Giving Up Smoking

I've tried twice. First time I stopped smoking for about 5 month then I started again and for now I don't smoke for about a year. Nicotine patches, gums and a lot of candies - that's what helped me. But it was very very hard though.
 
bobtee said:
Seriously, dont do it, i gave up almost 3 years ago and it was the worst thing i ever did, i piled on 3 stone and my health is terrible, my blood pressure is sky high for which im taking 10mg Ramipril daily (cough sweets).

Been advised for general well being to start again but i cant, it makes me physically sick which is apparently a long lasting side effect of the treatment i was on to stop, stopping was easy, getting on with life afterwards is the hard part.

Stopping interupts your immune system, it no longer produces loads of anti bodies to fight off the crap in your body from smoke

Dont do it
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i gave up 10th sept 2010,very difficult thing to do and sometimes you need to fight off the urge to start up again. However in the long run its got to be the right thing to do.Wish you well and everyone else who has stopped .
With respect to Gary but he is giving bad advice by saying don't do it.

Plus the cash saved you can treat yourself with to new equipment. good luck all. Gary think again.regards bob
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speak for yourself but more than 90% wont have that issue, yeh i put 2 stone on but would rather be fat than stinking like an ashtray
 
I've been smoking for most of my life, but I've got it down to 3 - 4 a day which is still a fair way from giving up, but I suppose it's better than nothing. This is probably nuts, but I just can't seem to take the final step. My wife has never smoked, but she has never badgered me about it, and is convinced that I don't really want to stop, and that I'm just hanging onto it for some psychological reason. I think she's probably right.

Funnily enough, I can sit through a 12 hour international flight without even thinking about smoking, but it starts becoming an obsession as soon as we land. I get very irritable if there are delays at baggage reclaim, immigration and customs, because I want to get to a smoking area, even if it's outside in the rain and wind.

I need to take that step, but just can't bring myself to do it.
 
6 years now for me and the other half.
 
2 mins for me and now I need another. How the hell did you do it?

Good on you.
 
Five days, now shut the F^<{ up you utter b45[#}&euro;$ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
amer369 said:
Has anyone tried vaping or e-cigarettes as a stop smoking aid?
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I have - I wasn't using them to give up, more as a healthier alternative to proper smoking. It was fine, until my delivery of replacement cartridges was delayed twice, and i went straight for a packet of malborough.......

Currently on day 4 of a complete cold turkey myself.....not much fun!
 
Oh, and its not necessary to pile on the pounds when you give up.....it just requires a little more will power. The only other time i tries giving up, i managed to be smoke free fo 18 months, and i lost 7lb in the first 4 weeks of giving up, and stone more over th subsequent 12 months....
 
It's been 4 years for me. It gets easier after the first two weeks and it's a gradual impovement after that (I went cold-turkey). It took about 2-3 years to get over it properly.

The thing that helped me loads was to promise myself as many fags as I like but only on Christmas day - That way you don't feel like your life isn't worth living any more because you have something (smoking) to look forward too.

The first Christmas after smoking was like heaven, I really, really enjoyed those fags and couldn't wait for the next Christmas to come. Roll-on (pardon the pun) 12 months - I had one fag and felt sick as a dog! Remembering how ill that fag made me feel really puts me off the thought of smoking.

I know someone who is dying of lung cancer at the moment. If you could see what she is going through, you wouldn't touch a fag ever again.
 
9 months for me and think i'm cured this time as Mr p has smoked the whole time, now it just turns my stomach
 
I went 6 years almost to the day, then this year on holiday had a craving for a cigar and haven't stopped smoking mini cigars since :(

My Wife says I'm a much nicer person since I've started smoking again as I was horrible when I gave up! Still at some point I need the bandwagon to roll up past my house again, the cost is killing me!!
 
I smoked for about 15 years and i started noticing that when i laughed i was getting a tight chest. I arrived home from work one evening and i said, "that's it, no more". That was in 1986 and i have not touched one since. Was it hard, yes . Was it worth it, Yes. Willpower has a lot to do with it, as well as a very understanding partner. You can do it.
 
Keith W said:
Well here I am 2 years down the line and I am still a non smoker :)
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Good for you M8! I can write a book on quitting the weed by now, been smoking for 12 years or so and been quitting for 8...

