25 Year Smoker Ready To Quit! Support thread!

im a smoker, and I am 25 years old, I started when I was 12 and a 1/2. I would love to quit, and Pretty much all it would take for me to do so it would be if I was thrust into some sort of romantic relationship.

sadly, no ladies want to date a smoker,


[edit on 9-7-2009 by drsmooth23]

reply to post by Greenize


Hey, I hope it works out for you! I am a smoker been it about 2 years now, but my parents have been smokers for 20+ years. My dad when he quit used to buy cinnamon sticks, better then toothpicks imo, you cant stab yourself and it taste better too! You can also try the gum/patches but I don't like these because its like 1size fits all in 3 steps. I don't smoke more then 10 cigs a day (i watch myself) so the gum is to much even the lowest amount along with the patches. So i ended up getting to much, more then i would if i was smoking. Also i don't like the "burn" feeling of the patches/ gum. You can also try a reward system with teas. There is a tea called "smokers tea" its pretty good and its good for your lungs. Brings down inflammation, and stimulates the creation of phlegm, so you can cough up crap. Also for an example if you can say after a meal you get a hardcore craving, you can go brush your teeth that helps your mind shift to something different, also helps with food cravings if you are a "snacker" because of quitting. Hope this helps and best of luck to you, YOU CAN DO THIS!!!


DK

Wishing you luck as you quit forever starting tomorrow!

I smoked cigarettes for 3 to 4 years before quitting.

THEORY:
The 4 elements of life are water(food, H20), earth(food), fire(sunlight, heat), wind(breathe). Being conscious of these might be essential for you since you went on for 25 years. Anyway, these elements are what life craves. When we smoke enough stogies in a given time, my theory is that the craving for all these is alleviated TEMPORARILY. I also think that food makes the craving for a smoke increase because it drawls oxygen away from the extremities and toward the core. It also makes you hungry for the same reason unless you smoke enough, or at least that's the case for me.

With that said. Here is what my daily routine was.
morning: wake up and go outside. Stretch and breathe in that fresh air(wind). Also you might go outside shirtless so as to get more sun(fire). Drink plenty of water all of the time. Take a shower if you feel or smell dirty. Then MEDITATE. I attribute a loss of self control to being unfriendly towards any living thing including your own body, the vessel that your SOUL inhabits. Strengthening your souls relationship with the body and brain is what an addiction free person lives by. An addiction is behavior that leads to a TEMPORARY feeling of satisfaction. Doing things for the FUTURE is the exact opposite of how an addict lives. Addicts live in the MOMENT for the MOMENT. Enlightened people live in the MOMENT for the FUTURE, rather than in the MOMENT for the MOMENT. Reckless people will go from one MOMENTARY satisfaction to the next. This is how people get ADD, theoretically. Enlightened people stay on an important task for as long as necessary to accomplishing the goal. So just before you decide to engage in an addictive behavior being able to ask yourself, why am I doing this? Can be the first step. So even if you do break down and smoke you now know you committed an act for temporary pleasure and permanent damage or at least a permanent waste of time.

Meditation can temporarily free you from all addictions. I say this is temporary because once meditation is over that divine state of mind seems to get degraded from many things. Bad air, sugar!, being unkind to others, just about any sort of sin or unhealthy act.

So then I go on with my day. All the while keeping it a goal to do something meaningful. I will never regret spending my time to do something meaningful, and therefore quitting got easier and easier as I began to accomplish more and more meaningful tasks. When you start to feel life getting better because of a habitual change, that change stays.

[edit on 9-7-2009 by C0mmonen5e]

Originally posted by jimbo2167
reply to post by Greenize

 

Hi friend.
I myself have been smoking for 30 years.
I actually love smoking and smoke around 30/40 a day.
I've tried stopping several times, patches, gum, inhalators.

Even the thought of quitting breaks me out in a cold sweat.

Until recently.

My daughter bought me an e-cig for fathers day, and this is my 3rd day
without a real smoke, a record for me.

The thing that helps me with the e-cig is the whole effect.
You inhale and get the throat hit then blow smoke rings.
Whilst it is the early stages this is the best thing I have ever
tried to help me quit smoking and if this doesn't work i'll happily
smoke the rest of my life away with real smokes.



