How did you quit smoking?

westgin said:
I smoked 2 to 3 packs a day for years. One day deer hunting I lit the last one that I had with me and decided that would be my last. I tried to smoke another 6 months later and thought I would die. THAT was the last one. I had quit many times before that that time it stuck... At times if someone lights up close to me the urge comes back, but just walk away!!!!!!!
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I quit smoking by doing the whole dip thing and now I'm throwing lips like it's going out of style. The only thing that work for me was excercise. I fell out from the routine, but just like westgin said, give yourself sometime and then take a drag and you will remember why you quit. I quit for 3 years and the only thing that worked was excercise, it was more of a lifestyle change than anything.
 
I quit smoking and dipping in the summer of 1997. I used the patch for a couple of weeks. Can't say if it helped, but I doubt it hurt. I relapsed a bit that fall but a big sore in my mouth (turned out to be nothing) put me back on the wagon. I have not had tobacco in any form since then--18 years come this November.

I did put on a fair bit of weight and have struggled with it ever since, but watching my mother in law (whom I loved dearly) die of lung cancer three years ago made me glad I stuck with it. I won't lie and say it was easy, but I can take a deep full breath and it feels great. No coughing and hacking, and my clothes don't stink. And the hundreds of dollars I'm not spending are a nice bonus.
 


Decided to carry my "Bill W. and Dr. Bob" Daltons for a while.

Quit the e-cigarette vape last night... got off cigarettes 3-28-15 and got on 12mg vape juice. Last night, I vaped the last of my 3mg. Now I only dip during AA meetings.

And I ran a half mile this morning.

:D
 
I didn't quit, I just stopped one day.

That was 5 years ago...
 
I've been a smoker for 20 years now and have been trying to quit for 19 years.
I've tried everything from nic gum to vape pens and I still kept falling back.

But I think I've finally kicked it with a (relatively modest) Aspire ESP30w box mod and Aspire Atlantis tank (now upgraded to Atlantis V2).

It didn't happen quickly mind you. For the first month of owning the rig I still had a pack of cigarettes in my pocket. But eventually I started to enjoy vaping more than smoking. Time will tell if I have truly given up cigarettes but I will tell you that I still do have an almost full pack somewhere in my car and it's been sitting there for the past couple of weeks - untouched!

My (grain of salt) advice to anyone looking to get into vaping is this:

1) Buy a decent variable wattage mod and tank set up -. Skip the vape pens and compact units as you will probably want to upgrade them almost immediately.

2) Choose a flavorful liquid with a pg/vg mix that you like -. I like "max vg" (all vg, no pg) in fruity flavors. Max VG gives a smoother pull with minimal throat hit and lots of cloud. You will also want to choose a Nicotine level that suits you. I was a pack-a-day smoker for 20 years and the second to lowest level, 3mg nic does me just fine. As it turns out, I think I was more addicted to the physical habit than the nicotine itself.

3) Have your smoke - After a day or two of vaping, if you still want to buy a pack of cigarettes then go ahead and get a pack. BUT don't get your usual brand. Instead get the crappiest/cheapest stuff on the shelf

4) Have fun with the vape - Fill your bathroom sink with clouds of vape. fashion a volcano from a black t-shirt and gently fill it with vape. And notice how the flavor hits your tongue with every inhale.

Hopefully after a couple of weeks of doing this you will soon start to enjoy vaping more than smoking and you will start to realize how nasty and boring cigarettes are.

Let's worry about the "How to Quit Vaping" steps in a few years.
 
Great thread.
I quit for a month using ecigs back in 2011. The ecigs worked pretty well until I went drinking with the buds. Had a smoke and have been smoking since. I have been getting tired of smoking a pack and a half a day, and after reading this thread today I went and got a prescription for champex. If that doesn't work for me I will try to go back to the vape, my coworkers have some awesome set ups and it's way cheaper than smoking.

Good stuff Charlie Mike! Don't run too fast or the knives will fly out of your pockets! Haha
 
Hello there. This is my first post in this forum BTW.

I smoked cigarettes off & on since the age of 15, used to steal cigs from my dad. Before long I was a full-blown smoker.

How did I quit? The hard way:

One minute I'm out "having a smoke" and the next thing I know I'm waking up in the hospital after being a an induced coma for 2.5 weeks.

What happened? I had a major heart attack at the young age of 48. My wife found me in the back yard laying on my back, bulging eyes open, not breathing, cold and blue. No one knows how long I laid there. She called 911 and was freaking out. They talked her though CPR until the cavalry arrived. They tell me I was unresponsive but they did not give up. Defibbed me numerous times and finally got a faint pulse. Decided to try and transport to a location where a "LifeFlight" helicopter could pick me up.

