BS: advice on stopping smoking

Subject: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 03:46 PM

Hi there,

My friend wants to stop smoking, but the last time he tried he had a rough time, became anxious and nervous.

What about you mudcatters ? Anybody got any great ideas ? I was particularly interested in suggestions I have heard for substitutes for cigarettes, such as sucking a dummy(!), or taking sunflower seeds because they have proerties which are found in cigarettes too.

We live in Europe and might not be able to get our hands on the lastest patches, etc. All suggestions welcome though !

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 03:54 PM

Well, first.. stop buying them...

2nd..   stop bumming them off people (tell everyone you're quitting, and that they're NOT to give you smokes)

3rd... when the urge does hit... do ANYTHING else to take your mind off it... walk around the block... drink water... get a BJ... anything... the craving only lasts about a minute...

Probably the most important thing, if you really want to quit, is don't stop quitting... sure... yer likely gonna fall off the wagon from time to time (I know I do when I got a few pints in me.. actually that's the only time I smoke anymore) but don't get down on yourself for that... it took you YEARS to become the smoker you are... it's going to take just as long to learn how to be a non-smoker... (There's a BIG difference between a non-smoker and someone who has never smoked... a smoke-virgin if you will)

And well, yer gonna have to accept that if you are a smoking addict, then there are going to be withdrawal symptoms... suck it up, and get through it...

Best of luck to ya eh!

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: GUEST,Skipy
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 04:52 PM

Try to find a way to have a nipple in your mouth 24 hour a day, that way you won't try & put a ciggarette in.

I'll get my spatula!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Amos
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 06:53 PM

Patsy:

There have been two or ore earlier threads on this topic.

What worked for me, which was a hard-bitten case indeed, was a tablet called "Commit".

A

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 07:58 PM

"It's going to take just as long to learn how to be a non-smoker"

Right on the button Clinton. The earlier you become a non-smoker mentally   
the sooner it gets loads easier.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: John Routledge
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 08:00 PM

That was me being unusually shy and retiring :0)

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Amos
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 08:04 PM

It helps to remember that you only "not smoke" the one cigarette you are thinking of having, one at a time; but if you start again you are starting carloads of them.

A

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 08:13 PM

Amos, how many a day did you smoke?

How long have you not had one?

Do you still crave them ever?

Just need some encouragement. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Chip2447
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 11:17 PM

54 days and counting this time. This is my umpteenth time quitting (or rather this time I've quit. The other 4 or 5 were just temporary stoppages). The more often that you try, the easier it gets.

keep trying and good luck.
Chip2447

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Amos
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 12:30 AM

Hey, pal:

Forty years a smoker -- from 1/3 to two packs a day.

Walking away involves a genuine decision as to where the real importance lies.

Keep it up man!! You CAN do this.


A

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Gurney
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 02:48 AM

The other way is my way. If you get a deep-seated pain in your chest which goes on and on.....

I didn't have the big C, but I thought I had.

I can take a hint, when I'm hit over the head with it.

Haven't even wanted a gasper from that time, twenty years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Davetnova
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 03:55 AM

forget the patches. The nicotines gone in three days. It's the habit you've got to break. (32years smoking 4 and a bit not)

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 04:26 AM

55 days for me, hadn't counted it up til today.55, that's pretty good, huh? Pleased to hear you are still hanging on in there, Chip

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 05:47 AM

Acupuncture worked for me for a long time, after 25+ years smoking I went from 50 a day to stop with no withdrawal symptons at all. Sadly after almost 9 years I have started again and the Acupuncture hasn't worked a second time, however a trick I have found is that when you crave a cigarette push your finger onto the fleshy part of your inner ear (not right down to the inner ear itself) and press hard for about 30 seconds it takes away the craving

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 05:50 AM

Well, I'd been a professional smoker all my life, until Nov 2003. So that's about 16 months, and no back-sliding so far. i still fancy a cigarette from time to time, it would be silly to pretend it's easy, but it can be done. Just take a look around: anything you like doing? Music? Anyone you like being with, family, lover, friends? Ask yourself, do I really want to give all those things up prematurely for the freedom to kill yourself by smoking?
    I strongly recommend really enjoying your last cigarette. Jusst because it's bad for you doesnt mean that smoking hasnt been a good friend to you in other ways. get to the last one in your packet, put yourself in your favoutie mental and physical space for enjoying a smoke, and do so. Then say goodbye to it. And stay firm.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Nick
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 06:38 AM

Davetnova is absolutely right. The physical side is relatively swift and easy to get over - the habit is the problem and breaking the associations is the harder bit longer term.