Will let you know when I get there(y)
 
Well I've been 6 days now :)


Was on 20 a day and now on 20 packs of mints a day :(
 
Ruffy said:
Well I've been 6 days now :)


Was on 20 a day and now on 20 packs of mints a day :(
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Was also on never more than 20 a day but the occasional binge session while LAN gaming...:eek:

Nicely down to 5-7 a say the last few weeks, just gotto dump it finally!
 
amer369 said:
Has anyone tried vaping or e-cigarettes as a stop smoking aid?
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Like the other poster who replied to you, I have used them as a replacement for smoking, for which they're very effective. They don't really do anything to knock nicotine cravings on the head though.
You can reduce the amount of nicotine (in which case, if you're like me, you just get through more cartridges).:LOL:

A
 
Keith W said:
Well here I am 2 years down the line and I am still a non smoker :)
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You'll always be an ex-smoker.

I gave up over 12 years ago and regard myself as an ex-smoker.

Non-smokers can never see what all the fuss is about, because they've never had the 'pleasure'.
 
Gave up 6 years ago after 24 years of 20-30 a day. It was the first time I tried to quit and 'just' went cold turkey. I like to be around a smoker occasionally, just to remind me how much I hate the smell that lingers after a fag.:puke:
 
I stopped smoking 18 months ago, after being on 20 a day for 17 years. I decided to use patches and gum. Whilst out one day, I was feeling pretty good about it, resisting the cravings and generally having a positive day. It was only when I got home and realised that I'd forgotten to put the patch on that I started to get stressed out and moody about it.

That was my epiphany moment, and from then on realised it was literally all in my head. Stopped using patches there and then, didn't bother with the gum (which tastes like crap after a couple of minutes chewing it), and just went cold turkey.

Best thing I ever did!
 
9 years here, I smoked through my college years, but packed up soon after cold turkey, soon it will be 10 years, nearly slipped up the other day, but resisted it, there's no such thing as one cigarette.
 
Would like to hear some experiences of those of you that have gone cold turkey. I want to know what I have to go through in order to get rid of this damn weed.

A lot of you have said that you've done it and now gone years without.... So I guess with anything 'no pain no gain', but I just want to fathom how much pain I'll be in for....
 
amer369 said:
Would like to hear some experiences of those of you that have gone cold turkey. I want to know what I have to go through in order to get rid of this damn weed.

A lot of you have said that you've done it and now gone years without.... So I guess with anything 'no pain no gain', but I just want to fathom how much pain I'll be in for....
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Well, for me, I was just totally on edge for about a week. I had a very short temper, and was VERY argumentative..... oh and don't forget the constant cravings :0)

The second week was far better. Still lots of cravings, but I was nowhere near as angry!

The third week.....I pretty much knew I had cracked it. Felt very proud of myself, and generally positive. After that, I don't really remember much else. The cravings stopped, I could smell and taste my food, my breathing improved etc etc

As I said before, best thing I ever did, and was well worth the near mental breakdown :0)
 
This is quite an old thread, but it's interesting to revisit it now and again.

I've been smoking since my late teens - a long time ago - and I've given up a few times, with much the same results. The first week is very easy, I hardly notice that I'm not smoking, the second week is no real problem, week three starts getting more difficult, and week four onwards is a nightmare. This seems to be the opposite from what most people experience.

I think support is important. I'm down to 3 - 4 a day at the moment, and have been for a while, but I can't seem to stop completely. My wife has never smoked, and she's never nagged me about it either, but she does tend to have a rather amused, slightly mocking, attitude when I try to stop: 'You're a smoker. You enjoy it, and you'll never give up. Don't worry about it'. I know she means well in a way, but some encouragement might help!
 
I smoked for many years but gave up ciggies almost 20 years ago. Carried on with (shall we just say) specialist products until Mum was dying after a smoking related brain bleed about 5 years ago. Dad has since passed away due to lung cancer and I have recently suffered from a Meningioma (tumour on the Dura of the brain), which may or may not have been smoking related - I'll never know. Believe me, had I known how much smoking would impact on my life, I would have never started.
 
I think it's the same for alot of people... If we had the foresight to know how bad it is and how hard it is to give up and how easy it is to get hooked I'm sure most of us would never have touched it to begin with...

I'm gona give giving up another go... I've always put that inability down to not having the willpower... But the more I think about it the more I know that's just not true... I have willpower in many other things so it can't be that.. I think its been the addiction just helping me make excuses to carry on feeding my habit...
 
