Smoking

Parent Cafe
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<p>Quit smoking as my New Year’s resolution / turning 50 pledge to myself. What started as an “occasional” thing I did once in a while when “drinking with the other guys in my squadron” turned into a half-pack a day habit mostly out of boredom and as a stress release in Iraq and a few other places. (BTW, you would not beleiv the number of troops who smoke, or worse yet dip, while deployed, and pass that habit on to their fellow troops). </p>

<p>Tried to quit before, but Pima smokes as well, and I couldn’t get her to quit as well. And with another smoker in the house, the temptation was too hard, especially on a stressful day.</p>

<p>Well, I finally said enough. Day 46 now without a cigarette. First few weeks with the “patches” but now nicotine free for a two weeks. And I convinced Pima to quit as well, which she did two weeks ago. But even if she started again, I’m done this time. It simply was time for me to do so…</p>

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<p>Congrats! Bullet and Pima!</p>

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<p>Wonderful, B & P :slight_smile: </p>

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<p>It’s important to remember that there’s a latency period for cancer. It doesn’t develop overnight. Today’s rates of smoking-related cancers reflect the smoking rates of several decades ago.</p>

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<p>Today I found out that a friend, single mom of a 17-year-old, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer, one of many diseases closely correlated with smoking. She couldn’t seem to kick the habit and now she’s gone and her young daughter is an orphan. It’s a terrible habit.</p>

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<p>Well, we do have to be careful not to attribute all cancers to smoking. Plenty of non-smokers get cancer, too and many smokers don’t. That’s way too easy. And, I realize people know this but still. That’s not defending smoking btw, but as others have noted there is a tendency to go overboard.</p>

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<p>We should take all the tobacco company executives, line them up against a wall and shoot them. Virtually no one starts smoking as an adult, so the tobacco companies’ entire business model is to entrap children. Hook a child to their poison, and keep that child after they become an adult. It’s despicable.</p>

<p>I’d damn them to hell, but the Devil wouldn’t take them.</p>

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<p>My mom had lung cancer. She was lucky it was isolated and they removed some of her lung. She is doing fine. They found it accidently when she went to the ER because she was not feeling well and they saw something on her x-ray.</p>

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<p>bullet:</p>

<p>Fantastic. Every day should generally be a little easier from here on out, although there is a stretch where the excitement of quitting starts to fade and you’ve got to keep renewing the daily commitment to go the next 24 hours without nicotine. As long as you do that, you are guaranteed to be successful. </p>

<p>If you ever need a shot of motivation or resolve, it’s a big help to work your way through Joel Spitzer’s videos.</p>

<p><a href=“Joel Spitzer - YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/user/joelspitz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>He was the first guy doing quit-smoking clinics for the American Cancer Society, back in the 1970s. He’s pretty much seen it all.</p>

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<p>My experience with quitting is the exact opposite of yours, interesteddad. I quit for three years in 2007. The first couple days, no problem. Then I had to start to fighting the urges. And I was so sleepy I could barely function. I was dozing at the wheel of the car and that scared me. I joked with people that I didn’t know how they stayed awake without stimulants, but I was partly sincere. The sleepy phase was easier than after that though- because I just slept most of the time I was at home so I didn’t miss smoking. Once I started to wake up (after about a month, I think), the tension started to build. It was mild at first. My throat felt a little tight and I realized I was clenching my jaw a lot. It continued to build for weeks and months. People kept telling me I should have been over after 3 days and it would infuriate me. In fact, I lost my temper very easily and cried at the drop of a hat. That was pretty much how things were for the next 3 years. I gained 75 pounds. I never felt relaxed. My jaw was always clenched to the point that I broke a tooth from clenching it to keep from screaming at people or crying all the time. </p>

<p>I started dating a smoker and one night while we were out, I asked for just one. And, for the first time in 3 years, I felt really relaxed. Obviously, as you know, once someone who has quit has one, they usually go back to smoking and that is what happened with me. I think you’re focusing only on the physical addiction and not the psychological. </p>

<p>Yeah, I watched my mom die of COPD at age 69 after quitting smoking at age 46, two years before her diagnosis. The day the doctor said he couldn’t do anything else and it was her last week with us, she said she wished she could breathe well enough to smoke. The cravings had never gone away for her. My dad smoked three times as much as her and is the first person in my direct family tree to live past the age of 69. He’ll be 78 this year and quit when my mom was diagnosed with the COPD- so he would have been 50 then. He walked away from them and never wanted one again. Each person is very different in their addiction. </p>

<p>I want to be a non-smoker without the constant tension, anger and sadness that I experienced during those three years. Everybody tells me the first few weeks are the hardest but that wasn’t my experience. Like all smokers I know, I wish I had never started. I wish, when I quit, it was like the experiences of people like interesteddad. I know I could do it then. </p>

