Okay rock and music types,

This may have been covered here, and I know there was a crap/not crap about it, but I'm actively looking for advice here.

Here's what I've tried:
Will power--this hasn't work too well. Just bearing down and fucking doing it isn't cutting for me. I'm weak and get stressed and yadda yadda.

A book called "how to quite smoking"--way, way too newy-agey for me. I don't need to center myself, I just need to quit.

Switching brands every time I buy a pack--sore throat, unexpected head rush from something called "Pall Mall", and just a generally bad experience.

I'm moving onto gum later today.

How's the patch?

Success stories?

Thanks a lot
Ike

It was actually called "How to Quit Smoking"

Sorry about the typo

Ike

I quit 3 years ago. Haven't had one since. I currently have no desire to smoke anything tobacco related.

Here's how:

I got double pnuemonia during the hottest August I can remember. Didn't (couldn't) smoke for two weeks - stuck on the couch in 102 degree weather with chills. After that, as a complication, had pleuresy (inflamation of the tissue wall surrounding the lungs). Couldn't smoke. It fucking hurt like a bitch for months just to breathe, and there was a point where I wondered if I might actually die.

At the point that this happened I hated smoking, couldn't quit, wanted to, but nothing was working. I sometimes wonder if my getting sick was my body's way of overcoming my lack of mental will.

I had tried gum, patch, cold-turkey, etc.... It's all a bunch of shit. You just gotta deal with it. The physical withdrawl only lasts about three days. After that it's all habit. You really gotta change your lifestyle too. I didn't go out to a bar/club, or hang around other smokers for at least 3 months.

Cigarette smoke smells like total shit to me now. I don't mind being around it at a bar or club for a little while. It was strange moving here from Madison, cause everyone who smokes in Madison is treated like a fucking pariah, and don't deny it. Here smoking seems to be a local pastime. Everyone downtown seems to smoke.

exercise

once i started doing yoga or riding my bike to work regularly, my desire to smoke cigarettes, even casually, vanished

if i don't do anything for a while, then smoking starts to seem like an ok idea. but it's actually repellent if i exercise regularly.

but i was never addicted, ike

my sympathies and best wishes are with you

Get your wife pregnant. The decision will be made for you. I had to sleep on the couch for a few days until I gave in and quit.

If you have the funds and do not already own one, buy a bike. It's helped me quite a bit. Gets rid of the nervous energy and saves a lot of wasted gas money, too.

"Get your wife pregnant. The decision will be made for you. I had to sleep on the couch for a few days until I gave in and quit. "



Holy crap, that's the whole reason for the quitting and fretting about quitting! My wife, who was a smoker until about 9 months ago, is due pretty soon. She's been so incredibly cool and strong about this, and it's time to step up myself.

I exercised a lot this summer at the gym, and that DID help. I've just got to get better about that.

Thanks, folks!
Ike[/quote]

Ike,

You might give Welbutrin (or one of its equivalents) the old college try. It's a mild anti-depressant. I went on it and was able to quit smoking without much hassle, and without the vague nicotine withdrawl feelings (everything lacks luster and I've lost the will to go on).

Yes. I quit and didn't smoke for months and months and months. Then I started again. Now I'm a 'social smoker'. I still smoke a lot, cuz I'm quite social.... So maybe it didn't work. But perhaps you have more motivation, what with the pending arrival of fresh DNA coils.... My entire social universe is wrapped in a cloud of smoke.

Best of luck!

Congratulations, Ike! Good luck quitting, no joke. You'll make it.

Ike,
Here's how I quit dipping after 6 years and how I am currently quitting smoking after 5 years.

I'm a firm believer that you have to trick your own mind.
I was a hard-core dipper. Free dip and attending college in the south will do that to a person. However, I had three key triggers that made me dip... 1. Baseball 2. Alcohol 3. Golf.
If I was engaged in any of those three activities, I had to dip.
So what I did was eliminate two of them from the eqation and told my brain that "I wasn't quitting, just limititing it to one certain time and place". Since I was a professional drinker and played baseball, I decided that golf was to be the only time I allowed myself to dip, since I only played golf once a week or so.
So I chewed gum like my plane was going down during the week and when I got a chance to play golf, I would dip - and dip as much as I wanted (a couple of cans in one round was not uncommon). But the second I left the course, that was it.
Eventually, I weened myself off of it completely... it's been two years since I've now had a pinch of the Bear and I don't miss it for one second.

Smoking. I'm now doing the same thing, with a little help from the 2mg Nicorette gum packs. I only smoke when I golf. I told my brain again, that "I'm not quitting, just limiting." And it's working pretty well now. If I have a huge craving, I just tell myself to take it out on Sat. on the first tee. Then I'll smoke a shitload during the round and be done when I leave the course.
Eventually, just like the dip, winter will roll around and I will have put myself in a position to not want it anymore.

Hope this helps.

P.S. Let's hear it for Nomar!!

I had quit smoking for several months. I felt good. Then i went to China. Everyone everywhere in China smokes. They had Ashtrays built into the urinals. -You start talking to someone, -they offer you a smoke.

I was weak and caved. I've been back over a month now and am using the patch, yesterday i forgot my patch and went to go visit family. Oh the anger.
So now i am hooked on the patch.

yay,
-Wilson