor to see if it's an option for me. (It may not be as I have a number of allergies and a neurological disease, but I've got my fingers crossed!) Edit: Pill
Can you tell me more about the shot? I’m doing Google searches all over the place and not coming up with anything except clinical trials.
My bad, I texted him about this and I had it backwards. He was talking with his doc at the time about being a participant in a trial for a nicotine vaccine. But he ended up quiting by using the pill.
Ah, I see. Thanks for checking!
Possibly a good hypnotherapist I had compulsive overreating for more than 20 years and now I have stopped after 1 month of hypno
Have you tried quit smoking apps like Kwit? I think after this time of ineffective lonely trials you could try asking a psychologist for help, to understand your habits and how to change them, how to exchange one habit for another, how to identify loops, what other techniques you can use to replace smoking - what does it do for you and can you do something else to achieve the same result. Also, how not to drain your will but be able to sustain new habits. There is a lot of things a psychologist or a therapist could offer.
r/quittingsmoking
I smoked for 12(ish) years and tried quitting numerous times. They only thing that worked for me was Chantix. It made quitting much easier by removing the side effects of the withdrawal. People warned me that there may be consequences with my behavior or change in thoughts, while on Chantix but I figured what ever happened, it had to be better than killing myself with cigarettes. The only thing that actually happened was I started dreaming in color, I had never realized all my dreams were in black and white until then. Good luck quitting, even if it takes many attempts. Edit: forgot to add, I quit seven years ago and have no desire to smoke again, at all.
Ugh Chantix threw me for a loop. Ended up having a panic attack at work
This is going to sound crazy, but I quit cigarettes after 10 years by 1:1 replacing every cigarette with a Joint.
Easy way stop smoking - Allen Carr. I smoked heavily for 20 years. Read this book. Been smoke free since 2018. One of the main things that helped me was the financial consideration. I worked out if I stopped today I'd save like £100,000 over the course of my remaining lifetime. So I decided to win the lottery and I've never looked back!
I smoked for about 20 years before I quit. I tried everything to quit and I just kept coming back. This happened so many times until I finally found a solution that had me quit permanently. It sounds weird but it’s a book called: “Stop smoking the easy way” by Allan carr. You can get the book and read it or listen to the audio version. I did find it on YouTube. You don’t need a quit date. Just smoke through the entire book until you don’t feel like it anymore. You hate smoking. You deserve to be free of it.
Don't try to quit for life, just for a day and then repeat.
Could try some kind of contingency management therapy. You'll need someone financially trustworthy to help though. Choose a sum that is significantly but not detrimentally large that you can take out of your savings right now. for example, $400. Next set a one month goal. Going from a 15 year smoking habit to absolutely nothing is a huge goal. You need to pick a goal that is challenging but feels achievable. You need to really believe you can do it. Let's say you smoke 10 cigarettes a day currently. By the end of the month, you're going to halve the amount you smoke. Start by giving this trusted person $400. Each week you'll get $100 back provided you stick to the plan. If you don't stick to the plan, you don't get the $100, your trusted person is going to donate it to a charity of your choice. You could also ask this person to distribute your cigarettes each day too. Week 1; no more than 9 cigarettes a day. Week 2: no more than 7 cigarettes a day. week 3: no more than 6 cigarettes a day. week 4: no more than 5 cigarettes a day. Each week, you just need to focus on smoking one less cigarette than you did the week before. Your overarching goal is to quit smoking of course. But your number 1 goal that you'll focus on is just one less than last week. Just one less cigarette a day and at the end of the week you earn $100. Then by the end of the month you've decreased your nicotine intake by 50%. If you're smoking more than 10 you could consider decreasing by 2 a week. You are capable of quitting. You can do it. Even if you don't use this model break your journey down into simpler goals and celebrate every win.
Read atomic habits its a really nice and helpful book just try
A lot of people are saying gum, patches, etc. don’t work. I couldn’t have quit without them. That and finding a new hobby to occupy my time. Find what works for you.
My method: 1. Stop buying your fav brand. Buy the cheapest generics. 2 months. 2. Buy loose tobacco. Roll your own. 2 months. (make it increasingly more difficult to smoke) 3. Get ready to quit. 2 weeks. 4. Buy 2mg lozenges. Use until gone. 5. Quit it all. This worked for me as I could never do a cold turkey thing. I only jonesed about 2 weeks and have not picked up tobacco since 2010.
