Question to other smokers bout quittin

I'm probably a nonsmoker, but I really don't consider myself a nonsmoker. I've been known to smoke so rarely that it has taken me a year to smoke two packs. I honestly do enjoy smoking, but I know it's bad for me, and I feel like it's a waste of money. I guess it's safe to say I don't have an addictive personality.

I used to smoke about two packs a week from the age of 18 to 40. When found out that I was at risk for skin cancer in my left eye due to sun damage I basically just stopped. I weaned myself off of cigarettes for the most part. I still kinda consider myself a smoker, because my mother used to always nag me so much about quitting that I can't bear the thought of calling myself a nonsmoker.

Once when I was in my late teens my mother wanted to look in my purse to take my cigarettes, because she is a control freak. Well, I wouldn't let her so we ended up kinda in a scuffle, and she pulled a knife on me. It's not like she pulled a switchblade on me, she actually pulled a knife from the kitchen that is used for deboning fish. It's actually a very nice knife with a matching bamboo handle and sheath. I can never forget! She of course has completely forgotten, is in deep denial or is just a bald faced liar! I do love my mother, because she can be very kind and generous, but I certainly don't respect her! My dad was there when all the drama went down, but now he swears that he doesn't remember. He's 81 and she's 78 so I dunno if he honestly can't remember or not. I told him recently that if he'd had someone pull a knife on him maybe he'd remember too.

I feel like my parents have fucked me up a lot, and now that they're old I have to help take care of them. My life is pretty damn depressing right now, but it could be worse, of that I am certain. You don't have to be from the ghetto or the trailer park to have been through some shit, there are plenty of bat shit crazy people in the suburbs.

Sorry for my crazy rant about my family. So yeah, I'm not really addicted to smoking, I probably don't have an addictive personality.

P.S. I probably should be praying for my mother, and her soul and all that jazz, but I don't. When I see my mother or my sister going through a rough time I figure they're just reaping what they've sown or it's just their Karma.

Theres a lot of long responses here but I have to ask what you're smoking, I think you should smoke mostly everything.

Not a scientist, just what I've read, so if someone knows more let me know.

Nicotine has an impact on your brain in a similar way that heroin and opioids do, namely it fundamentally changes how your brain chemistry works.while marijuana for instance your brain likes it doesn't develop a true chemical dependency, nicotine however your brain thinks it requires like water.

This dependency can attach very early on, after the first few cigars in fact. As a result 6 months or not it won't really matter, your brain will still panic.

Nicotine withdrawal is really bad the first three days, think of it like dying of dehydration. It takes a lot of will power to get through this, but it is entirely possible. Fair warning you may want to do it over a weekend and take a day off work, as you will be a raving prick.

After that it decreases in intensity over the next few weeks. After 2-3 weeks it becomes tolerable, your airways start opening up and the smoke will smell really, really bad. Make sure to have everything cleaned as possible, as before you hit this point it will make the cravings worse.

After that though it will largely reduce to an afterthought. If you used to smoke when drinking make sure to tell whomever you drink with to keep you away from them, I picked it back up three times when I got drunk.

And honestly look into the gum. It is made to give enough nicotine to take the edge off, however not enough to make it fully go away. In terms of cost your health insurance may actually help, many have quitting programs where they provide some guidance or patches and help with other things. Even if they don't it is an investment on your future health, it will pay itself back in spades.

Hope this helps.

Replace it with a different addiction, like the perfume in ladies' magazines.

I agree about the Snus, but the formaldehyde and vaping thing is highly questionable.

As far as I can tell, it all goes back to a letter - as opposed to a peer-reviewed report on a study - published in the New England Journal of Medicine a few years ago. That's a credible source, but the NEJM was immediately criticised for publishing the letter by experts who questioned the methodology of the authors and their conclusions.

It became a Social Media Huge Thing, mainly because it's one of those stories that's guaranteed to create a Twatter tempest and Facebook frenzy: "OMG!!! Something you thought was totally safe is totally going to give you cancer and kill you, dude!!!!!"

As usual with social media crap that spreads like wildfire, the truth is more nuanced.

From what I've been able to find, it is true that propylene glycol (which _some_ vape liquids contain) can degrade into formaldehyde-containing compounds at high temperatures, but those temperatures are only reached if you're stupid enough to ramp the voltage of your vaper up so high that the vapour tastes like shit.

Formaldehyde gas is a _suspected_ carcinogen, but it's far from clear if the compounds produced by an overheated vape coil affect living tissue in the same way.

