How to quit smoking?

Parent Cafe
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<p>This is no big deal. The average physical craving for nicotine during withdrawal lasts about three minutes. A major study on withdrawal craving was presented at the British smoking cessaton conference last year. The researchers were sadists. To trigger a crave, they made the ex-smoker subjects hold a burning cigarette of their own brand in their hand while recording physical response. They then tested an array of coping mechanisms. Basically, they found that any behavioral trick (doing something, such as drinking water or sucking on a straw, or chewing a piece of gum) was equally effective in getting through the crave. Similarly, they found that almost any cognitive trick (thinking something, like imaging healthier lungs or that date with the non-smoking girl) was also nearly as effective.</p>

<p>All you really need is an arsenal of three to five little tricks that you use to get through a crave episode. The deep breathing trick that I used is almost universally recommended by successful ex-smokers, perhaps because it combines both behavior (doing something) and cognitive (imagining healthier lungs) in one trick. But, there are hundreds of options, as far ranging as sucking on a cinnamon stick. The links I have you earlier have lists of 100 things that have worked for real-world quitters.</p>

<p>We are only talking about a week of intense craves, and then a longer period of time of working through much less frequent mental associations. Four months seems to be a common time frame for achieving pretty much total comfort as an ex-smoker. At four months, I did back to back seven hour car drives without a single desire or urge to smoke, which is about as brutal a test as any smoker can find. Even walking by the smokers lined up outside the rest stop on the Jersey turnpike – no urge at all. In fact, I felt sorry for them and how desperate they must have been to pull over and get a cigarette.</p>

<p>The people who really suffer with cravings are people who have not firmly committed (to themselves) that they are done. If you respond to a crave with an internal “should I or shouldn’t I have one” debate, you are toast. That’s just a willpower battle and the nicotine addiction will probably beat you. However, if you have a personal commitment to not smoke period, then the decision is already made when the crave hits. Smoking is not an option. So, you deal with the crave. There were times I walked out onto my smoking deck with a cup of coffee (coffee break was a huge crave trigger) and basically said, “Is that all you’ve got? You’re gonna have to hit me with more than that because I’m an ex-smoker now and I’m not smoking”. </p>

<p>Once you break the physical addiction cravings, then it’s just like if you love peanuts, but an allergy makes you swell up, stop breathing, and go to the emergency room. Even though you may remember eating peanuts, it’s not that hard to just draw a line in the sand and not eat peanuts…unless you let your mind start fixating on peanuts. Same thing with smoking once you have made a personal decision that you would rather live your life as an ex-smoker. </p>

<p>The trick is believing that you can quit. Most nicotine addicts don’t believe they can quit. I knew I couldn’t quit. It’s junkie thinking. They think that the 46 million Americans who quit must not have been as addicted or must have had superhuman powers. Hardly. The thing that made those 46 million different is that they made a simple decision to never take another puff. They dealt with the withdrawal. They became comfortable as ex-smokers, glad to be done with smoking, and they never looked back.</p>

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<p>Alan Carr’s book mentioned in an earlier post worked for me. As soon as I started reading it I got my “light bulb” moment and understood that the first cigarette I smoked would be setting me up for needing the next one (the nicotine from the first cigarette starts depleting and calling you to replenish by smoking the next one). I stopped cold turkey…chewed a zillion toothpicks and occasionally cinnamon sticks…and read Alan Carr’s book over and over. Also promised myself never to nag other smokers or try to make them feel guilty; there are no smokers out there who do not know they shouldn’t smoke but its very irritating being preached to by ex-smokers on a mission. You can only quit when you really want to quit.</p>

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<p>Thanks everybody! I’ve been busy with my honors thesis so I haven’t been on here much. Today I finished my pack, so I’m jumping in. Will keep you all updated on how it goes. I do appreciate all your tips.</p>

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<p>Husband was a 2-3 pack/day smoker for 30+ years. Quit in 5 weeks using the nicotine patches. Hasn’t smoked in 5 years, even though he works with people who smoke. Contact your state’s department of health. They can refer you to smoking cessation programs and low cost/no cost options for patches (which come in generic form, too). The patches cost less than a carton of cigarettes.</p>

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<p>It seems that there are lots of opinions about how to quit. I smoked 1-2 packs/day for 40 years and finally quit over a year ago. I was thoroughly addicted and except for sleep never went more than a few hours without a cigarette. I smoked with colds, flu, right after a tooth extraction, anytime, always. One year ago I got an unbelieveably bad case of the flu with bronchitis. I coughed constantly around the clock. It is not that I was motivated to quit. I just could not smoke. One puff and I would cough for 10 minutes. So I switched to nicotine lozenges. After I finally got rid of the flu, I kept at it: no cigarettes, not one, but plenty of nicotine lozenges. Ten months later I had to have surgery. I had the usual 24 hours of liquid diet and 12 hours with nothing. Of course, I was still sucking nicotine the last few minutes before surgery. When I came out of surgery, I was done with the nicotine. The pain from the surgery was a bigger issue than my addiction. </p>

