help me quite tobacco!

Originally posted by rubbertramp
i'm such an idiot.
at 47 i've been an on/off smoker since i was about 13.
i was doing really well for the past months till i went and had a few beers with a friend who smokes.
please feel free to call me names, give me a hard time etc........i deserve it.
mods, if possible, cut a bit of slack, i'm asking for it.

Listen you filthy smoker, nobody likes you. When you walk down the street, and babies see you smoking? You know what that baby thinks? It thinks you're a dumb grown up. Ever notice vultures flying over your head? No? That's because not even a vulture would eat your tar-infested corpse.

Well that was fun.

I smoke too. Woke up, and my throat hurt. I am actually also quitting today. So yes, I will quit with you. Here is a tip that I learned today:

Willpower has nothing to do with quitting-

One cigaret = One cup of liquid bleach.

How much willpower does it take to not go into your laundry room and chug bleach? None. What if you were really drunk? Still no willpower. Once you change the way you perceive the cigaret, it will not take any energy to quit. Any physical withdraw or temptation from a friend will not amount to the way you perceive that nasty bleach bottle of a cigaret.

Once you realize that a cigaret is like drinking bleach, it doesn't take any effort to quit.

There is no social anxiety at the bar - Because you associate a cigaret to bleach.

Just keep thinking like that. - I'll see if it works too.

Also - Every time you really, desperately want to smoke -- drink a glass of cold water. Physiologically it is the same, illusive experts claim.

reply to post by rubbertramp


I asked my doctor about helping me quit...
put me on Chantrex... maybe not how it's spelled...
Anyway I havent quite but have dropped from one pack a day to one pack a week...

here's to hoping soon I can just walk away

PS thankfully I only have a $3 co-pay that drug is like $160 a box

it may not work for you, but after multiple tries, I quit cold turkey and constantly reminded myself how bad quitting sucks. Once I could get through the day, I would remember that I would never go through that again. It's been 12 years. Sadly, I picked eating as my activity to take my mind off smoking. Don't do that. Now the doctor is all over me about weight loss. there is just no making that man happy.

Originally posted by Neopan100
Well today is one week smoke free and for some reason I am struggling BIG TIME...I have been craving a smoke since I woke up.

Hang in there! I used the patch and experienced the same thing. Eventually the cravings only came every few days. Once, after I had gotten off of the patch, I went to the pharmacist to get more patches. He asked how long I had been using them. I told him I used them per the instructions and had been without them for 2 weeks and was having a monster craving. He said GO DO SOMETHING ELSE. Go get a milkshake. Go for a walk. This craving will pass.

Eventually, you may get a craving weekly. Eventually they will go. As for me, even the smell of a cigarette now makes me gag and I can only wonder why I ever started smoking in the first place!

Peace

I work as a stop smoking advisor in the UK.

The people who have most success are the ones who plan and prepare. Look at your routines and habits around smoking - keep a diary of them to identify what your personal trigger are and then change them. Alcohol and Coffee are the biggest triggers but everyone is different. Also write down all your reasons for quitting and the negatives of continuing smoking and look at them each time you want to smoke. It's easy to get blinkered and fixate on that next cigarette rather than looking at the big picture of why you're quitting.

In terms of products Chantix (Champix here) is the most successful aid according to our stats. Followed by NRT combination therapy which is usually patches and a product that you can control youself. I'm getting good reports about the mini lozenge at the moment - they act faster than many of the older types of oral NRT.

reply to post by ThinkingCap


Anansi is my little girls FAVORITE story! Nice avatar.



@JOHND: Thanks..It's tough but I have to keep chuggin' along like you said.

Hello,

I quit smoking about three years ago. The way I quit was based on a little bit of science and some corn syrup.

Behavior- All the decisions to act that we make in life are based on two things.
- Avoiding Pain
- Gain Pleasure

When you smoke a cigarette you are gaining tremendous amounts of pleasure.

In order to quit you must retrain yourself to think that you will be gaining pain by smoking and thus not gaining pleasure. All of the information is out there for your brain to accomplish this. Cancer, heart problems, money factors.,, etc etc etc

Problem is that as we are designed to use these two items to help us survive.. at least in a situation hundreds of thousands of years ago. Back then we gained pleasure by eating or having sex and procreating etc... Now we have those basic pleasures but also hundreds of other artificial ones that we have not evolved to deal with. The animal instincts in us is beating out the "human" brain power and rationalization gifts that we have not fully evolved yet. So basically we become slaves to the cigarettes because our bodies are gaining pleasure and the instinctual drive is stronger then our will power (rationalization). So to fix this we need to know how the brain works.

Well, anytime we create a behavior it is because we were led down this path by the above gaining pleasure or avoiding pain routes. Our brains have neurological pathways that reward this behavior by increasing the size of that particular pathway until it makes it a little bit bigger and stronger. Once this pathways has gotten bigger it becomes easier for the electric current of our thought to travel down this pathway as it has more room to travel. This is actually evolution trying to help us but in this case it is hurting us.