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<p>No. I’m definitely not underselling the psychological aspects. In fact, what makes nicotine addiction such a bear is that it directly stimulates the part of the brain that provides the “reward” (a dopamine release) that hammers home the psychological triggers. Every time we get a hit of nicotine to those brain receptors, it uses own own teaching system to program us to “need” a cigarette to accompany whatever we were doing. Since we smoke all day, every day, that is a heck of a lot of psychological triggers. </p>

<p>My point is that we have no prayer of working through those triggers, one by one, over the course of the first year, if the physical drug addiction is still hijacking our brain receptors. Getting off the drug is step one. That, at least gives us a fighting chance to work through the psychological triggers. I think that entails a very dedicated effort, at least daily for the first three months, with an occasional reinforcement for 12 months. I watched the videos I linked above daily for the first couple of months and was very actively “reprogramming” my thinking about smoking for most of the first year. I have seen that ex-smokers who don’t do that, who still have fond thoughts of smoking, are pretty likely to relapse.</p>

<p>I remember having a discussion with another guy who quit about the same time. I told him that I was doing everything I could to cultivate a fundamental hatred of smoking. I wanted to despise the very thought of smoking. He said that he didn’t want to be one of “those” ex-smokers, who scrunched their nose as the smell and so forth. He remembered how much he enjoyed smoking. Sure enough, he relapsed at about the one year mark – drinking with smoker-friends.</p>

<p>For the first two years, I “celebrated” each monthly anniversary by reading [The</a> One Puff Files](<a href=“Freedom - Information”>Freedom - Information). These are stories of smokers who had been off cigarettes, sometimes for a decade, and thought they could have just one. The sad tales of rekindling their full addictions was pretty sobering and a very good way to mark each passing month. One hour reading those stories. </p>

<p>Personally, if I’m ever tempted to get close to cigarette, I want to have exactly the same physical high alert sirens that I would have if I walked along a trail and came upon a coiled rattlesnake. Because, the cigarettes are far more likely to kil me than the rattlesnake.</p>

<p>I’ve backed away from all that now because, honestly, I never think about smoking, except occasionally when I’m out hiking and I give a little thought of thanks that have I escaped that hell.</p>

<p>Another terrific resource is Allen Carr’s [Easy</a> Way to Stop Smoking](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615482155]Easy”>http://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615482155)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87SZvhopco”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87SZvhopco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Although everything you need to quit smoking is available for free from Joel’ Spitzer’s WhyQuit site, the Allen Carr folk sell a terrific webcast seminar for $149. The three free samples are worth watching, especially the second one:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Webcast.aspx”>http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Webcast.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>And, while I’m hunting links, this Forbes TV YouTube interview addresses the question, “Why Do People Smoke”</p>

<p><a href=“Why People Still Smoke - YouTube”>Why People Still Smoke - YouTube;

<p>It’s all in the (false) belief that smoking gives you some benefit. That you would be “giving up” all that if you quit. The reality is that those “benefits” are an illusion. A con. Junkie lies.</p>

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<p>Great job, Bullet and Pima. One day at a time.
Barnard mom, My sympathies. I feel anxious when I quit sodas and junk food. I am a binge eater who has lost and regained fifty pounds a half dozen times. Food is always on my mind when I eat clean. Now I am on day seven of no sodas. Music helps me get through a difficult hour sometimes.</p>

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<p>Bullet, there were many days when I despaired at the thought of never having another cigarette, but could talk myself into not having one today, or at least not having one right now. It was a couple of years before I became a non-smoker in my own mind. But the one thing I knew would never happen is that I would never put myself through those first few weeks and months again, so that if I ever started I would never ever have been able to quit again.</p>

<p>Good luck. As they say in the PSAs about that other thing, it gets better. </p>

<p>Sometimes I find myself smoking again, but then I wake up. Still haven’t learned to control the weird dreams.</p>

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<p>Like romani, I was child of parent who smoked and have similar health issues - asthma, chronic pneumonia and bronchitis and ear infections through life. Mom smoked during pregnancy and in those days in the house. She died before she was forty, and was warned by docs to quit because of a health condition she had… Her parents died in early 70’s with emphysema and lung cancer, also chronic smokers. </p>

<p>Cigarette smoke really bothers me. Never started. </p>

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<p>I do agree with portgirl’s comments on this thread about the slippery slope and privacy concerns. We are rapidly approaching the point when everything we do is monitored or legislated. What was once science fiction, isn’t really, anymore. </p>

<p>Even all those store loyalty cards come at a price. Save money, but now the company knows everything you buy and, honestly, that is a little unsettling. </p>

