How did you STOP smoking?

RaptorSA said:
Let's not even go there.
I'm right now in the middle of a compounded struggle with both smoking and habitual weekly drinking that has grown into another bad habit.... and unfortunately for me, the idea of just dealing with one and then the other during the course of this year has just been me bulls**ing myself.

They are fundamentally intertwined, so I'm in for a motherf**er of a rough time.
Boredom is by far my biggest enemy on that front.
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It is 100% a mind-F$%k of note - but as soon as you realise you can function normally without it, you will be good.

I have this weird psychopathic tendency to try and do something no-one else can - I then realised I can use this to my advantage wrt "addictions", I get a kick out of not drinking while everyone around me cannot stop :) and the lack of hangovers, regardless of how small is a welcomed sensation

"look at all you peasants, struggling with such trivial battles of the flesh"
 
The_MAC said:
It is 100% a mind-F$%k of note - but as soon as you realise you can function normally without it, you will be good.

I have this weird psychopathic tendency to try and do something no-one else can - I then realised I can use this to my advantage wrt "addictions", I get a kick out of not drinking while everyone around me cannot stop :) and the lack of hangovers, regardless of how small is a welcomed sensation

"look at all you peasants, struggling with such trivial battles of the flesh"
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I keep telling myself:
Now that I've lived like a f**ing degenerate for over two decades, I have the opportunity to actually live life from a different perspective, 'cause to be honest, the status quo has been getting more and more boring.

*deep breaths*, Raptor, *deep breaths*
 
I think I commented in here a few years ago. I started drinking Champix. It was meant to be for 3 months. I stopped smoking after 11 days and never went back. BUT I think it screwed with my head. I've always been a bit special in the head, my childhood school journey was horrible, and it made me a very sad person. Anyway, I think the Champix made it worse. 9ish years ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and it's been a journey since.

I could also be wrong and it did nothing to me 🤷‍♀️
 
Jean Claude Vaaldamme said:
I don't think nicotine is the problem, the habit is more of a problem.
I have been vaping for many years and quickly reduced the nicotine to 0%. That was easy. Trying to stop the sucking and blowing smoke and keeping your hands busy is the real problem.
I have started putting nicotine in my vape juice again, just because the juice taste better, but at 0.5%. Its almost nothing
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Wish that were the case. I stopped smoking 7 years ago through vaping. Sure, vaping mimicked the smoking action to a degree, but it’s literally just the hand movement. Quit that last year after 6 years, and despite tapering down over time, I definitely noticed the increased withdrawals every time I stepped down. The hand action stayed the same, the delivery didn’t, so the nicotine IS the problem.

A few days after binning it for good I started really going off my head, so went and bought a nicotine spray. Almost instant relief. No hand action this time, though, just the drug delivered under my tongue. Again, nicotine IS the problem.

Anyway, it’s been a year now, and wouldn’t you know it? I’m still using the bloody spray! So, what can I assume? That nicotine IS the problem, not how it gets into my bloodstream.

Nicotine quit date is the 31st. Have the first week of January booked off. Going to raw dog it.
 
Akasha said:
I think I commented in here a few years ago. I started drinking Champix. It was meant to be for 3 months. I stopped smoking after 11 days and never went back. BUT I think it screwed with my head. I've always been a bit special in the head, my childhood school journey was horrible, and it made me a very sad person. Anyway, I think the Champix made it worse. 9ish years ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and it's been a journey since.

I could also be wrong and it did nothing to me 🤷‍♀️
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I will definitely consider drugs if I end up being unable to quite even with my most sincerest efforts.
But that would be a massive lose for me and will try anything I can to not go that route. I've read horror stories about Champix etc. and apart from the occasional Disprin, I don't use medication in general.

The last time I remember being depressed was during the first half of my 30's, or last part of my 20's. I'm not sure exactly. But I cured that by staying single for the most part. Turns out, if I'm around people for extended periods of time, no matter who it is, it's like adding fertiliser to some kind of recessed depression. Thanks, brain, you really f**ed me over.

Have honestly not had those feelings in many, many years, but it would be a real k@k one if that's something that ends up coming back. Risking it by taking weird drugs sounds like a bad idea. Depression is something I don't wish upon my worst enemies.
 
