I want to quit, as in seriously, but I’m being hampered by years of failed attempts, tried almost all the gadgets on the market, aside from Hypnosis, which seems dodgy to me. Anybody here tried it or know somebody personally that had success with it? Going cold turkey is like having permanent PMS which is not a pretty sight or experience.
two words: negative association.
say like, you have a fag in your mouth, and you step in nice, steaming dog shit. forever, when you stick a fag in your mouth, you will think of the juice dog crap squishing through your toes.
so, what you do, you get two class bottle, fill one halfway with water, the other you make a piggy bank.
next time you have a fag, you put R5 in the piggy bank. when you smoke your ciggy, you ash into the bottle with water, and then drop the stompie in there as well.
next fag, you drop 5 bucks into the piggy bank. open the water bottle, and take a nice, deep smell.
continue on like this.
soon enough, the bottle with money will be full, and your water bottle will smell like absolute crap.
you give the money to a charity, or your kids, or your s/o, and your not allowed to get anything from that money for yourself. you are allowed to count the money and feel like a douche.
so whenever you want to light up, you will want to retch, because the cigarette smell will you remind you of the smell from the water bottle you have to partake in, and you will be mif cause you are losing another R5.
allso, you need to break your habits.
instead of having a fag when you wake up. isntead, brush your teeth immediatly. so everytime you would traditionally have a fag, after a meal, etc, do something that freshens your mouth instead. chew gum for instance. drink a nice fresh juice.
then you need something to keep your hands busy with. i found a ball of prestik works like the bomb. coa you are used to having your hands busy with your fag.
problem is, if your s/o is a smoker, chances are you wont be able to quit, he’s your enabler. while he keeps on smoking, you have very little chance of persevering.
Faerie read my mind. I’m a cold-turkey guy, even though it sucks, I can’t get over the tackyness of any other method. I know that weaning yourself off of nicotine is no option. I’ve read (but not confirmed) that any amount of nicotine will trigger the complete, full blown addiction your brain is used to. This is why, one fag, and you’re hooked again. Also why weaning never helps, people simply are punishing themselves over a longer period and thus fail. I’ve stopped smoking for a number of years by going cold turkey. One I was having an absolute shitty day, my car had trouble, I walked into the service station I’d pulled into, bought a single cig. And boom, I was hooked all over again.
After that I quit again, with much more severe withdrawal than the previous time, why this is I’m not sure. Anyway, that lasted 2 weeks, until I went out for a drink, or five, and it was all over. I’m planning on doing it again in 2 weeks - been mentally preparing a while now, and breaking my routine up purposefully; and I know it won’t be a lick of fun, so I’m planning out a w/e to sleep as much as possible (no withdrawal when you sleep).
What I find difficult is that the people around me just can’t be supportive. I’m tearing my hair out, pulling paint off the walls, and their reaction to this is: “Good! Atleast you’re not dying of cancer! Get some!”. This is not the kinda feedback I need when I’m walking the edge of reason already. I’m sure they mean good to dissuade me from going back, but what they’re actually doing is shouting “THIS IS SPARTA!” and kicking me straight down the well.
So, Faerie, good luck. Doing research on this stuff before I quit always helps. It inspires me to just go and read what the stuff is doing to my body, and I make a point to notice the effect it’s having on my skin, fitness, etc.
Also been doing that “mental preparation” thing…
What I find difficult is that the people around me just can't be supportive. I'm tearing my hair out, pulling paint off the walls, and their reaction to this is: "Good! Atleast you're not dying of cancer! Get some!". This is not the kinda feedback I need when I'm walking the edge of reason already. I'm sure they mean good to dissuade me from going back, but what they're actually doing is shouting "THIS IS SPARTA!" and kicking me straight down the well.
YES!!! A FREK, Its got the opposite effect of support, I usually lift an eyebrow, flip a mental middle finger and go get myself a smoke, and light it in their house just to piss them off…
So, Faerie, good luck.