<p>My hat is off to anyone who can quit cold turkey. I suspect that is pretty rare. Maybe not if you are a relatively light smoker who has recently started. Except for very extenuating circumstances I would still be smoking. I would certainly not been able to quit cold turkey, relying solely on will power.</p>

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<p>Not rare at all. 90%+ of all ex-smokers in the world successfully quit cold turkey. Even today, with over-the-counter pharmaceutical nicotine being pushed so hard, the vast majority of people still just quit – no planning, no patch, no gum, no anti-depressants.</p>

<p>You are selling yourself short. Quitting on a whim due to flu is one of the most common ways to quit. That’s how I quit. I had just returned around midnight from a quick run to buy two packs of cigarettes because the forecast showed we might get snowed in. Had no intention whatsoever of quitting smoking. I was coming down with the flu bug my wife had. So when I opened the first pack and took the first cigarette outside to smoke, the first puff burned my sore throat. So I put it out and stuck it back into the pack for the next day. That was the last puff I ever took.</p>

<p>I went 24 hours without smoking and realized not only could I quit, but that I was perhaps looking at the only shot at quitting I might ever get. I made it through the second day. On day three, I knew that I would never smoke again.</p>

<p>You are very fortunate that you had surgery when you did. Most people who stay addicted to gum or lozenges for 10 months after quitting smoking are sitting ducks for relapsing to smoking because there is no nicotine delivery mechanism that delivers the “pow” to the brain receptors like inhaling nicotine smoke. Eight seconds. </p>

<p>There is no way to permanently deal with nicotine addiction without, eventually, ending the use of all nicotine. About a third of all current purchasers of nicotine gum are chronic users, i.e. using it for longer than the three month recommendation (see Obama at 2+ years) The ultimate goal of the pharmaceutial companies is to sell a permanent replacement for cigarettes. The nicotine addiction market has always been a cash cow, who wouldn’t want a piece of it. You can see it in the direction the advertising is taking in non-US markets. The pharmaceutical companies don’t market against the smoking, the market using fear tactics about how awful it is to quit.</p>

<p>BTW, light smoker, heavy smoker. Doesn’t really matter. The last time I had smoked less than a pack a day before the day I quit was when Nixon was in the White House. Cold turkey is actually the quickest and therefore most painless way to quit. Three days and the drug is out of the body and the peak withdrawal is passing. Seven days and most people are feeling noticeable improvement. Two weeks to a month and the brain chemistry changes associated with nicotine addiction have largely reverted to a normal state. I don’t think investing a week or two in something as benefitical as becoming an ex-smoker is unreasonable. About like recovering from a sprained ankle or getting wisdom teeth out.</p>

<p>One of the concerns I have is that the ubiquitous message being sent to smokers by the pharma companies is that they can’t possibly quit smoking without medication. That is just a bold-faced advertising lie and there are over 40 million American ex-smokers as proof. That whole message just strengthens the fear of quitting, which is a major deterent and a major reason that smokers psyche themselves into abject terror at the thought of quitting.</p>

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<p>edad:</p>

<p>Willpower is useless in quitting smoking. There are people who temporarily deprive themselve of smoking with willpower, but they suffer immensely and almost inevitably relapse. </p>

<p>If any smoker were stronger than the nicotine addiction, they would only be smoking a couple cigarettes a day and not worrying about it. Of course, that’s impossible. The addiction doesn’t allow it.</p>

<p>Successful ex-smokers have done it because, for various reasons and various triggering events, they have come to a point where they see more value in becoming ex-smokers and no value in continuing to smoke. The delta is strong enough to motivate them to pay the price of quitting. The larger the delta, the stronger the desire to walk away from the addiciton, the easier the quitting might be – which is why Allen Carr’s approach has been helpful to a lot of people.</p>

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<p>interesteddad, congratulations to you! Have you considered a career change to help people with this? You are certainly impassioned.</p>

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<p>Another cold turkey quitter here–30 years ago. Before that, I had stopped for 2 years and after I broke up with my boyfriend, immediately started again. The final time, I was headed home to live with my parents–militant ex-smokers-- for the summer at age 27. As they had both quit cold turkey when I was 3 years old, there was no way I could smoke without them smelling it on me or my clothes–so I just quit.</p>

