Quitting smoking

[SaraTherase]

Originally Posted by FairyCrystal

I've now been smoke-free for 8 days!
Have been a smoker for 37-38 yrs, bar for 3 years when I was around 31.
I am using nicotine patches which are covered by health insurance.
I was a very heavy smoker.
The reason I quit was 1) my health. My lungs were very unhappy and even painful at times. 2) I have a grandchild on the way, to be born any minute, and I don't want to be that 'smelling granny'.
3) I don't want to stink of smoke anymore, always having to wear specific clothes at home and keeping the good stuff upstairs for when I go somewhere. Meaning I also have to change clothes when I leave the house lest I smell.
4) I don't want a house that stinks anymore.
5) I don't want my beautiful crystals, paintings (made by me) etc. to get covered by nicotine yuk any longer.

Once I quit I used a pencil during the moments I really felt that oral need to suck on a cig. I did the same thing with the pencil, sucking, inhaling, blowing out. Really helped!
I haven't had to use it for some 3-4 days now.

I read every day, or several times a day, what is healing at that mo in my body. 3 days the cilia in your lungs begin to heal.
I was thrilled when I'd made 3 days! I made that milestone!!
I keep reading what is healing, it helps to not fall back into the smoking trap.

I set myself a goal, something I can buy with the money I'm no longer smoking, literally almost.
It was a dress. I bought it a bit early, but it was meant for an event. Unfortunately the dress didn't fit properly so I had to send it back.
Now I'm without goal, which doesn't help, so I have to find a new one.

I quit 2 yrs back and then each week I went to the ATM to take out the money I had saved by not smoking and put it in a pot.
Seeing the amount increase, fast!, was a huge help to keep going! I was saving up to go to Scotland. Unfortunately the pandemic ruined that plan :/
But it is a good thing to do: withdraw the money to save for some dream.

Stress... smoking actually triggers a stress response in the body. It literally gives you stress! As soon as you light a cig your heartrate goes up, blood pressure etc. If you haven't smoked for 1-2 days you can feel that really well as soon as you take a few puffs from a cig.
So it doesn't help relieve stress, that's what you make yourself think. It causes stress.

It helps if you can work out WHY you began smoking, and why you smoke when you light a cig.
You say stress, why? Can't you handle some turbulence? What other way could you cope with it? What else is behind it?
For me for instance it often was to have an excuse to withdraw from a group because I like some alone time.
So if I now have a group thing it's something I have to be mindful of.

Not saying it's easy, you really got to want to quit.
Like today was harder for me for some reason. But what helps to not smoke is to remind myself that a) the cilia in my lungs have begun to grow back!!! b) my lungs feel much better c) I already breathe a lot easier d) I know it will taste god awful if I now smoke e) I know I will be very very very very disappointed and sad if I light one. I will SO regret it!
Because I really want to quit! So I'm not going to disappoint myself.

You really got to find the reason within. Money isn't enough. I couldn't afford to smoke at all as I'm on wellfare and to be honest not within my limited budget. But you do it anyway when addicted.
Money isn't a good motivator as it isn't internal, it's an external thing.
You gotta find an internal drive to quit that can keep you going.

Congratulations on being smoke free for 8 days FairyCrystal! You are doing so well. Thank you for all the advice and information. I started smoking again after having quit for 7 years due to stress and partly kept on smoking cos my partner at the time loved to smoke even more than me, I know it sounds silly but it's even harder to quit when you live with someone who smokes. You have such great willpower and strength and it's admirable how your own journey inspires others to get healthy and quit too. Thank you for sharing and best of luck with everything

[FairyCrystal]

Originally Posted by SaraTherase

Congratulations on being smoke free for 8 days FairyCrystal! You are doing so well. Thank you for all the advice and information. I started smoking again after having quit for 7 years due to stress and partly kept on smoking cos my partner at the time loved to smoke even more than me, I know it sounds silly but it's even harder to quit when you live with someone who smokes. You have such great willpower and strength and it's admirable how your own journey inspires others to get healthy and quit too. Thank you for sharing and best of luck with everything

Thank you!
Currently it's 2 weeks, today is the 15th day :)
Last time I quit I didn't put on any weight. This time my weight has gone up a tad, which narks me tremendously!!
Now I have been eating a bit more of things that I shouldn't have been eating the time around Easter I think. But I want it gone!!
I lost 11 kilos last year, I do not want to put on weight again.
So as it is I'm trying to drink more -I tend to forget that of late- and probably time to pick up my at-home-fitness regime (1 mile walk).
I've been sitting a lot since Feb as I've been painting almost every day. My daily walk outdoors didn't happen often, so all in all not enough movement.