Thanks, you too.
:-\
i have no idea what you okes are going through, since i havent smoked a day in my life. i have never had an addiction to anything.
so i can only give moral support to you two. good luck, and vasbyt. 
Okay, I’m in on the deal. Two weeks from now is 7 September. Faerie, BoogieM and Hermes will have their last cigarettes by midnight on 6 September.
Week 3 is the crucial one, so we can celebrate after three weeks, that is on 27 September. During the three weeks we are allowed to spend our cigarette budget on nice cheeses. 
Mmmm!
Oy, that’s in the week foo!
Good time to smoke foockall!
I prefer dark chocolate, although cheese is nice too.
Damn, three grumpy almost-ex-smokers will trawl these corridors… beware the Hermes-Boogie-Faerie… 
I promise to behave myself as well as the Hitch on a bad day.
I quit on 1 Sept 2009 and haven’t smoked a single cig in almost a year now. How? I use one of those electronic cigarettes. I’m still slightly addicted to nicotine, but get my fix in steam rather than smoke. If you’ve tried it and it didn’t work it may be that you had a shitty make (and there are PLENTY out there, expensive and almost totally ineffective, which is frustrating enough to drive you back to the real thing).
Well, it has worked for me (through much perseverance and experimentation) and I feel like a new man.
and he attacks you with his e ciggie when he gets excited about the topic at hand 
LOL. Heheheh! Will you ever let me live that one down? (Hangs his head in shame) ;D
I quit 13 months ago. I read the Allen Carr book (Easyway), set a date and went cold turkey. See here for more details. My girlfriend still smokes (she’s going to see a hypnotist next week over my objections) and her smoking just doesn’t bother me apart from making me concerned about her health. I’m completely over it and it’s the best gift I have ever given myself. Just do it!
there there now. ;D
Those electronic cigarettes are pretty cool for when you can’t get outside to smoke, but I think I’d miss the tar. It gives the smoke a certain velvety texture which they lack.
What I would like to try is one of those huge vaporisers. ;D
Bwha- har-har !! Superb! ;D ;D
Mintaka
Due to sinusitis I actually stopped a few days ahead of schedule, but for the sake of solidarity I’ll only start counting the days from 7 September. Good luck!
I ran out of ciggies this morning, so I’m also starting a day early… :-\
Lets see how it goes, good luck to all of us!
I stopped on saturday morning, and it went well, up to a point. :-\
I was ravenous on sat, I ate everything in view, but mostly I could keep the cravings under control and kept myself busy. Went to the driving range (I don’t play golf, but was convinced by some of my friends to come hit some balls), had a nice lunch, went to watch some movies at a friends house, and just, kept, eating. It’s not the best thing to do but it helped and I was doing OK. - Aside from my digestive system reacting very badly to the cessation, I googled it when it’d settled down and saw it’s a known side effect.
That is until we went to bed and GF support started faltering. Somehow we got into a “difference of opinion” after lying down that escalated to full-blown warfare in no time. I tried to reason that I’m not being myself, now is not a good time to discuss these things, and pleaded for some understanding. Unfortunately that didn’t help much and there was screaming and slamming of doors very soon after that… - she said I was being unusually “cold”, my response was “duh!” - I lay down for a second, and about 1/4 of a second later I was searching the room for where she’d hid the cigs. I found them, walked straight out the door and lit up (I have to confess I was shaking with anger at this point). This was at 12:30 am, roughly 24hours after I’d had my last. She heard me leaving the house and in a flash we were having another tiff outside, before there was more slamming of doors.
This was not my proudest moment, I know, but within minutes I was back into a frame of mind to go and convince her to not sleep on the couch. She confessed she should’ve understood what was happening, I apologised for being a dick, and we mended the situation. We also agreed we’d do it again next w/e, this time knowing what it was going to be like.
Sorry skeptics, I’ve failed you already. 