<p>I also believe it is very important to your success to stay away from smokers not only at the beginning, but for a long time afterwards. It is just too tempting. Good luck to you</p>

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<p>From all the smokers I know who used nicotine replacement to quit, half gave up and went back to smoking and the other half are now addicted to the gum. The only ones I know who have successfully quit went cold turkey. Not a very scientific study, but if I had to quit, I’d do it cold turkey.</p>

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<p>Good luck w/the quitting, PolPHD. Would add, re: Chantix – my hub had a negative reaction to it (conscious of becoming depressed & his heart was racing). Then again, my gf quit using it for only 2 weeks & has stayed ‘free’ for 2 yrs after 20 years of smoking. It does sound risky, though…</p>

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<p>Good luck. About 40 yrs ago my mom and dad both quit cold turkey. She did it mostly in solidarity with him. He had smoked over 2 packs a day. He had a coughing fit, and as mom told it, he pulled the car over and threw all the cigarettes out the window. He was a real “downtown” guy, and he walked around for a week or two with a plastic cigarette pacifier. THat was it. Smoking really damaged his health, and I think ultimately shortened his life. His sister (my aunt) died of lung cancer from smoking in 1977. </p>

<p>Best personal regards and hopes of success to you. Congrats to all who quit.</p>

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<p>I quit on December 7th, 1982 at 8:06 PM. At the time, my (now) husband said “me or cigarettes, choose”. I decided that I could have two more cigarettes in my lifetime–just in case I was ever in front of a firing squad, I wanted to look cool. (Yes, I’m serious.)</p>

<p>The first four days were hellish. I carried around a bag of cut-up vegetables and ate constantly, every time I wanted a cigarette, which was constantly. I couldn’t sleep. My father weighed about 70 pounds when he died of lung cancer in 1978, and I’d quit several times before that final push but hadn’t been successful.</p>

<p>What finally worked for me? Partly knowing I can have that one more cigarette if I really HAVE to, partly wanting to keep my boyfriend (now husband). Partly fear of ending up like my father, dying in a lot of pain. </p>

<p>But I’ll be honest, even after 26-odd years, I still have occasional dreams of smoking, and I always wake up feeling guilty that I still want a cigarette.</p>

<p>It’s an extremely addictive drug. One of the things that my father commented on was that he saw former POWs at the end of WWII, who hadn’t had a cigarette in four or five or six years… go right back to them, as soon as they could.</p>

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<p>The people doing smoking cessation from early on know that the majority of real-world qutters just stop one day. They either get sick (flu) and don’t feel like smoking and take advantage of the opportunity. Or they get the dreaded news in the Doctor’s office that they can either can either quit or die. Or, they just throw 'em out the car window.</p>

<p>The irony is that the official government health recommendations in both the UK and US is that you must “plan” your quit for weeks in advance. Practice denying yourself cigarettes. Get your medications ready. Yadda Yadda. A whole big scary hulla balloo. So one of the big researchers comes long, does a study of the British smoking cessation clients (the UK does it right with gov. paid group coumseling, etc.) Lo and behold, the people who just quit on a whim were 2.5 times more likely to be quit at one year than those who followed the government protocol and “planned” their quits.</p>

<p>My own personal belief is that quitting smoking is like climbing up the ladder and jumping off the high diving board for the first time as a kid. It’s a leap of faith that you can live without nicotine. The last thing you want to do is stand up there, looking down at the water, and thinking about it. That’s when the fear sets in and god help you if you climb back down the ladder because you’ve freaked yourself out. It just gets harder after that. March up there, walk quickly to the end of the board, and jump. When you hit the water, just start paddling like hell. There will be plenty of opportunity to “practice” getting through a cigarette crave after you are already splashing around in the pool (not that “practicing” makes it any easier). My view on quitting is that you want to shove all your chips to the center of the table, go “all in”, and git 'er done. If you aren’t ready to do that, then just keep smoking and hope you don’t run out of time.</p>

<p>It is quite possible that just throwing the damn things out the window was the key to your father quitting. That kind of action is really empowering and gave him a big ownership stake in seeing it through to the end. I believe that having no thought of quitting was a key for me. I was already through two days of withdrawal before I made the decision to quit for good. No way was I walking away from that opportunity.</p>

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<p>Ahhh. The Smoking Dream. Those are universal. Almost all quitters have at least one and the first one is utter terrifying, using resulting in waking up in a sweat certain that you’ve really blown it and smoked. I had one. I looked down in terror in my dream, noticing that I was smoking a cigarette without even realizing I had lit one. I was shook up for several hours after I woke up.</p>

<p>It’s actually not an indication that you want a cigarette. It’s an indication that the commitment to quitting has reached your unconscious dream mind.</p>