Sorry, i do not agree. You really shouldn’t sell yourself short and underestimate the strength of your own will power.
Sure it is difficult, but it is not impossible. The withdrawals are not significant nor really all that long lived. The habitual aspect of it is the bitch of the bunch. If you have a fag with a pint, after a meal, as an excuse for a break at work, to get past an artistic impasse… then you will find struggles due to that association.
The key to breaking that association, is to swap it around. for example, don’t smoke a ciggy after you eat, smoke it before.
Ultimately we are force fed the concept, the lie, that smoking cessation is almost impossible. It is as if we are told we might as well not bother. Besides, it is so tasty, so sociable, so comforting et cetera… but hey, if you really must… here are a shed load of nicotine products, patches, pseudo-ciggies for you to spend your tobacco budget on instead. A load of cash grabbing bollocks.
One other fact of life… there is nothing more annoying than an ex-smoker (in this case, me).
No, I don’t think so. So much more socially acceptable as well - can’t really see a down side at the moment! My ‘squirt’ as I call it, keeps me sane. I know I’ll have to chuck that as well, eventually…but just not this week!
Gingerlil, I did wince in recognition when I read this. I must confess that I have not yet found a satisfactory substitute for cigs in this sort of setting, and it has been well over 10 years now. I wasn’t a creative for a living (just a hobby) and that was just as well as well, as I have not found anything since to set me to creative work so easily and reliably as a lovely cigarette. Sorry, that’s not very helpful, is it? I know that many people get past it, but I wish that I could.
I am an ex smoker i actually agree with all you say.
What is it with this addiction that makes it impossible for people to stop even though it really is killing them… Smokers should just go and stand on a railway line and get over with it quicker because a high majority of them are going to die a horrible death by slowly suffocating…
SOUNDS horrible doesn’t it, and mean, but believe me, I live with a smoker who is 69 now. He says he cant quit. Yet every morning he has to spend 2 hours getting his breath and taking a ton of meds and puffers and I almost hate the sound now of those ventilator things as he sucks in their medicine so he can breath, yet the first thing he does is has a fag…outside and then another one.
He struggles to do anything, and is constantly sitting down to catch a breath. He always has chest infections, and is on steroids so often now his skin is almost non existent and when you touch it, it BLEEDS.
He cant have oxygen because he smokes.HE NEEDS OXYGEN as his levels are like non existent.
I lay in bed sometimes thinking what am I doing watching this man kill himself because that is what he is doing. What is so annoying is just before the smoking ban in work he stopped for 3 months, i was so proud of him, i think he used Champix or something and it worked brilliantly. In 3 months he looked a different man and could do so many things. Then he started again because he felt alienated by his workmates as he was the only one who wasnt smoking jeez give me a break, then 12 months later the ban came in.
Now I am living with a disabled man who really in the grand scheme of things is much worse then I am.
I have MS and do everything i can to make my life more tolerable. If i had to stop smoking I would. We had a care assessment recently to see if he was capable of caring for me…the lady doing the assessment was shocked at how ill he looked. He is 5ft 11 and weighs 8.5 stone as he struggles to eat. IF I fell on the floor which i have done, he would never be able to pick me up. He was deemed UNFIT to be my carer, and in actual fact she is organising for him to have an assessment so he can have a carer lol…well not funny really but the irony of it. In the grand scheme of things I can do more then he can…go figure.
I used to love vino (being Italian descent), but when my MS kicked my backside over it, I gave it up just like that.
I know i am going to die like everyone else in this world, but at least i am going kicking and screaming and trying my hardest to stay with my family as long as I can.
I told my husband you are committing a form of suicide…well he is. I thought i was going to loose him a few months back but he rallied. I have just lost a good friend to COPD and she was only 56 the direct result of smoking.
What is wrong with you people when you say you cant quit, or it helps you too relax? Try sex instead, or go for a walk, or learn meditation lol… but no you have to go straight for that coffin stick instead.
Smoking is the most controlling medium in this planet.
Before my husband goes anywhere he has to have his fag first, must make sure he takes his with him. I will be ready to go out, and its wont be a minute just having a fag…jeez give me a break already.
Then there is the E cig, now my young neighbour next door doesnt smoke but he is addicted to them, so he is still addicted to nicotine lol.
Its really simple.
You stop buying fags. Yeh life is going to be hell for a week MAX, and then your body will start to release all those toxins and you will cough up a lung and this will be the first excuse of yours to start again, but you have to resist the urge.
After a few weeks you think to yourself whats that smell? Hey guys its FRESH AIR lol.
You will eat something and think wow this tastes lush wonder why i never noticed before lol…
Will your MS quit you too, no, BUT not having TOXINS shoved in your body everyday, you will feel better and your muscles will twitch less.
I just got up one day and thought ok, do i feed my children today (i had become a single parent), or do i buy a packet of fags? The kids won on this round.
Its an addiction. We all have addictive tendencies.
STOP EXCUSING why you shouldn’t give up and just do it.
DONT count the smoke free days. The day you stop putting this obnoxious POISONOUS weed in your mouth is the day you become a NON SMOKER.
God I hate the smell of smoke now, and my husband has turned my lovely conservatory into a yellow walled stinky glass house. He has now been banned from there too lol. If it can make our walls yellow then just think what your lungs look like.
The cemetery is full of people who died because of a DIRECT result of smoking. Could they have had longer lives perhaps not, but at least most of them wouldn’t have died horrible, suffocating pain ful deaths. AMEN to that…
Heres a sobering thought to read whilst you have your first fag who ever reads this and smokes lol.
There are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes. 51 of them are known to be carcinogenic.