During the initial transport my heart stopped again (twice), more defibb kickstarted me again. When they put me on the helicopter the first responders thought I would not make it.
Upon arrival at the hospital (an 75 mile flight), they could not tell if anyone was home, so they immediately put me in a coma and then therapeutic hypothermia for 48 hours. After the therapy, they decided to bring me out of the coma slowly - like two weeks slow.

The first thing I can recall is my wife's voice whispering in my ear "you're in the hospital, please wake up". In the room was my mother and step dad, and my wife, all of them crying. Happy crying. I was clueless to everything but the doctor was excited that I could recognize my family. Somebody's home!

It took another week to get rid of the pneumonia from the therapeutic hypothermia (that was bad). Once that was under control, I had a quadruple bypass perfumed. There was extensive damage done to my heart. I did have brain, liver and kidney damage from the lack of oxygen due to not breathing/no pulse, basically being dead for who knows how long.

If you think smoking is expensive, try doing what I did. Just the helicopter ride was $12,000 and my day was just getting started. In the end, my out-of-pocket cost for the whole thing was just over $380,000. I'm still paying it off, probably will be for many years. I hope.

If you are reading this and you smoke, just quit. Sure, it's hard. But you know what? It's easier than not quitting, a lot easier.

Do it.

ps: Without a doubt, the most surreal experience a person can have is meeting all the people that were involved in saving your life. A few weeks after I got home, there was a knock on my door. Two ambulances and a fire truck were parked out front of my house. Everyone that was there that day had to come see for themselves that I was still around. They even showed me a cell phone video of me being loaded into the helicopter. The single most humbling thing that can happen to someone. Just take my word for it, I don't recommend it.
 
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About 2 years ago I was smoking a pack a day until I saw General Swedish Snus at my local gas station. I remembered reading studies that swedish snus wasn't as bad for you as American chewing tobacco. I had previously tried camel and marlborough snus and thought it tasted too much like after dinner mints and provided little to no buzz. No replacement for cigarettes that's for sure. So I picked up a can of 20 x General Mini Mint snus and started popping them. One every couple hours, under lip for about 30-40 minutes until it ran out of flavor. I was off cigarettes in about a week. Fast forward two years and I just gave up the Swedish Snus for a $40.00 E-vape and have been trying different flavors. I use the 12MG nicotine vape juice and hit it whenever I get a craving, which is frequently. My wife hates it but I have weened myself off the snus with it. I have come to a realization that I am severely addicted to nicotine, and that the only way to give the drug up for good is cold turkey. I have tried everything from gum to cough drops to patches. The snus worked for a while but I started to get heart palpitations from how much nicotine was coursing through my body, so I had to give it up. I will still puff a cigarette if I have a few drinks or I'm severely stressed, but I have gone from a pack a day to maybe 3-4 cigarettes per month, if that. Good luck...feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Oh ya, also check out Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking...my friend quit cold turkey because of that book.

Also forgot to mention previously, we just found out my mother in law, who is only in her mid 60's, has stage 4 small cell lung cancer that's spread to her heart and throughout her body. She's the most amazing woman and it is devastating to our family. They tell you and tell you and tell you, and you think "well that's a ways off if it's gonna happen..." but the damage is already being done, the foundation being laid, etc. bad habit man...really bad.
 
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My girl friend (now wife) told me that if I was meant to smoke that I would have been born with a chimney on my head. That was it, I quit smoking and have never looked back. That was about 35 years ago.
 
steppinthefunk said:
I am glad you're still around Stitches!
Your story gives me strength.
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Thanks!

I hope my "episode" encourages you to give it up. A large part of the need to smoke is in my opinion habitual conditioning. Your thinking Duh, smoking is a habit. It goes way beyond that.

For example, I had conditioned myself to smoke while on the phone. If the phone rang, I lit up without even thinking about it. Other conditioned "triggers" included smoking after eating or while contemplating a complicated task, among other things.

These conditioned habits are the hardest part, even harder than breaking the addiction. This is where people most fail. Tricks like e-cigs just substitute one problem for another and do nothing about the conditioned habits.
It takes turning your lifestyle up-side-down. When you encounter a trigger, you have to do something else. My most difficult trigger to defeat was the phone thing. I ended up just sitting down at the computer and playing solitaire while on the phone. It was enough to get me past the want.