[edit on 9-7-2009 by jimbo2167]

[edit on 9-7-2009 by jimbo2167]

As I see it, if you make your body an environment where cancers wont survive (7.3-7.5 Ph alkaline) you WILL NOT get cancer, so that should not be a worry. Also one of my moms coworkers has a pretty interesting way of looking at it. She says, everyone dies of something, and if she wants to smoke, she will. Anything these days can kill you, simply getting into a car to crossing the street is putting your life on the line. I am kinda in line with her. Do what makes you feel happy, and go for it.

DK

Stop all addictive behavior and enrich your life! An addictive action is an action taken for temporary pleasure that must again be repeated for slightly less temporary pleasure. This perpetuation leads to a more and more meaningless existence. A non-addictive act is an act that is done in the moment for the future, usually to accomplish a goal. Once this goal is accomplished new goals must be found, thus there is less repetition in life and more things are getting done.

Congratulations on trying to quit. I quit 5 years ago. I wasn't a long time smoker but still addicted. I quit cold turkey, and ate a lot of licorice when I got the urge to smoke. I also read that you should rearrange your areas that you use to smoke at, so my computer are was changed and I no longer sat on the couch in the same area. It took some time but now I can proudly say I would never go back. I hate the smell of smoke. Sadly, my husband still smokes but I have forced him outside! lol

Good luck!!

My mother smoked a pack a day for almost 20 years and quit in a single day after I told her, when I was very young, that I did not want her to die.

She never smoked another cigarette after that.

She kept a pack of cigarettes in the cabinet for some time as a reminder for why she hated them so much: because they were taking her life away.

I'm almost 15 and I have been smoking for 15 YEARS!!!! I'm in the process of quitting now. I'm using patches, though the process has been very difficult I'm confident I can overcome.

Congrats to you for saying no to the Man's poison.

First you need to start to hate them... theres so many reasons.... they make you go places and do things against your own will.... theres ground up dead rats in most of the "top brand" packs..... YOUR BEING SUFFOCATED!!!

i suggest hiking far and wide find a good secluded place... set camp... smoke plenty of weed... a joint everytime you feel a craving... spend 3 days in the wilderness away from civilization with fress air.... no cigarettes... no way to easily get cigarettes... dont smoke the cigarettes...
then pride on your success and never go back!!!

3 days the nicotenes out then its all in your head

21 days to make a habit
only 7 to brake it

[edit on 9-7-2009 by LosTNForGotteNWayS]

Congratulations on your decision to quit. I was a pack a day smoker for 15 years and have been off of them for 10 years now. Tried a bunch of times, then met a man who wanted to marry me but said the smoking was a dealbreaker. I loved him more than the cigarettes, and that was that. It wasn't easy, but went on a 2 week vacation with him where I couldn't smoke, and I found myself not wanting to smoke because I wanted to be with him more than I wanted to smoke. I kept repeating to myself "I am a nonsmoker", and reveling in how that felt. I'd repeat it many times a day, enjoying the sensation of BEING a nonsmoker. The more I repeated it, the more I felt like a nonsmoker. I know this might not apply to your situation, but I just want you to know that it can be done, and the brain will bend to your will.

reply to post by Greenize


oh hey good for you!

you can do it but it won't be easy like everybody here says.

i smoked first time for over ten years then quit cold turkey. it was really tough for the first five days but eased back off after that.

i didn't smoke again for a little over ten years then i started back up after going out for drinks with some smoking friends and guess what happened.

kool filter kings.. i swear if those things were never made i wouldn't have ever had a taste for it.

i smoked second time for almost ten years and couldn't do the cold turkey thing no matter how hard i tried.

then i broke my appendix.

i found the perfect stop smoking tool as a result.
four days in a hospital bed and ...painkillers. (codeine, actually).

i don't really recommend it, but it's been five years and i don't care whether others around me smoke or not, i don't want it.