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RaptorSA said:
Let's not even go there.
I'm right now in the middle of a compounded struggle with both smoking and habitual weekly drinking that has grown into another bad habit.... and unfortunately for me, the idea of just dealing with one and then the other during the course of this year has just been me bulls**ing myself.

They are fundamentally intertwined, so I'm in for a motherf**er of a rough time.
Boredom is by far my biggest enemy on that front.
Click to expand...
One thing you need to absolutely stop while you quit smoking is alcohol. It lowers your inhibitions and you think to yourself that just one cigarette won't hurt, and before you know it you're smoking again. Every single time I relapsed was because of booze.

Also don't substitute cigarettes with sweets and snacks. That will create other health issues. Just get past the first month of torture and then it gets a lot easier. Once you do quit for a few months, you can ask yourself whether you want to put yourself through that month of torture again. That should be another motivating factor to not start again...
 
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The Voice said:
The hand action stayed the same, the delivery didn’t, so the nicotine IS the problem.

A few days after binning it for good I started really going off my head, so went and bought a nicotine spray. Almost instant relief. No hand action this time, though, just the drug delivered under my tongue. Again, nicotine IS the problem.

Anyway, it’s been a year now, and wouldn’t you know it? I’m still using the bloody spray! So, what can I assume? That nicotine IS the problem, not how it gets into my bloodstream.

Nicotine quit date is the 31st. Have the first week of January booked off. Going to raw dog it.
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100% agree with this.

Nicotine addiction is a bloody expert at hiding itself as other psychological issues, and all the studies etc. that I've discussed with the LLM goes into depth about how we know this. There's a ton of knowledge on it.

Hence, the whole point of my random out-of-nowhere need to go a few weeks and see what it feels like when the physical dependency starts to wane... right now, it feels unachievable, but that's what the addiction is telling me, the only way out of this nightmare is time.
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
One thing you need to absolutely stop while you quit smoking is alcohol. It lowers your inhibitions and you think to yourself that just one cigarette won't hurt, and before you know it you're smoking again. Every single time I relapsed was because of booze.

Also don't substitute cigarettes with sweets and snacks. That will create other health issues. Just get past the first month of torture and then it gets a lot easier. Once you do quit for a few months, you can ask yourself whether you want to put yourself through that month of torture again. That should be another motivating factor to not start again...
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100%... this is the biggest one of them all.

In fact, I'm supposed to be going to Cape Town for a few days in 1.5-2 weeks from now to visit a friend.

Whether I actually go or not will only be decided after 7 days without nicotine.... but even then, I already know that it's going to be a bad idea since alcohol would have to be involved and no amount of wishful thinking will convince me that I can go through that this soon without relapse.

I'm soaking in every moment of this suffering. It's much, much worse than I expected, so using it as ammo later should be pretty effective.

EDIT.
ChatGPT is really good at this... I really don't think people need to pay money for courses etc. anymore, it's clearly trained on all the best mind-f**k tricks to hack us mortals.

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RaptorSA said:
100%... this is the biggest one of them all.

In fact, I'm supposed to be going to Cape Town for a few days in 1.5-2 weeks from now to visit a friend.

Whether I actually go or not will only be decided after 7 days without nicotine.... but even then, I already know that it's going to be a bad idea since alcohol would have to be involved and no amount of wishful thinking will convince me that I can go through that this soon without relapse.

I'm soaking in every moment of this suffering. It's much, much worse than I expected, so using it as ammo later should be pretty effective.

EDIT.
ChatGPT is really good at this... I really don't think people need to pay money for courses etc. anymore, it's clearly trained on all the best mind-f**k tricks to hack us mortals.

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Yeah nicotine is a bastard. What non-smokers ("just quit, bro, it can't be that hard") don't realise is that it literally creates new dopamine pathways in your brain: the same pathways that give you satisfaction after eating when you were hungry, after drinking when you were thirsty, and after having sex when you were horny. All centred around survival of the species. So, because nicotine runs on the same pathway now, your brain now thinks you have to have it to survive. Depending on how deep those pathways run (how much you've been using for how long), withdrawal is literally going to feel like you're not getting something that's essential for your existence.