I tried many times but always found excuses to smoke again and I don't believe you can ever give up unless you really want to. Anyone that says it's easy is talking crap, it's not. You are battling with your own body which is releasing the very chemicals that you are addicted to so how can that be anything but difficult? But I believe that if you accept that it's going to be tough for a few weeks then you can fight through it - it really does get easier over time and eventually you only get the odd thought about smoking - I don't think that ever goes away though.

Smoking is so restrictive; it restricts your fitness level, it makes you smell, it costs a fortune, it lowers your health, you need to allow for ciggy breaks with whatever you are doing. It's a bloody liability!

The first and most obvious benefit I noticed with quiting smoking was going long haul. Flying was a far less stressful experience.
 
That's the one thing that really enoyed me about smoking - "I'll just have a quick fag before I ................". - It rules your life.
And now with all this anti-smoking health and safety lark, you can't smoke anywhere anymore, so you spend your whole time worried about how your going to get your next fix.
 
As an ex-smoker, I now loathe the smell of smoke, whether it's straight from a ciggie on the street or on somebody's clothes/hair etc. It also irks me to see people just dropping and treading on the fag ends - IMO, they should be done for littering! Even more annoying is having lit tab-ends flicked out of car windows when you're behind them on a bike. Having had one go down a partially unzipped leather jacket, I can tell you it's rather unpleasant. I have been known to pick up a lit tab-end just dropped out of a window at traffic lights and flick it back into the car!
 
Nod said:
As an ex-smoker, I now loathe the smell of smoke, whether it's straight from a ciggie on the street or on somebody's clothes/hair etc. It also irks me to see people just dropping and treading on the fag ends - IMO, they should be done for littering! Even more annoying is having lit tab-ends flicked out of car windows when you're behind them on a bike. Having had one go down a partially unzipped leather jacket, I can tell you it's rather unpleasant. I have been known to pick up a lit tab-end just dropped out of a window at traffic lights and flick it back into the car!
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I've been there, it's the shock more than anything of getting burnt when you're not expecting it. I've smoked around 20 a day for best part of 7 years, I nearly packed it in a couple if years ago using champix but silly me, I didn't finish the course properly because i felt i knew best, and was back to smoking within a month.

I'm going to book a doctors appointment this week and ask to go back on champix with the promise to do the course properly this time. Hopefully I will be able to get smoke free by the end of the month, which will coincide with my fathers death 3 years ago, it was cancer that got him after smoking for 40 years or so. That will be my motivation.
 
Now gotta go for some lung test as I was told today I probably have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease...And here I am with a ciggy on the go. Not sure how I'm going to give up but I'm going to have to.
 
what made me give up was thinking i had COPD.
I started to wake up at 2,3am unable to breathe which believe me is one of the scariest things i've experienced. Luckily my son had an old salbutamol inhaler as he used to suffer from asthma, which relieved the symptoms a little.
After many tests, was diagnosed with adult onset asthma, which i manage with various inhalers. It wasn't the best news, but it wasn't COPD, and it finally gave me the push to give up (been 2 yrs 1 month now).
I did it cold turkey, the first 2 weeks being hell! but weirdly i felt the next 6-8 weeks were the worst. Not physically, but as others posters have also said, it's habit! You have to re-learn and dis-associate certain times where you'd normally stop to have a cig. like getting into the car, or after a meal for me.
I also was quite ill for the first 6 months, but i haven't had a chest infection or even a cold/flu for 18 months! coincidence? probably not! i used to get chest infections at the drop of a hat!
 
Zulfi, when I gave up (for the final time!), I just stopped, gave the rest of the pack I was 1/2 way through to another smoker and haven't had a ciggie since. At times, it wasn't easy and I still miss it after a few ouzos but I can't help feeling that my life is a lot better since I quit.

Try this - not sure how many you smoke per day but a rough figure of a fiver's worth per day seems fair. Rather than spending that fiver on fags, stick it in a jam jar or similar and watch the quids start piling up. You'll soon (3 weeks?) have a hundred quid to spend on yourself rather than giving it to Philip Morris or BAT (other baccy companies exist!), surely a better way to spend it! Thats £1825 per year, about the price of a new highish end prosumer DSLR - what would you rather have, a nasty taste in your mouth and a cough or a new camera?
 
when i gave up i paid for a holiday for the family to zante best thing i ever did. as Nod says get a jar and stick the money in it makes a big difference seeing the money build up instead of going up in smoke.
 
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