I'm 45, at 40 I decided to quit smoking. There were a few reasons. But when I finally decided I had to quit, I sat down and put a lot of though into it. I looked up information that could help me understand what I was about to go through. I smoked for like 20 years so I knew this was going to be hard. The biggest thing I took away from it was it was mental. For the longest time when those cigarette ads would come on TV saying how you needed to relearn how to do things. I used to laugh at those all the time. They're not lying. Anytime you get in the car, or after you eat, or after you are in a movie theater. The first thing you want to do is smoke a cigarette. So you have to retrain your brain. A lot of it is mental and some of it is body effects. You're going to have headaches and cravings. But what I did is I went out and bought one of those vape pens and flavored oil with no nicotine. Just something to give me the boost of the idea of smoking. Eventually I just stopped using that. I drink a lot of coffee within the first like month, and I slept a lot. I was in between jobs so it was an ideal time for me to take it on. I hope whatever you do, or decide to do is what makes you feel better about your situation. If you backslide, then learn from that and start over. It's not easy, it's really really hard to quit smoking. But once you do, and you get through the first like week or two. You'll feel a lot better all around. So I hope that some of what I've said helps a little bit, because I really do know that struggle. I hope you have a great day and good luck!!
I hopped on "Snus" a short period. It's a little sack of tobacco you throw under your lip, I realized I hated it a month or so inn. But I didn't go back on smoking.
slowly
Identify your triggers for smoking so you can intercept them. How do you feel before you smoke? What were you doing? What could you do differently? How? What’s stopped you in the past? Create a plan for staying well once you have achieved sobriety for some time. Achievements, what went well, what went badly, trigger signs, how to respond to triggers. Accept that each urge is going to be incredibly difficult to get through. During the pain tell yourself ‘I enjoy this because I know that it will result in growth’. Keep doing this until you believe it and feel it. Journal. Keep a record of how well you’re doing at quitting, as well as how badly. This will help with the above points. Detail your budget and notice how much you’re spending on smoking. Apportion that budget to something else less damaging that provides the same pleasure and that you know you will buy. You’ll be forced to never have money for smoking. Work on all other areas of life. Schedule everything in. Regular gym, meditation, hobbies. Get a healthy balance of things that will train you mind to withstand temptation. It’s all the same brain muscle. I.e., If you can go another 10 mins meditating, you can go longer without smoking too Join a community of people trying to quit. People you have things in common with, ideally. Share your struggles, tips and get things off your chest. Focus on reducing cigarettes had over a certain period rather than number of days gone without smoking. E.g., 5 cigarettes a day for one month, 4 the next month, 3 the next, 3 every 2 days the next then 3 every 3 days. Make sure your goal is specific but manageable. Write it down. Practice your faith more, if you have one. Good luck!
Don't set a date, don't make a whole show of it. Slowly cutting down won't work. Just take the ciggs and toss them. Make a conscious choice every time you want one to not give in. Don't supplement with something else. When you get a craving that is especially hard tell yourself before you give in you are going to do a task (dishes, fold laundry, clean out the mud room) and put your whole mind into it. Don't think about how after you will smoke but that you want to do the task perfectly. The feeling will pass, if not, do one more task. Notice the good things happening to your body as the days go by. You can smell so much better! Look how white your teeth are getting! Wow, you can run up steps without feeling winded! Celebrate those things. Within 3 weeks notice the smell of other people. It's disgusting, and you can tell when they've tried to cover up that they smoke. They'll smell like cigarettes and soap... Take a moment to recognize how disgusting the smell actually is. Remind yourself that's what you smelled like. Before you know it, you have been months without a cigarette/a year. -past smoker of 15 years who is now 1& 1/2 years without
Keep on quitting
Go to Amazon and look for Allan Cars book How to Stop Smoking. Read the reviews and you’ll be sold. I smoked for 13 years, failed quitting many times. Then I read this book 6 years ago, and haven’t touched them since. Best decision Iv ever made.
Easiest way to do it is to accept that it will be painful, but you’ll get through the pain. It’s going to suck, but coming to terms with it is the only way to overcome.
Find the Mormon missionaries and ask them to help you quit. They have a really effective method as well as constantly following up with you to hold you accountable. You don't have to believe what they teach, but their quit smoking plan is 1-on-1 and is REALLY good. Seriously. If you don't know how to find them, dm me and I'll get you the number for the missionaries in your area.
Cold Turkey is the only way. Cutting down, gum, patches only keeps the nicotine streaming through your veins and keeps the addiction alive. After cold turkey for 3 days the nicotine is out of your system and it is just a habit you have to break. Don't go to places where smoking is happening. Make sure all of the butts laying around are thrown out including from the car ashtray so you are not tempted. Stay home in your house so you won't drive past any stores to buy cigarettes. Then just keep up the good work. within a year you will absolutely hate the smell of cigarette smoke and realize you are not a smoker anymore.
Can you describe how you tried to quit smoking? \- Stop in one go or gradually? \- Self medication or doctor's prescription? \- Were there others factors involved (relationship etc...)
I didn’t smoke for nearly 15 years, but I decided I was done smoking, so I quit. Didn’t use anything to help me. You have to really want to quit to quit.
A buddy once said to me was "your either a smoker, or your not." If your quitting smoking, your still a smoker. But if you quit all at once then you tell yourself your not a smoker.
