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BS: No Smoking-4years on

13 Dec 04 - 12:52 PM (#1355745)
Subject: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: nutty

Exactly 4 years ago today I posted a thread on Mudcat to say that I was giving up smoking.
I had tried before with litle success but had such amazing support from Mudcatters that This Time I made it.

Thank you all Mudcatters who offered encouragement, listened to my ramblings and generally were there to give me strength whenever I felt that I was weakening.

It's been a hard 4 years. The habits of the previous 30 years were well entrenched and until recently I still felt like an ex-smoker.
Now I can say that I am definitely a no smoker and that feels really good.

I'm sure that over the next few weeks there will be others taking the plunge. I just wanted to let them know, that with the help of this community anything is possible.


13 Dec 04 - 01:28 PM (#1355770)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Amos

Way to go, nutty. Been well over a year now for me, and my life is better for it by far.

A


13 Dec 04 - 02:54 PM (#1355842)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Hollowfox

Wow, it's been that long? Great job!


13 Dec 04 - 08:42 PM (#1356116)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: JennieG

Goodonya!! Just think of the money that you have saved - you could probably afford a round-the-world holiday now.

Cheers
JennieG


13 Dec 04 - 10:03 PM (#1356174)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: bbc

That's wonderful. Congratulations!!!

Barbara


14 Dec 04 - 09:02 AM (#1356523)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: s&r

Don't ever believe you can have the occasional cigarette just to be sociable. I made that mistake the first time I gave up. Second time is thirty years and still running. Well done!!!!!

Stu


14 Dec 04 - 09:58 AM (#1356572)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Paco Rabanne

Your membership of Hull Smoking Club is hereby revoked nutty!!!


14 Dec 04 - 10:01 AM (#1356575)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: wysiwyg

Ten years. It CAN be done!

Beware the "one puff for old times' sake." It ALL comes back, and fast.

~S~


14 Dec 04 - 10:06 AM (#1356579)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Bill D

I congratulate and commend all those who are succeeding...and encourage those who are still trying.


14 Dec 04 - 10:28 AM (#1356605)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST,Raggytash

Nutty, as someone who has just returned to the evil weed after over 9 years, please don't count your chickens
I too thought I'd given up, but circumstances, new job with lots of hassle, a barmaid who left her fag burning in front of me, no will power ............. and there you are, 9 years out of the window.
Keep taking it one day at a time and I wish you all the best in your continuing to be an ex-smoker


14 Dec 04 - 10:32 AM (#1356608)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Davetnova

3 and a half years here and no worries. Best thing I ever done. Well done Nutty.


14 Dec 04 - 11:20 AM (#1356669)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Wolfgang

Beware the "one puff for old times' sake." It ALL comes back, and fast.

Perhaps that's true for most people and/or for cigarette smokers.
I smoke about one cigar or cigarillo per year (some years I skip, some year I smoke two) since more than twenty years without even the slightest temptation to smoke more than that.

Wolfgang


14 Dec 04 - 02:58 PM (#1356869)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: jeffp

You and I must have quit about the same time, Dave. My last cigarette was April 16, 2001, my 47th birthday. I tasted one that fall, but it was one of the worst sensations I have ever experienced. I just can't see learning to enjoy that again. Since then I have been tempted a few times, but never seriously.

Raggytash, that 9 years is not lost, that was 9 years of your lungs clearing themselves out instead of getting worse. And you can always quit again.

jeffp


14 Dec 04 - 07:16 PM (#1357054)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: vectis

Well done nutty. I'm 16 months since my last puff (with Morty) and still on the nicotine gum. Not yet a non-smoker but on the way.


14 Dec 04 - 08:32 PM (#1357097)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST,amergin

Think I did it around march/april of 2001...every once in a while I'll get real pissed and smoke one or two...then have the stench lingering and can't breathe and such in addition to the hangover.


14 Dec 04 - 10:42 PM (#1357166)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST

Four Months -

You will be dead before May Day.


14 Dec 04 - 10:48 PM (#1357171)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Bobert

Good on you, nutty...

19 years and holding here...

'cept for an occasional puff on the peace pipe (wink, wink...)

Bobert


15 Dec 04 - 06:09 AM (#1357383)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: My guru always said

Well done nutty & all who've managed to give up!!! 4 years for me too come January, though I like to sit next to a smoker occasionally :-) Yes, beware temptation, one thing leads to another!!

ps. peace pipes are quite acceptable Bobert *grin*


15 Dec 04 - 07:48 AM (#1357470)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Sandra in Sydney

congratulations to all the non-smokers & ex-smokers. I'm a non-smoker since 1976 & remember picking up while trying to stop. And I also remember knowing I had stopped when I tried to light a cigarette for a friend without putting it in my mouth!! (ps. it wouldn't light)

sandra


28 Dec 04 - 03:20 AM (#1365673)
Subject: Quit Smoking Today!
From: GUEST,jhoyd

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28 Dec 04 - 03:34 AM (#1365676)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: greg stephens

Oct 22, 2004(as far as I recall). Still going strong! Not a whiff has passsed my lips since then(not even a peace pipe, Bobert).


28 Dec 04 - 03:52 AM (#1365683)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: freda underhill

good luck and congratulations to anyone who tries.

my father smoked from his early years and said that he'd rather enjoy life and smoke and be damned. When he was 80 he had a stroke, and his doctor told him that if he didnt give up smoking he could have another one, much more damaging, and end up living for years mentally incapacitated. Much to all our surpise, he gave up smoking after being a heavy smoker for over 65 years. Three years later (when he was 83) I asked him how he was going as a non smoker.