I used to smoke 20-30 a day and the first thing I did in the morning was light up a cigarette - how on earth I managed to smoke an untipped Gauloise first thing in the morning now frankly baffles me but I realise I had a great physical need to stoke up my nicotine levels.

I gave up the week before Xmas in 1990 and have never smoked a cigarette since.

What helped me enormously was a book called 'How to give up smoking' (original eh?) by Allan Carr (I think). It has a plan to give up over a 4 week period and over that time you smoke however many cigarettes as you want but as long as you obey the 'rules'.

eg In the first week you must change brand, smoke with your other hand, keep a note of when you smoke and which ones taste particularly good, and you were not allowed to smoke for one hour after eating.
Week two you change brand (but also to a lower strength cigarette) and again record what you smoke but this week you can't smoke for an hour after eating OR an hour after drinking.

By week 4 you switch to the lowest strength cigarette (Silk Cut Ultra in UK at the time which had more holesd in the filter than a golf course) and are pretty much not allowed to do ANYTHING when you smoke (but you can still smoke as many as you want within the guidelines) - ie not smoke when drinking, eating, on the telephone, reading, driving etc When you smoked you JUST smoked. Hellishly boring!

And then you stop.

I smoked 16 cigarettes the day before I stopped and have never smoked one since. And genuinely it never bothers me if others do and never did even early on.

Some of the things that did happen over the 4 weeks was that how few cigarettes really 'tasted good' - it swiftly became apparent that that was a myth. The physical nature of my addiction was obvious - I woke in the morning, had 4-5 cigarettes by about 9 and then topped my levels up during the day. It also became apparent how boring smoking IN ITSELF is when you end up doing nothing else.

What it did was to destroy the associations of meal - smoke - good; beer - smoke - good; pick up telephone - pick up cigarette; get in car - light cigarette. After the initial physical withdrawal (made easier by the miuch reduced levels of nicotine swimming round the system) most of the habit/association bit was easy to deal with.

Strangely the only place I ever think about smoking is on summer holiday - in Greece I was very aware of it. The combination of people smoking - the weather - lots of time on hands - relaxation etc was one association that I had never broken and it's still there after a long time. It's easy to ignore it though after all this time!

Stick with it - it has lots of benefits.

My father had lung cancer when he was 41 and following having one of his lungs removed became a huge medical curiosity by living nearly forty times longer than the year he was supposed to survive for. When he died late last year the cause of death was still linked to his smoking forty + years ago. Most people don't defy the odds in quite the same way. One thing I always remember him telling me was when he was still in Brompton hospital having had his lung out in a ward with people with chronic emphysema, people on oxygen, people with limbs removed because of circulatory problems etc there were STILL these same people slipping out (hopping out?) to have a cigarette!!

It ain't easy to do but I hope that you succeed. The benfits are definitely worth it and IT DOES GET EASIER!

And just remember not to have the first one - the other ones are easy.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 06:52 AM

You know how you keep putting off stopping smoking? I'll do it after Christmas, after new year, after my birthday and so on. It gets to the silly point where you find all sorts of excuses not to stop? Well, try it in reverse. Stop right here and now and then promise you will start again. Just after Christmas, new year, your birthday... I stopped over 10 years ago now and with a brief respite when I was working in Brussells (It's compulsary there don't chaknow!) I have been trying to start again ever since.

I promise I'll do it, honest. Just let me get the weekend over with;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: LuteMonkey
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 07:19 AM

I have been smoking 14 years. As I get older, I notice that smoking has begun to phase itself out of my life without much effort. I don't smoke in my home, pubs have banned smoking, and I have no friends that smoke anymore. It really has become more like a glass of scotch than a habit attended to repeatedly in the course of a day.

I still enjoy smoking, but do it in moderation. Hopefully it will just phase out all together. But control is the one thing that I feel is important. Get control of the smoking, and then steer it in the right direction. Cold turkey is so unappealing.

Subject: RE: BS: advice on stopping smoking
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 24 Feb 05 - 08:06 AM

Watch your mother drown in the pink froth she exhales for the last couple of hours of her life. I did. If that doesn't stop you, nothing will.