Topic: Do you want to quit smoking ??

[Gordon]

Now, just try to get me to quit beer , and you have a whole different story!

[heffay]

wait, 2... count them... 2

clarification... 2 smokes
wasn't talking about the amount of years.

[Gordon]

wait, 2... count them... 2

clarification... 2 smokes
wasn't talking about the amount of years.

What are you talking about?  Did I miss something?

[d3buttz]

i was in the hospital for a month from appendicitis and terrible complications from there, i was there for so long i lost the chemical addiction and doing pretty good so far w/o smoking the past few weeks. at a pack a day and 51 days i calculate 250 buckssaved, i cant wait to get some braided lines for my duals on myy 550!

[TwoTired]

Are you sure that cigarette in '75 was actually your last one, or are you just in the midst of your longest period of abstinence, to date?    

Yeah, I'm about as sure as anyone can get.  I had pneumonia last year.  Not being able to take more than a very short breath without intense pain makes you solidify any anti-smoking tendencies you might have.  Gave me a whole new respect for respirators and their importance to the health of mammalian lungs, too.
It also made me realize just how stupid it was to start smoking.  However, military service does not induce deep thoughtfulness and understanding to the lower ranks.

The chances of me smoking again are pretty remote.  Hard to think of more zeros between the decimal point and the number in the odds specification.

Cheers,

[Gordon]

I guess what it really comes down to is that once you've been addicted to any substance, you've never actually quit it until you're dead.  It's just a matter of how well you can manage that addiction (if at all) for the rest of your life.     

[myhondas]

Started at the age of 14 and was killing a pack a day on average for 26 years. Admittedly, I let a lot of them burn up in the ashtray (couldn't work with one hanging out of my mouth) but still smoked better than 80% of the pack.  Decided that I had smoked about half of my life and maybe I shouldn't smoke the last half. Buried my last butt at midnight on my 40th birthday and haven't had one since. Used a crutch to go cold turkey. Put a large handfull of jolly rancher candies in my breast pocket and every time I reached for a butt, pulled out one of the candies and sucked on it instead. Took about 3 months and then started to ween myself off the candies. Just takes WILLPOWER ! ! !  or should I say the intense desire to not smoke.

[lynchj]

Hey Caaveman hows the quitting going? 12 days for me now, still have the urge but I'm fighting it. Was out cutting wood this weekend and I felt a lot better, didn't get winded and didn't stop every half hour to smoke a butt so I got a lot more done.
I've smoked for almost 30 years, at one point I was up to two packs a day, Have "quit" several times but this time it's for good, life is too short, smoking shortens it even more. I want more time to ride. 

[alltherightpills]

This is going to be my summer project.  I started back up a couple of months ago, and gave myself till the end of the semester.  Working full time and taking classes 3 nights a week was a little too much for me to handle, so instead of pulling out my hair, I decided to light up.

The plan:

I think if I can couch quitting into a larger plan for getting healthy, it will be a hell of a lot easier to quit.  I am tired of being horribly out of shape and sick of eating like crap, so if I can utilize that emotional response, and emotional drive, it will be enough to outweigh the pleasure of smoking.

It all works according to the pleasure principle.  If you want to quit doing something that gives you pleasure, either the external consequences or the internal motivation must be greater than the pleasure you are receiving. 

I don't really have enough external consequences (I realize death is a pretty serious consequence, but it isn't an immediate consequence, so out of sight, out of mind ) to quit, and on their own, my internal motivations (sheer will power) aren't enough to quit either.  But if I can tie quitting into a larger plan of getting healthy, I can tap into both the external consequences (getting healthy, looking good, being able to walk around in my muscle shirt and not be embarrassed  ) and I can tap into internal motivation as well (I really want to wear that muscle shirt ). 

So I am going to work out if not every night after work, then every other night.  I already walk 2 miles per day because I live a half mile from work and come home for lunch, but I may start riding my pedal bike and taking a longer route to work, and I'd like to cut science out of my food.  I don't think this will be that difficult because I live a block from a farmer's market that happens twice per week.  Ain't nothing like fresh Iowa produce.  If your veggies don't have dirt on them still, they aren't fresh enough!

I don't think it'll be terribly difficult (I have no illusions about it being a walk in the park either), but at most I smoke 8 smokes per day, usually more like 3 or 4.

[goon 1492]

One good trick to stoping smoking and not quitting, we naturally are not quitters so subconsously you will not let your self quit, you have to stop and tell your self that too. Also you have to be ready to stop or you won't.

I was tired of hacking up some lung butter every morning and then chasing that silly plant every hour on the dot.

It is soooo much easier to say than do....

Good luck alltherightpills and don't look back

[Rushoid]

Well, Friday marked 2 years since my last smoke. I gave it up cold turkey and haven't wanted one since. After 20 years of it I was just done with it. Like goon 1492 said, i was tired of coughing up crap all the time, spending all that money, etc. I hate the smell of cigarettes now and I can smell it from far away. No kidding: I can smell it from another car 50ft away! My wife always complained about the smell, and how it took her breath away, and I didn't believe her until I quit. You smokers STINK! 

Good luck to all of you trying to quit.

Now I just have to quit eating so much... 

[toycollector10]

My Quitzilla statistics are 14,234 smokes un-smoked, $7,117 NZD saved and it's been 2 years, 7 months and 5 days.

I wonder how many people have died from smoking related causes since I started this thread back in 2007?

My wife is still putting away 20 to 25 a day 

[alltherightpills]

It's been 3 weeks for me now.  I got into a research study program at the University of Iowa that looks at controlling weight gain after quitting.  They give you 6 weeks of free patches, pay you, and put you in an exercise program, which was what I wanted to do to quit anyway.  I've also told my friends that I've quit, so they're not allowed to let me bum one or let me have a drag off of one of theirs.

I have to say, it's been pretty easy so far.  Granted I didn't smoke that much, probably 10 or less per day, but still...