He lifted his chin and said he never even thought about it, and had never looked back. (he was a proud man, and would not have admitted to anyone if it was tough)

he died two years after that with a tumour on his lung.


28 Dec 04 - 04:02 AM (#1365686)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: jacqui.c

I had my last cigarette on January 1st 1983. I got withdrawal symptoms so badly that I NEVER want to go through that again - aversion therapy worked for me.


28 Dec 04 - 04:03 AM (#1365687)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: freda underhill

ps my mother, also a heavy smoker all her life, died of cancer when she was 56. Both her brothers smoked, and they also died before they reached 60.


28 Dec 04 - 04:16 AM (#1365692)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Gurney

23 years and counting -I hope- for me. I got aversion therapy of a kind, too. It was a pain in the chest that took 2 months to go away, and I was convinced, despite medical reports, that I had the big C.
An easy way to give up. I've never even thought about a smoke since.


28 Dec 04 - 08:02 AM (#1365803)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: ard mhacha

I gave up smoking 22 years ago and I can tell anyone trying to give this filthy, unhealthy habit up you will reap the benefit health wise, this is certainly much better than what you will save in money.


28 Dec 04 - 12:12 PM (#1365970)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Ebbie

Wolfgang, they say that cigar and cigarillo smoking has a different effect on a smoker. Cigarettes are insidious.

Raggytash, 27 years ago when I proudly told my doctor that I had quit smoking, he asked how long it had been. I said, Three weeks. He shrugged. Then you can't really say that you've quit yet, he said. I could have punched him. Keep in mind that the longest I had gone withiut a cigarette in 25 years was 5 days; this time I knew I had quit. All that doctor demonstrated was that HE had not quit.

Congratulations to all who have made it and to those who keep trying.


28 Dec 04 - 02:23 PM (#1366078)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: McGrath of Harlow

I'm with Wolfgang on that, but with cigarettes. On the rare occasions I've smoked a cigarette since I gave it up (maybe 20 or 30 years ago) I've never felt any craving to take it up again.

But I'm perfectly aware that for a lot of people that isn't the case, and for anyone who had a hard struggle giving it up, I certainly wouldn't advise risking it.

I remember when I decided to stop smoking I just gave it up like that, no hassle. I'm sure it's not a matter of willpower, it's just that different people seem to be wired up differently when it comes to such matters.


28 Dec 04 - 02:51 PM (#1366095)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos

For all those that haven't quit, I'll give you another reason.

I have been suffering from a pretty bad cold (coughing so bad that I was on the floor, pulling muscles in my back, abdomen and accross my shoulders) which has gone on for three weeks.

The doctors didn't know what was going on and were treating me as best they could with little result.

When I told them that I didn't smoke but had grown up around smokers they changed the treatment regimen totally and radically.

I'm recovering nicely now, but now that I know that it does make a difference I will never allow my children to smoke or be near smokers. If not for your health, please quit for your loved ones and those around you.


28 Dec 04 - 03:39 PM (#1366127)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Ebbie

Chief Chaos, in what way did they change the treatment? One of my life regrets is that I didn't quit while my daughter was still at home. I smoked in the house and just about every where I pleased. Sh hated it. She does not seem to have suffered any ill effects but who knows in future.

The really sad thing is that some of us can't quit for the sake of someone else- it has to be when WE are ready.

Once in awhile though I had to laugh. At one point, I had a squirrel monkey. One night I shook out the pack and found I had only three cigarettes left. Figuring that would carry me through the middle of the night cigarette and one when I arose for the day and one for the drive into town I went to bed.

In the morning my three cigarettes were neatly broken into 7 pieces. I had left the monkey out overnight.


28 Dec 04 - 05:18 PM (#1366211)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Joybell

That's great, nutty! Congratulations.
Ebbie, so the matches were safely hidden then? Lucky thing. Clever monkey. You had enough to last you 21 times as long. Cheers, Joy


28 Dec 04 - 10:42 PM (#1366466)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: Ebbie

I hadn't thought about the possibility of Freckles trying to light up, Joybell! On the other hand, my matches were not the kitchen 'strike anywhere' kind, so I don't suppose he would have been successful had he tried.


29 Dec 04 - 08:43 AM (#1366682)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST

Really, really well done nutty - I'm guessing you and your clothes probably smell a lot nicer these days!!

cheers, Terry

(then again, you do have a dog, don't you......)


29 Dec 04 - 09:06 AM (#1366692)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: GUEST,Raggytash

Ebbie
The point I was trying to make, which you clearly missed, was that although Nutty has done extremely well to have survived without a cigarette for so long it is VERY easy to slip back into smoking, as I and many others who have quit for a long period have found out. It is akin to being the evil drink, once you have been an addict you will always have a propensity to fall victim to the drug you where addicted to.
Good luck in the continued fight against the evil weed Hazel, I wish you well


30 Dec 04 - 05:33 AM (#1367469)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: polaitaly

I smoked my last (I hope) cigarette on £1 March of 2001. I begun smoking when I was sixteen; I quit at twenty. Then I begun again at 23 or 24, and stopped four years later; and then begun and quit again and again, four or five times... I think that for the last thirty years I smoked half of the time, more or less. And almost every time that I was at it again, I had to blame Bobert's "peace pipe wink wink" because the little tobacco in it was enough to trigger the habit again. Once a smoker.....


30 Dec 04 - 06:16 AM (#1367483)
Subject: RE: BS: No Smoking-4years on
From: ard mhacha

McGrath, Fair play to you, you must be made of stern stuff, you say that you never had any problem when you gave up smoking, well, I went through hell, but being a stubborn cuss I fought it out for months, yes, months.
In no way is kicking this bloody awful addicition easy, it was well into a year before I could safely say I beat that most addictive drug.