So we need time to reduce this pathway of thinking by doing a couple things slowly over time

1. Start coming up with a list of all the complications in your head and associate smoking repeatedly with gaining pain and not avoiding it. Go to a hospital and meet someone dying from it if you can. That should change your association.

2. We have to slowly reduce the positive pleasure of smoking into gaining pain. I did this by using a product that is not available to buy at the store in the USA. It is called nicobloc. You can google it. And no I do not work for them or anything like that.. it is merely that it makes scientific sense to me that I recommend it... plus I quit using it. It works by blocking 33% of the nicotine in your body with each drop placed and "PROPERLY" mixed into your filter.

I bought three bottles of it, and yes it is really high priced for what is actually in the bottle. But I had one in the car, 1 at work and 1 at home. I made a new years resolution not to quit, but to only place a drop of it on every smoke I had or I did not smoke... That is really important.. if you do not do this then you are not serious about quitting. And over time, while I did what I really wanted to do, smoke a cigarette, the neurological pathways in my brain slowly started adjusting to my new reality. The pleasure was being reduced and the pain (coughing, headaches, etc) were staying at the same level. At some point I made it to putting two drops on every cigarette which blocked 66% of the nicotine going into my body. I never went back to one and eventually the pain and pleasure was almost backwards. The sizes of my neurological pathways had changed and when I got a cold I quit and quit for good. It worked so good for me that even when I am wasted from drinking I still have no desire to smoke. Hope this helps. Feel free to IM me if you have any questions. GOOD LUCK!

reply to post by rubbertramp


Here's what worked for me.

Most people smoke 1 pack a day...most.

If that's you....

Mark the day and have a fresh pack ready for the morning. Smoke normally for the first day. Any remaining at the end of the day, throw out.

Next day...

Open a new pack and throw one cig in the toilet. Smoke normally for the day. Again, any remaining, throw in the toilet.

Day 2. New pack. Take 2 and throw away. Repeat the day.

Day 3...take 3 out...and so on.

If you see the math and are buying 20 cig packs, you will be down to 1 cig on day 20. (Day 25 if you are buying the 25 pack)

Last day and all you did was slowly cut 1 cig out per day. Not dramatic but you relax your body and mind into it rather than cold turkey.

On another note. Did you know that mountain climbers carry an emergency cig in their packs? If they are having shortness of breath because of the height and thin air, a cig will expand your lungs.

Just thought it was interesting that a cig has actually saved some people while it kills so many.

Good luck with whatever approach you take.

It's easier to quite if you burden the responsibility rather than reaching out for help from others.

Most people I know who stopped smoking did so on their own. They blinked and cured their brain, if you will.

Have to mention it again.... simply because it IS the easiest way to quit smoking.
Read Allen Carrs "The easy way to quit smoking"...

reply to post by jude11


I know several people that have used this method with great success. I didn't think it would work for me since my husband and I share a pack/day. We are using the NRT right now.

Hi there, I am not going to read the previous posts on your thread so I apologize if I am repeating what someone else has said.

I am also 47. I smoked cigs since I was about 15-16 years old. By the time I was in my 30's I was smoking two packs a day and then some. I have an addictive personality and thought I would never get off of them, but, I am now four years smoke-free and I do not even have a craving or an inclination to ever pick up another one. I can sit near people who smoke I can even spend a day alone with opened packs laying about (my partner is a smoker still).

Here is what I did. I went to my doctor and told them that I wanted to try Wellbutrin (an Anti-psychotic found to help in cessation). He handed me a 30 day supply for free ( I assume most doctors keep supplies of this stuff on hand).

I began the 8-days of taking the Medication and continued to smoke (which is the instruction to do so), then on the 8th day I quit. What I discovered was that the Wellbutrin immediately cut me off from the effects of nicotine on day one, so by the next day of starting even though I was still smoking I was not getting any benefit from the nicotine and I began having my "fits" right away. By the 8th day of nicotine "fits" the 9th day of not smoking was no different. I was suppose to stay on the Wellbutrin for at least 20 days or up to 3 months, but I could not.

Since I am a visual thinker and I see in pictures I was unable to think or remember anything. I was facing mid-terms in college and I could not remember what I had been studying, so by the 12th day I quit the Wellbutrin. I still managed to pass all my classes and kept my GPA intact (thank GOD for that). I just continued on without either cigs or Wellbutrin from there and then I discovered something very interesting. I could no longer smell tobacco. I could be standing over the ashtray in the smoke itself and I couldn't detect any smell at all coming from the cig. I still had my "fits" or what I thought were cravings but later I realized that I was not having fits at all but rather I was experiencing small bursts of anxiety. I was literally having anxiety attacks all my life and my treatment for it was Nicotine of all things.

Once I finally came to grips with what the Anxiety really was and how it was effecting me I began walking more, exercising more and suddenly focusing on my breath. I managed to ward off these episodes within minutes of them starting and I then realized that I did not have a desire or a craving for a cig. Seriously, almost two years went by before I knew it and still I could not smell a cig.