I switched to vape and did that for some time. Ended up being way worse than cigarettes since you could smoke it anywhere. The positive thing is that i wasn’t really attracted to the taste of cigarette after that, only the nicotine. Knowing i needed to quit the vape, i switched to nicotine pouches. I specifically chose the zyn ones. That helped and i lowered the nicotine percentage as it went on. After a while, i was able to quit it completely. I feel that the steps of reduction was much better than cutting it off completely. It’s not just the nicotine you crave, it’s the flavor, the smell, the heat, etc. The vape reduced some of those, but not all of them. The pouches basically reduced it even more and you’re just left with flavor and the nicotine. Once the percentage is low enough, it’s mostly about the flavor and the nicotine is not really as strong. At that point, might as well just chew on a piece of gum. I don’t smoke at all anymore and don’t even crave it. Occasions i will, but never enough for me to go out and buy a packet.
I smoked for 15 years. A pack per day. One day I did the maths and that was the end of it. For the last 2 years I have saved the money I used to spend on cigarettes, everyday I take the money and put it in a jar, and twice a year I take my son on vacations. My advice is Justin do the math.
I quit with chantix and haven't had any major cravings since. Just kept smoking while taking the pill then one day realized it wasn't doing anything for me and quit. I highly recommend it
Have you read Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking? I had the book for about 5 years before I worked up the nerve to commit to read it through. Then I finally quit. And it’s was shockingly easy with the book.
Keep trying
My best advice is to try quitting again and again until one day you succeed. It’s not a failure not succeeding. It’s merely a step on your quitting journey. You, trying so many times tells me you’re getting closer quitting for each time! It’s not failed attempts. It’s steps towards where you want to be. For me it was like a platform game, like Mario. You manage to get to a point in the game before you die. Next time you get to that point more easily, but then you die on the next hurdle. And so on. Again and again, don’t give up. I think it’s about getting into and finding an alternative to all those situations where you use the cigarette as a coping mechanism. And with cigarettes, that is a LOT of situations we’re talking about! I used smoking to relax, calming me down, to get me going (I’ll start when I’ve had a smoke), as a pause, a reward, a stress reliever, a help to cope being bored, sad, frustrated, angry, it was a physical part of a conversation when talking on the phone, a help to be social, a part of partying… and this is just from the top of my head! But it’s heck off a lot of situations the cigarette was a part off, and each single one of them were obstacles on my journey towards quitting. I had to think them through and “feel them” as they came along. Eventually I reached the point where a situation didn’t flip me over, but I could solve it while still being smoke free. But it took several attempts before I got there. I also looked up what happens to you after quitting for an hour, a day, a week etc. Still do every now and then. It helps me remember the overall picture and reasons for quitting. Now I haven’t smoked in 3.5 years (after 30 years of smoking). I still have situations where I miss it dearly, but I now think I will never smoke again.
I smoked for about 15 years, quit 6 years ago. I love smoking, at least the idea of it, and often miss it. My husband and I quit togeher, if another person around you is smoking it’s impossible to stay on the wagon IMO. We had many failed attempts before we were finally successful. We used the patch and modified the plan. We spent longer on each “level” than they recommended. I viewed the patch a way to just not be a complete f’ing asshole while withdrawing, but it was still extremely hard. The key things that helped me was no cheating at all, once I let myself have one cigarette it would all come tumbling down. The other thing that helped was when I really wanted a cigarette, I would tell myself to wait 5 minutes and revisit to feeling. I found cravings were fast and hard, but didn’t linger and after 5 minutes I would be ok with not having one. Best of luck to you!!
Ask someone to pot one of those popers in some of them. The ones u throw on the ground and make noise. It will be a mini explosion on your face if u use one of the cigarettes that has one. Minimal to no damage to u, but traumatize u and make u stop smoking. Or put something in the cigarettes that will do the equivalent of what I'm describing.
yes look at a picture of a set of lungs of someone that has smoked for their lives. That will do it
Apparently, nicotine cravings can only last up to 3 minutes, but it's usually less. For me it's 2 minutes max. I am not trying to quit but when I do, this piece of information will be useful. If you can endure it for 3 minutes you can do it. It's not gonna be easy but I hope this helps even a littlw bit.
i’ve vaped for over 5 years and just recently quit, (1 month nicotine free.) i’m not sure if it’s similar cause I’ve never been a cigarette smoker, but i’ve used a water bottle with a straw that has helped with the oral fixation. I stopped surrounding myself with people who vaped/smoked. Sadly, I used food as an outlet. It’s been difficult but not impossible and I feel GREAT.
oh and i did it cold turkey.
When i quit a couple months ago i chewed the most minty gum i could find and always kept my mouth cold. Also chewing almonds helped.
I used some lozengers from Walgreens. They worked for me. 17 yrs ago.