The good thing is, I breathe easier so it's also easier to exercise :)
I am single at the mo, hoping to find a partner, but I don't want a partner that smokes. Too tempting, and as it is I don't want the smell around me and in my home either.
I've smelled my rolling tobacco a few times, which helps to put me off smoking even more. It's so gross! I can always smell the chemicals in the tobacco, it doesn't smell nice at all. Not a plant/tobacco smell but a chemical stink.
When sniffing that I honestly cannot believe I've smoked that cr@p!!
It made me wonder how I could've done that as, when being honest, it never tastes truly great like for instance a piece of cake. So why do it? I don't eat something that tastes and/or smells off-putting either after all!

In any case, so far so good.
Hope you can get to the point of setting that first step as well!!

[AngelBlue]

That's brilliant Fairy crystal. Well done.
You raise a lot of good points. Saving the money up to treat yourself to something nice is what I did the first time.Amazing how it soon mounts up, also having something in your hands to put in your mouth is something many do and helps. With me it was a wooden toothpick that would keep in my hand and munch on in my mouth.
We don't realise how much our lives are "ruled" by smoking until after we stop. It's quite liberating, like being freed from prison .

You will likely have a lot of "smoking dreams" too which are alarming but when you wake up it's such a relief to realise it's only a dream.
You have done the hardest bit . Keep up the good work.

[AngelBlue]

..Also. it's natural to put a bit of weight on after stopping smoking . Please don't let that put you off or give reason to start again. Usually it will eventually even put again . And they not to "diet" at the same time as quitting . You can only focus on one thing at a time .
( The weight has not left me after 2 and half years but that is because I am not so in-active because I cannot breathe !!! )

It's also important to remember something I was told by an expert in the field which was this..
"" We think we can't stop smoking, and yet we do in fact "stop" smoking every single day . When we go to bed we have an average of 8 hours that we don't smoke, and we don't get up every few minutes to have a cig, so for a third of our day we have stopped ""

[AngelBlue]

To Sara, Thank you , but oh my goodness don't worry about me. I promise by the way that I wasn't trying to guilt trip you . I would never do that.
I also tried vaping twice and I just couldn't get to grips with it.
I have stopped 3 times and obviously on two occasions I started again. This time , I hadn't planned to stop but I ended up in hospital in agony and on all kinds of drips and oxygen for 2 weeks , so by the time I was well enough to actually have a cig I had been stopped for 2 weeks and the "worst" part of stopping was over.
I knew I would be silly to try again , especially after all of my test results !!!
It never bothered me in hospital .
Even when I saw the other smokers dragging their drips behind them with their bums hanging out of their hospital gowns to go in the car park for a puff, it still didn't bother me.
I knew the challenge would be when I got home , but I resisted. I just drink 5 bottles of vodka a day instead LOL..
You be kind to yourself too and don't be hard on yourself.

[Aldous]

I remember seeing this in a health class in college many beers ago.

The Feminine Mistake, 1977 anti-smoking documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-BWM_Czlv0


The course was Drug Use and Abuse. I also remember discovering the misinformation about methadone where some people claim that methadone is easier to get off of than heroin. After I heard the teacher say its harder to get off of methadone than heroin, I brought the PDR in to show him what it said about this. The PDR said that methadone is easier to get off of than heroin. After this, we watched a film about heroin addicts and the addicts said that methadone is harder to get off of than heroin, so I believed the addicts and not the PDR. I think some people even say methadone is not addicting, which isn't true. That was an old PDR and I didn't check the newer ones yet.

[Aldous]

long lived radicals in cigarette smoke
https://tinyurl.com/mpwpv8vt

[Aldous]

I thought of the term Battle-axe (woman) for some reason today. The 3 Stooges used that term now and them and I looked it up and found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle-axe_(woman)
https://tinyurl.com/mtjaepfr
Carrie Nation was anti-tobacco, too.
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news...n/62671616007/

[Aldous]

Apomorphine for addiction
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ers-researcher

[kundalinikid]

“Cigarettes are a classy way to commit suicide.”
Kurt Vonnegut