I can say though, now I do smell them and I think they smell marvelous! I love the smell of tobacco in the room, pipe tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, you name it I love it. I have jars of pipe tobacco here (because of my partner) and I adore the aroma. I still have no desire for it. I only like the smell, much as I love the smell of food.

I will admit, when I quit I was about 170 pounds and I shot up to about 220 pounds within two years. I was told many times that weight gain is normal and not to worry about it. I never did, I openly accepted the new "Santa" look although I do wish I were a bit more jolly LOL. Eventually by last year (my third year off cigs) I started realizing my metabolism was beginning to adjust. Without any efforts at all I finally withered back down to a reasonable 165 pounds and with good muscle definition. I am just about ready to turn 48 and I feel fabulous.

I did go through a cascade of health problems after I quit and I cannot help but think that I was actually going through the cleansing process and this was the expression my body was doing. Nothing lasted for long, aches/pains, swelling, you name it, if an old person ever had it I had it! Now I feel much better and getting better every day.

I do note that it did not make me a better singer in the shower though! LOL I also did other things like using a really good water filter and now I am not even a person who wears deodorants and I do not "smell" like I used to. I can be near the fussiest noses and no one has ever complained to me and I have asked, believe me, I used to be a serious deodorant user. I can sweat like a pig and still smell like a flower

So, think about it on the psychological level, try to cut the Nicotine firing endorphins and see if it doesn't help you overcome this, it certainly worked for me!

You will probably notice a drastic aging, but that might just be you catching up to yourself and detoxifying. Eventually you will see a much better you in the future!

Goodluck!

I'm 23 and have been smoking since I was 18. I tried to quit before, I used gum, they were rubbish! In the end I actually had a gum in my mouth and spat it out in exchange for a cigerette.
I've been on the patch now for 7 days, you get cravings but its entirely possible to go without. Someone else said get hungover for the day you start, I did that and it worked a treat. I chewed up around 5 pens to on the first day. I still find my self going through the routines, I even put my coat on and stood outside patting my pockets once before I realised what I was doing!
My dad quit cold turkey, he watched his parents die in pain from smoking. My entire memory of them is two frail bodies, immobile and smoking. My ten year old sister used to say '15 minutes' everytime she saw me smoke, implying the amount of time it would take off my life. She asked my what they tasted like 7 days ago.

I can't count the number of times I quit before I quit for good (August 19, 2001). So, keep trying. One day you'll learn that you CANNOT have just one. And don't go into the old habit areas (having some beers with smoking friends) after you quit until you've been off for a GOOD long time!

I used patches and herbal cigarettes to help make it bearable for me. Get set up, have LOTS of alternative activities (straws, cloves to chew on, celery stix, carrots) have it all planned out and set a date and do it. Then NEVER smoke another. As a person who was highly addicted to cigarettes, that's what I advise.

Good luck!

reply to post by totalmetal


Good for you and your mom, glad you both quit smoking! Electronic cigarettes/personal vaporizers helped me kick a 32-year smoking habit. E-cigg makers sell e-liquid/e-juice for them that has no nicotine, and some that have reduced amounts of nicotine, making it easier to lower dosages until a person no longer feels the need for nicotine. I've been smoke-free since Dec. 1, 2010 and have no desire to ever smoke again. I think what I really missed was the actual act of smoking itself, so the e-cigg worked wonders for me. Now I "vape" instead--and my lungs feel great! No more wheezing!

Someone else here mentioned it on the first page and I thought I would too, to try an electronic cigarette. I got mine in the mail on September 20 last year and haven't smoked since. (There are TONS of models available but avoiding anything that costs more than $30 - $60 for a starter kit or you're being ripped off.)

I make my own "smoke juice" and I am down to about 8mg nicotine in it today. Total cost for me: about $0.10 per ML of liquid (which equates, for me, to about 6 tobacco cigs.) and I go through about 5ml a day. My plan is to be completely off nicotine entirely for my 1 year.

I tried Wellbutrin (before Chantix came out) and all that did was make me crazy. The commercial for Chantix scares me too much to ever put that stuff in my body. *shiver* The gum and patch would work for about a day but I would find myself chewing my fingers down 'til they bled and when I wasn't doing that, I was eating anything and everything. LOL No matter what I tried, I always ended up smoking very quickly. The psychological part of smoking is the killer for me. This was the only thing that worked for me and I can honestly say, for the first time in 25+ years of heavy smoking, that I will never smoke again.

Originally posted by Centur1on
I work as a stop smoking advisor in the UK.

I would LOVE to do that for a living. I think it's very commendable.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Look mate its easier than you think...Just go and buy some snuff..after a weeks use the habbit of lighting and puffing disappears.Then Knock off the snuff over a period of a couple of weeks.Just watch the weight gain.

man, look at all these replies.
when i had my last ciggy of the day yesterday, we were on the first page.
will take me a bit to read all of this, thanx for replying.

reply to post by flice


Agreed, I posted the link for the book on Amazon on page 2. It really is the most helpful way I have ever found. No patch, no gum, no withdrawals, no fits. Nothing. Just no desire to smoke, not feeling deprived in any way, shape, or form. Its pretty awesome.