Familiar Chemicals in Cigarettes ARE:
carbon monoxide * car exhaust
nicotine * bug sprays
tar * material to make roads
arsenic * rat poison
ammonia * cleaning products
hydrogen cyanide * gas chamber poison
cyanide * deadly poison
acetone * nail polish remover
butane * cigarette lighter fluid
DDT * insecticides
formaldehyde to preserve dead bodies
sulfuric acid * car batteries
cadmium * used to recharge batteries
freon damages earth’s ozone layer
geranic acid * a fragrance
methoprene * a pesticide
maltitol * a sweetener not permitted to be used in foods in the U.S.
So which of you smokers is game to try one of the above? A touch of rat poison perhaps, or a sniff of gas, insecticide tea?
No you wouldnt think of it would you but hey EVERYDAY, every cigarette you are taking into your body thats exactly what you are doing.
I stopped smoking nearly a year ago using an E-Cig. No desire at all to smoke a regular cigarette again. I am slowly cutting down the amount of nicotine in my E-cig. Started at 30Mg the 24Mg now 18Mg…2 more steps to 0Mg…12Mg and 6Mg then I’ll be off the nicotine completely.
I think it’s just a case of giving yourself the best chance you can Me and hubby both packed up a couple of months after I was diagnosed, we went nicotine free straight off the bat and went for e-shisha sticks. Good flavours take your mind off it, best ones for me were mango, raspberry and blackcurrant, best one was liquorice
Once we decided we stuck with it, we’ll be 2 years clear in a couple of months.
Goldengirl’s post reminds me of the mum of a friend of mine in America. Her mum had emphysema and she was one of those stereotypical 'Murican’s you see permanently attached to an oxygen tank, but always with a cigarette in their hand. She’d get rushed into hospital with various lung infections, end up on a ventilator for days/weeks, and the first thing she’d do when she got out was light up…
I’ve never been so grateful for never having started smoking as I am when I read about the horrors it’s done to other people.
thank you, Alison! and yes very helpful!!! Have tried substitutes but found that I really needed the real thing after…so in the end decided as long as it’s less than 10 (between 5-8) a day, the enjoyment of these outweighs the stress caused by my futile attempts. + Another reason for me not going cold turkey is the fear of blowing up like a balloon. The Cigs just give me the right amount of energy for all my other activities and prevent me from going to sleep.
Hi JS, its AWFUL, and so stressing when you love someone and just watching them slowly killing themselves in such an horrific way.
I know two closer friends who have COPD and both are now on oxygen even though they gave up smoking. The chances are good if you stop and really much less progressive. Both of them were told they would have died by now if they had not stopped when they did. One still goes out on holiday and does things even with her little pack with her oxygen and the other lady has basically given up. She lives a few doors from me. Her husband has to do everything.
My husband was working until recently even at 69 but now he has finished he seems to be deteriorating fast.
I simply dont get it. OK a lot of damage has been done to his lungs, but here in the UK if you still smoke they will not give you oxygen and he really needs it.
Well his doctor wont anyway.
I wish people could see their futures because its not pretty believe me. I know of at least TEN people with COPD all from smoking.
OK I smoked yes i did many moons ago way back in the early seventies.
I was one of the lucky ones.
What really sticks in my craw is my daughter smokes (her dad died of lung cancer), her son at 16 does, my grand daughter from my other daughter, and my son in law and most of the grandchildren friends SMOKE.
All this ban has done is shove it back inside the house.
A packet of cigarettes cost EIGHT pounds.
I am so proud of Ant for trying to stop. He has all the support he needs on here.
All you can do is try your best. I hope you succeed it would be fab if you did. The future is grim for people who smoke but the saying goes IT NEVER HAPPENS TO ME, but sadly it does.
i recall when trying to quit, i read that you need to make yourself reasonable goals.
for sure the sting of quitting something (which you have convinced yourself you love,) is no easy task, but apparently three is the magic number.
so first you quit for 3 hours. (not a problem as my smoking was on average at a rate of one every four hours).
then you aim for three days.
then three weeks and by the time you are looking at three short months, you are more or less free of any craving.
by three years, you are pretty much free and clear of it all!
of course, you cannot reward yourself for reaching each of these little milestones by lighting up! (do a line of coke instead? *joke!!)
to interject a serious observation based upon human nature… you cannot say that you have officially quit smoking, until you are unable to state how long ago it was, when you had your last cigarette.
i am proud and relieved to be able to say, i can barely even remember smoking a fag, let alone when the last one was finally stubbed out. i see people smoking today and i have nothing but sympathy for them. if only, IF ONLY they could see themselves through my eyes; they would give themselves a chance. i just know they would.
good luck. it is a battle. but it is not impossible. and you will feel better for it. it is phucking poison!
Good that this worked for you, Paolo, but it wouldn’t have worked for me! I would have caved in straight away at the thought of the ghastly hours ahead. The only thing that worked for me was just not having the next one and keeping on not having the next one. No longer term goals allowed at the start (not even 3 hours); the idea of time stretching ahead and no cigarettes would have sunk me completely. Once a few weeks have passed, it all gets so much easier, of course.
I offer this thought as encouragement to anyone whose heart just sinks at the thought of giving up for ever - or even for hours! There are all sorts of ways to skin the smoking cat, and we must all find the one that best suits.
I’m off fags about 7 years and still yearn for them at times - in fact i was thinking of buying a vapour e-cig to take the edge off…don’t know if this would be a good idea or not mind you…
Having a buddy helps; I packed in the fags in solidarity after an ex-smoking-buddy of mine had a heart attack, and she’s younger than me… quite a shock to the system, so I said if she had to pack in, I’d do it too, and we’d get through it together. Which we did. Give the addiction a name, and then you can swear at it… mine was called Clarkson, the most bloody irritating thing I could think of. Good luck!