Congratulations on trying. I have been 4 months now without a smoke. I still have dreams about throwing in the towel but their not gonna get me this time, lol. I finally decided to kick the habit after the last tax hike. Tired of paying to kill myself and the people around me. I quit cold turkey but I also made sure I kept the tools that could lead me to stumble out of the picture. I actually threw the ash tray in my truck away as well as the ones at my house. I can tell you things will surely taste better and you can breathe easier and my sense of smell has been amplified quite a bit as well. Just started doing yard work and working out and quit drinking alcohol for the first week and a half because I new the urge to smoke would be the greatest if I was drinking. I can't tell anyone I will never smoke another cigarette, but I can say I have saved around $800 so far and enjoy the extra spending money. The one negative is my wife thinks I have turned into a pompous a--hole since I quit but I assure her I have been one the whole time.

Have you been slowly cutting down or are you quitting cold turkey? After smoking for so long quitting cold turkey can be such a huge shock on your system, and could cause you some problems. So I have heard Good luck. I plan on quitting my self soon.

I have been a casual smoker for 4 years. I've made several half-hearted efforts to stop, but never with conviction.

I am a new member to ATS as of today, although I have been a browser of the site for a couple months. I am an improviser with a compassionate supportive way of living life.

Greenize thanks for your post, I hope that knowing you have all this support will help you realize you don't need this drug.

I'm in. I won't smoke another cigarette.

My advice is to take up the briar my friend. Pipe smoking is healthier and (in my opinion) much more enjoyable than cigarettes. It is more of a hobby rather than a habit.

Best of luck to ya'.

Originally posted by vox2442
A friend of mine recently quit (I'm thinking about it, myself). the first two weeks are the killer.

His solution was to take a 2 week vacation. Something about being in a new environment with a new routine made it a lot easier, or so I'm told. Gets rid of all of the normal triggers and so on.

I don't smoke but I like your friend's idea. But is it not similar to drinking as well? I used to drink about 6 beers a day after work, I didn't see anything wrong with it and I didn't feel like I was addicted to it. I still drink on and off one day of the week but not daily anymore, looking back I can't see what I saw in it really. I knew it relaxed me but now through meditative understanding and discipline, I kind of feel alcohol or any kind of drug, inlcuding caffiene just gets in the way. I don't need to relax anymore from an external source, or am really in need of relaxing aside from a good chair. I never understood the whole vacation thing either, I don't need to drink on the beach for a week and forget life, i want an adventure.

Escapism, stress, the innability to understand one's circumstances and thus unwanted focus on internal struggles as well as desire, all very powerful things, you just need to make yourself stronger.

There is wisdom in suffering. Overcoming it is an experience of personal growth, it is very rewarding and you know life only gets better because you have one less struggle keeping you down.

Your body doesn't need nicotine or all the chemicals along with it, so don't let that craving tell you otherwise, tell it to shut up, focus on your breathing, center yourself and let it pass.

Best of luck to all of you. Smoking is awful, the addiction, the toxins. You just know its a conspiracy, because it seems like willful harm and torture.

Anyways, best of luck to all.

Originally posted by projectvxn
I'm almost 15 and I have been smoking for 15 YEARS!!!! I'm in the process of quitting now. I'm using patches, though the process has been very difficult I'm confident I can overcome.

Congrats to you for saying no to the Man's poison.

Damn, that's some hardcore stuff right there.



Your parents must have been really laid back if they let you spark up when you were 1, haha.

Hey,

One of my friends has tried all these complicated ways to quit smoking and all of them failed. He then stumbled upon a really simply solution. He placed a rubberband around his wrist and everytime he thought about having a smoke he pulled the rubberband back and let it snap against his wrist and focused on the the pain. He told me it helped him asscociated his need for a smoke with a feeling of pain. Sometimes the simply ways work the best.

Goodluck

My self, my sister, my husband and a couple others here on the ranch all quit smoking three weeks ago today. We were all furious over the prices of the last shipment of American ciggs that came in and we all made a pact never to buy another cigg again. So far so good, none of us are smoking but now we can't stand to be around each other lol. Just kidding we're all hanging in there and I'm sure you'll do the same.

My sister's planning on getting a month under her belt just so she can say she did it cold turkey, then she's going to get some e-ciggs. She's a real witch and things just aren't the same without that smoke following her around if ya know what I mean.

You can do it!!!!