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<p>The smoking dream, where you wake up in terror, thinking you’ve lit up and thrown it all away, is an almost universal phenomenon among ex-smokers. It’s scary as heck and the immediate reaction is to think that, my god, I still crave cigarettes. In my smoking dream (I’ve only had one), I found a cigarette on a window sill, picked it up, and smoked it before I realized what I doing. When I woke up, I was literally in a panic. I felt better after watching this;</p>

<p>[Dreams</a> of Smoking](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_gZx_6hq0I]Dreams”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_gZx_6hq0I)</p>

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<p>Retailers do a lot of data mining because, shockingly, they are trying to make a profit and earn a return on investment for their shareholders. Knowing the shopping habits of their customers and what the customer might “need” is an important way to drive sales. There isn’t much privacy anymore. That’s for sure. There are safeguards in place governing the use of customer information, and usually these work. If you want privacy in your shopping, loyalty cards, providing your zipcode etc are off the table.</p>

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<p>interesteddad, it’s great that you were able to quit smoking. I remain unconvinced, however, that (1) your way is the only way, (2) your way would work for everyone, (3) your way is the best, most high-percentage method of quitting smoking for everyone. It seems like you are trying to convince smokers that they don’t like to smoke and they don’t find it pleasurable. But, evidently, many smokers do like to smoke and do find it pleasurable, and if they quit, some smokers continue to miss smoking for years although others, after a few weeks or months, stop missing smoking.</p>

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<p>Heroin addicts and alcoholics find their drug addictions pleasurable, too. Of course, nicotine junkies find smoking pleasurable. Nicotine binds to brain receptors and causes a release of dopamine – the brain’s “pleasure” signalling mechanism. You bet it’s pleasurable. Even more insidious, nicotine levels in smokers hi-jack those receptors and swamp them, forcing the receptors to down-regulate as a defense mechanism. The end result of that is that the big hit of nicotine is just about the ONLY thing that can trigger the dopamine release and pleasure signalling. Why do you think there is a stereotype of smoking a cigarette after a meal or after sex?</p>

<p>The great thing about smoking cessation is that there is a black and white end-point, just like with heroin addiction or alcoholism. You either quit or you don’t. I’m putting some resources on the table, because I am sure there are some smokers lurking here. Who knows, maybe one of the links I post will be the thing that helps them escape the trap, just as it was for me. People don’t like being called junkies, but everything you experience while quitting smoking makes sense in the context of a drug addiction. If you accept that premise, then the foolproof way to escape the addiction is really quite simple: Never Take Another Puff. At first, it’s a personal commitment for an hour. Then, for a day, then for a week, then for a month. It’s no different than for a heroin junkie. They have got to stop shooting up. Everything else, while it may be helpful, is just window dressing compared to the bottom line.</p>

<p>I don’t honestly care if smokers try this approach or even if they try to quit. I was a nicotine junkie. I know that this stuff will be ignored right up until the point in their lives where they bolt upright and say, “enough is enough”. At that point, the links I’ve provided can be very helpful.</p>

<p>The statistics on how successful ex-smokers have quit (defined as 12 months without smoking) are pretty overwhelmingly consistent, whether you look at the recent Gallup survey or the surveys the National Health Service did in the UK a couple of years ago. The links I’ve provided offer an approach that works: cold turkey drug withdrawal accompanied by pulling back the curtain to expose the Wizard of Oz on the addiction and the junkie lies, reinforced by extensive support/education. The real secret lies in changing the perception of “giving up smoking” into “gaining a wonderful freedom from the drug addiction controlling your life all day, every day”. My personal trick to focus on that when I was getting rocked by a crave was to step outside, and take long, slow deep breaths, feeling the cool air reach into my lungs, and visualizing how wonderful it would be down the road to do that without the little cough and wheeze… That turned the crave into a positive motivation and I often thought, “come on…is that all you’ve got? Hit me with your best shot, because I’m NOT smoking…”</p>

<p>This used to be done in group counseling programs. Now, thanks to the internet, it’s all right there for the taking. Joel Spitzer’s stuff on YouTube and at WhyQuit.com is completely free. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. Allan Carr’s book is under $10 or available in every public library in the country, Even his $149 seminar is less than the cost of the cigarettes most nicotine junkies will smoke in the next month. If a smoker quits and dives into these materials for even a half hour a day for a few months, they have a good shot of escaping the trap. It’s not like there’s a big downside, here.</p>

<p>Or, try the gum and patches and recommendations to plan your quit months in advance (what a stupid idea… junkies will always find an excuse to put it off when the date rolls around). The Spitzer stuff and the Easy Way stuff will still be there next time around. The only catch is that each failed effort may make quitting harder. In smoking cessation, Larry the Cable Guy might be right: Just Get 'er Done! Quitting again and again and again is torture. The funniest quotes on smoking cessation forums are smokers, trying to quit, talking about what “worked” for them before. If it had worked, they wouldn’t be smokers!</p>