My stupid ass started smoking when I was around 11, and I've been addicted to that "satisfaction" of calming my withdrawal through smoking, vaping and NRT for 34 years (which is literally the only reason we keep doing it - not the enjoyment, we just don't want to have withdrawal). It's the usual stuff: aches, fatigue, etc. But, what gets to me eventually is the inability to concentrate at all. I have ADHD, and for anyone with it, you know that we rely on stimulants to keep us going - nicotine is a stimulant, and when you suddenly just remove it... My brain also feels like it's been wrapped tightly in cling film, and it's being pulled tighter, and tighter. And then I snap and go find some nicotine again (first smokes, then vapes, and now the spray).

I know I'm going to struggle, but I'm committed to the 31st (having a set date helped me in the past with smoking and vaping). I'll say a prayer before, and then leave it in God's hands.
 
bwana said:
I maintain to this day that without vaping I'd never have quit smoking.
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Definitely helped me. Though, I quickly found that due to the convenience of it I was vaping way more than I ever smoked. Tried to quit it loads of times but failed miserably. It was only because of a pending trip to Australia that I was forced to quit because of their dubious vaping laws. Wasn't a bad thing, obviously, but I then got addicted to the NRT instead...
 
4 years sigarette free today.
manged to be completely nicotine free for a year, but started vaping in june 2023.
Down to 3mg nic in my juice that I make myself, and my goal for 2026 is to drop to 0mg nic.
when my current batch of Juice is finished my next mix will be 0 nic.
 
Day 4 of what has been the longest 85 hours of my life (hey, that's one way to make a December break feel longer).
It gets better, though.

One thing is for certain, I feel like paying some street thug a bunch of cash and giving him full permission to moer me into a coma if I ever relapse and put myself through this again.

The extra oxygen is nice, it's like when you're a lifelong Higveld Vaalie and you go down to the coast for a few days to experience what 1bar of atmospheric pressure actually feels like... lung turbos, yoga chicks smaakit.

I can even suddenly do frog jumps around the house without passing out in my own piss.... imagine what I'll be able to do in a few months, pay my TV license? Wash my shower doors? Catch a fly using chopsticks?
 
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Drake2007 said:
Quit smoking mid July this year so that's 6 weeks now. I went into clicks to get my daughter some cold and flu medicine, saw the nicorettes on the shelf and just bought them as well.

Haven't had a cigarette since.
This not my first time quitting smoking so have learned some lessons from past failures. i.e. Just don't buy them.
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Well done me! 10 years and a few months ago, stayed quit from nicotine.
I've found an easier explanation, I'm too lazy to smoke cigaretts. It's such a stupid schlep, carrying that kak around in your pockets and a lighter, add cellphone and wallet and it's just too much crap to carry about.
 
carstensdj said:
As the title says... What worked for you?

My fiancee is busy cutting down quite rapidly as she really wants to stop. I on the other hand am not dead set on stopping and that's why i think it's a little harder for me. Just the thought of what i am doing to myself and have already done to myself over the past 11yrs though does make me realize that i NEED to stop.

Any advice?
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Did your fiancé mange to stop smoking? What about you?
 
I don’t think any pill or patch or hypnotherapy or anything will work long term unless you truly make the mindset shift and convince yourself to stop.

I stopped and started again on and off for about five years, never really thought my smoking was a problem anyway, so I kind of just smoked when I wanted to, and didn’t smoke when I didn’t want to. But then I slowly started not being able to drink without smoking, and realised it was becoming an unbreakable habit, and if I didn’t have my own smokes on me, I would start bumming cigarettes from mates etc as soon as I had one or two beers in me.

So then one day I really seriously decided I wanted to stop smoking once and for all. It wasn’t like the other times I chose to quite, I really meant it. Took about two weeks of serious will power, which included excusing myself from social events where I knew I would drink and then want to smoke. But after those two weeks, I haven’t so much as craved a cigarette in 4 years, and I can go out with the boys, or polish off half a bottle of whiskey over dinner, and still not so much as think about smoking. No pills, no patches, just a real, meaningful mindset shift. Plus the benefit is now, the food, the whiskey, they wine etc all tastes so much better.

I do indulge in cigars from time to time though. But I feel that isn’t in the same category, and it probably only happens a couple of times a year.
 
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