What is clear is that not smoking, not using Snus and not vaping is a better choice than doing any of those things. If you find it hard to imagine getting through the day without a regular nicotine fix, then either Snus or vaping is much, much better than smoking.

I may consider looking into Swedish snus. I won't worry about nicotine gum, since that really does seem like something that will only prolong withdrawal, and the gum is like 5 times more expensive than smokes are, not worth it.

I'm not really in so much of a hurry to get off the methadone, because at the clinic they taper you off slowly to minimize withdrawal. I just really want off the smoking. I guess, unlike with opiates and many other drugs, cold turkey sounds like the best way off the smoking, because everywhere I've heard, reducing your amount of smokes per day or switching to nicotine gum does not ease withdrawal and only wastes further time and money. I'm gonna stop smoking cold turkey, I'm sure it won't last more than about 2 weeks, not the physical part anyway, when I only smoked for six months. The psychological part shouldn't be too bad since the majority of my memories over the past several years did not involve smoking

I have looked at websites on quitting, but have had trouble finding info on quitting when having only smoked for six months at age 43 after being a non smoker for so many years, like as you said, it is an unusual situation. The reason why I've done this is because I've attended the methadone clinic for past three years, and due to financial difficulties about 6 months ago, I couldn't pay my payments and was forced to financially detox from the methadone, and was withdrawling so badly from the methadone and I desperately needed something to give me some kind of a little lift just to help take my focus off the methadone withdrawal so I smoked (I also drank about a half pint of whiskey a day during that time, but luckily I was able to stop drinking when I got back on the methadone (I was a non drinker when I was on the methadone because I never wanted to mix the two)). By the time I had gathered enough money for the clinic and I was able to continue back on the methadone, I had smoked daily for several weeks by then and I started finding the idea of quitting the smoking something I wanted to put off a little longer, but I was stupid and it obviously got harder to stop because I kept smoking. Now I can't stop, and part of the reason is because I'm so unclear on how hard it's gonna be. I need some kind of timeline to look at for how long the withdrawal will last, and because of my unusual situation, I can't find one.

Twenty-five cent cigars have got to be some high quality stogies.

I smoked very heavily (as in up to 60 cigarettes a day) for the better part of two decades. During that time, I attempted to quit several times before finally succeeding with nicotine replacement therapy that was sort of a primitive, non-electric version of vaping.

There are two elements to tobacco addiction.

One is all the primarily psychological stuff about rituals, doing it by habit in certain settings, and so on. The feeling of inhaling the smoke, the taste and so on is also part of this. When you smoke, your brain learns to associate all those little things with the pleasant sensations caused by the nicotine.

The other element is the actual neurochemical addiction connected to the nicotine triggering pleasant sensations in your brain. Once some people experience this, it creates the craving for more. There are some people who can cope with smoking a cigarette or two a day and not feel any cravings between smokes, but others start to feel decidedly itchy (for want of a better word) once the level of nicotine in their blood starts to drop as it's removed by the kidneys.

I suspect that after a mere six months, you probably won't have built up too many habits associated with smoking, but it's possible that you could be as addicted physically as someone who's smoked for many years.

Some people minimise the unpleasant feelings of withdrawal by tapering down and rationing themselves to a decreasing number of nicotine hits over a period of weeks. That didn't work for me, and I was just as antsy and just as big of a total pain in the butt to be around when I did that as when I attempted cold turkey.

I hated the nicotine gum, because it was so totally different to smoking.

These days, many people stop smoking and switch to vaping. The advantage of this is that you still have something to fiddle with, and you get a "throat hit" that's very similar to smoke.

As well as being highly addictive, nicotine is a toxin, but as I'm sure you know, it isn't the nicotine that messes up your lungs when you smoke and nicotine has never been shown to cause cancer. The real problem with smoking is the tar: the cocktail of hundreds of other toxic compounds that you inhale along with the nicotine. It's impossible to prove that vaping is totally safe, and the tobacco industry is low enough to encourage scare stories about vaping and promote legislation against it, but the current scientific consensus is that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking.

If you find it very uncomfortable to go cold turkey and stop smoking your stogies (which have to be the absolute worst thing you could possibly smoke), then I suggest you look into vaping. As I said, when I did eventually quit, it was thanks to a sort of vaping. That worked so well it actually felt like I was cheating, since I suffered no withdrawal at all, and I never felt even the slightest urge to buy some more cigarettes.