Another thing I ended up doing (a lot) to recondition myself was walking around the block. If I really really wanted a smoke, I would just stand up, walk right out the door and continue all the way around the block. Rain? So what. You have to do whatever it takes, and turning a negative into a positive is just a bonus (walking is way better for you than smoking).

Walk, play solitaire, keep your mind off of your conditioned habits by keeping yourself busy doing something completely different - turn your lifestyle up-side-down. If you don't, smoking will do it for you in a not-so-friendly way.

Be strong, do it.
 
I didn't manage to quit but when my doctor told me that my red blood cell count was too high I found keeping a written record of the time's I smoked very useful for cutting down, I had no trouble doubling the time between each smoke for about a month before I gave in.
 
Thanks for sharing your story stitches scary shit for sure.

Good health blade bud. Stay sharp
 
I was 26 years old, my car became stuck on a mountain road. My wife(4 months pregnant) and I had to walk mostly downhill for about 3 miles. I thought I was going to die. My wife, a non-smoker, was unfazed by the hike. I decided to quit smoking. I took two puffs from a cigarette a few days later and never touched one again.
I will be 71 this coming August, and I truly believe that the only reason I'm still here was because I quit smoking.
 
I finally realized that for the past two years I had only been smoking at work so I started working my way down a little at a time until one day I was at work someone asked me If I wanted to catch a quick smoke. I walked out to the break area took about two puffs and handed him the rest of my pack. I slowly weaned myself off of them a little at a time until I realized I didn't need them anymore then I substituted the oral fixation with pumpkin seed. Now when I'm stressed everyone laughs there asses off at work because they all know I have a little bag of pumpkin seeds with me and I will start chewing those.
 
My wife and I quit cold turkey after our first son was born 36 yrs ago, we got tired of going out to the garage to smoke, she lasted, i resumed several times usually after drinking too many beers, finally i went to a shick stop smoking course, cost me $300 back then which was a lot, it worked, figured I didn't want to waste $300.........we both gained some weight but still better than smoking..........good luck
 
I couldn't quit without an aid. Was Nicorette gum and the pending birth of my firstborn that got me to quite after 20 years of smoking. I didn't want to set a bad example for my kids.

I got cancer at the base of the tongues 10 years ago that I thought was due to smoking. Now they think it was human papilloma virus.
 
I had been weaning myself down for a number of years by hand rolling my own - with a filter. Being an avid exercise enthusiast, I was also noting the decline in my endurance as I aged into my mid 30s. Had plenty of motivation.

Wasn't until I took up breath meditation that I realized 100% without a doubt I did not want to die due to lung failure if there was anything I could do about it. In a few weeks time I went from being OK with it, to realizing it is probably more harmful to oneself than being a cutter.

The only crutch I used was tincture of lobelia. Two drops in a cup of coffee will eradicate a nicotine craving for a few hours - also makes you feel slightly nauseous for a couple minutes. Is like having a smoke after a couple days without one. I bought a small bottle and never did finish it.

Lobelia was used up until recently as an ingredient in stop smoking products in Europe - Native Americans used it some of their purification practices - also known as pukeweed, but one needn't take a dose anywhere near high enough to vomit before getting good effects.

Between the breath meditation and the Lobelia I pulled it off pretty cleanly. The wife managed it with some acupuncture. She bought a pack on the way to the acupuncturist, and after the treatment it sat in the car in the map compartment within arm's reach for a couple of months - she never did have another.

When we quit, both had over 20 years in as smokers. I had quit before this, for as long as 1.5 years at a stretch but never really eliminated the desire for more till the last attempt.


Lobeline, the principle alkaloid in lobelia, has a chemical structure similar to nicotine, except that it has the opposite effect. Nictoine acts on these receptors to contract blood vessels, increase blood pressure and heart rate and make muscles tense. Lobelia has the opposite effect. It dilates blood vessels, decreases blood pressure and heart rate and makes muscles relax.

These actions make lobelia one of the best antispasmodic and relaxing herbs in the plant kingdom.
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Russ Andrews above gave a great answer. You're addicted, see your doctor. As far as what you can do on your own, all addictions are extremely difficult to cure. The human mind is inherently prone to all kinds of addictions. So the best way to get rid a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. You got to quit cold turkey. Every time you want to smoke, do pushups. The exercise will give you an adrenaline and endorphine high. Work your way up to 50 pushups every time you get the urge. Soon you'll be the strongest guy in the neighborhood. If you have to have something in your mouth, chew bubble gum. Using chewing tobacco causes oral cancer. If your friends are big time smokers, you're going to have to stay away from them and get new friends or get them to quit also.
 
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