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  Topic: Calling any Ex-smokers< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Sheikh Mahandi



Posts: 47
Joined: May 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 07 2006,04:49   

How did you quit and stay quit? Any tips tricks for more recent quitters?

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"Love is in the air, everywhere I look around,.....Love is in the air, every sight and every sound,......"

  
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 07 2006,05:02   

I've currently quit for three months. I did it by switching to Skoal. I still get my nicotine fix, but in a much safer way. Smokeless tobacco is not harmless, but it's much less harmful than smoking.

   
Savagemutt



Posts: 18
Joined: Nov. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 07 2006,05:16   

I've been on the patch (off and on) for about three years. I fall off the wagon occasionally and start over. And yeah, I know you aren't supposed to use the things long-term, but it's gotta be better than lighting up.

  
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 07 2006,05:52   

After multiple aborted attempts over 35 years, I finally figured out the secret to quitting for good:

Suffer.

I haven't had any for 5 1/2 years now. The craving never goes away. Patches don't help. If you used to enjoy stuff where you really needed a cigarette, you have to quit doing that stuff. If it was your job, you must find a new job. Otherwise, you just start back up again.

It also helps me that my wife (whom I married at least partially because she was a smoker!;) quit, and went on a big health kick, and made (and still would make) my life #### on earth if I started again. And I know without any doubt that if she died, I'd pick up a carton on the way to the funeral home. If I were a religious man, I'd pray each night that she start smoking again, so I could.

  
Tim



Posts: 40
Joined: Sep. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 07 2006,06:04   

I smoked for ten years, mainly Marlboro Lights, but also Silk Cut and Camel Lights, and occasionally anything else if I had little choice and needed to light up.

It took a hiking trip along the Inca trail in Peru, where some of the walks are at altitude where the air is thin, to make me realise how much smoking had adversely affected my health. I became out-of-breath extremely easily, my fitness unreasonably poor, my lung's ability to process oxygen unduly limited.

At a relatively young 28 years of age this came as a real shock. I decided there and then that I would not smoke another cigarette, and to this day a little over four years later I have not relented.

The habit was hard to break, particularly when out socialising. But I decided that if I were to see it through, it would be through sheer will; patches and other alternate forms of nicotine intake still feed the addiction troll, and that just didn't hold water with how to successfully break the habit for me.

As Flint has said, I think that it's best just to suffer and bear it if you are to break it.

Now, very occasionally, I get a pang when I'm in a pub and I see someone light up. But one glance at a disgusting and overflowing ashtray, one nauseating whiff of putrid smoke in a restaurant while I'm eating, one walk in the hills when I can breathe the fresh air and can stride energetically without loss of breath, and I am quickly reminded of why I gave up.

Go at it and stick to it. It's well worth it. Good luck!

  
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