Giving up smoking...

[max_tranmere]

Any ex-smokers on here who gave up and didn't return to it? I've recently quit and am hoping it stays that way. Any advice on how to beat any temptation that may come along? I suspect having a beer and not going outside the pub for a fag could occasionally be difficult but I've done it a few times now and never got tempted.

[David Johnson]

In your case, I suspect avoiding Muslims would be crucial in not raising your stress levels.

Good Luck
David

[RoddersUK]

I was a seriously heavy smoker from an early age. As a squaddie abroad duty free tobacco and spirits were readily availlable and I smoked fags, roll ups, cigars and eventually a pipe.
One day I laft my favourite pipe on a tank mud guard as I handed it over to the normal driver. He pulled away and drove over the said pipe. I went back to fags and after halfway through a packet of 20 I just couldn't get on with them and I chucked em away and have never smoked since. That was in 1984. My missus and her sister still smoke like chimmnies and it is a constant source of irritation in the household as they call me a self righteous sod. Perhaps, but I aint spending ?40 a week on the stuff.
I was a very ratty person for a few months after quitting as I never felt the need to light up again. I was ratty because I wished I had done it years before and hadn't.
My elder brother was also a seriously heavy smoker from an early age but when he was diagnosed with lung cancer he quit, just like that. Unfortunately the cancer was terminal and 3 months later he died a week before his 65th birthday.
I honestly believe that if you want to quit the evil weed you will.
It is all in the mind.

[max_tranmere]

I was only a social smoker but someone said to me that can be just as bad. Not smoking for a couple of days, then going to the pub and smoking 10-15 in 4 or 5 hours is not healthy as you are basically binging. There has not been one time when I've been planning to go out where I have not hated myself for the fact that I was about to start smoking for the evening and the fact it has serious health implications.

Also, for centirues up until 3 years ago when they banned smoking inside pubs, the pub experience involved sitting or standing where you were for the whole evening and only leaving that spot to go to the loo. Since the ban I've only been temporaily stationed at the place I was because I was always heading for the door to have a fag every 20 minutes, so in a way I will be going back to how the pub thing used to be now that I have quit. You enter, stay where you are, and only head out when you are going home.

So I'm looking forward to doing the traditional pub thing like one used to before the ban. Having your spot at the bar or a table and staying there (except to go for a slash). Also I will look forward to going out more as I wont be doing something that I know to be harmful. I try and remind myself that there are many people who love the pub experience, look forward to going out etc, and have never smoked. So once I am used to it it will be no big deal but at the moment I find myself thinking about smoking a lot. I resist the temptation though.

[mrchapel]

If you want to quit then thats all the motivation you need. Patches, gum and all sorts of shit wont help if you don`t actually want to quit.
I just kept counting the days then weeks or months and told myself if I started again after a week, a month and then six months that I`d be stupid and would have wasted all that.
I didn`t find it hard either after the first day and I was smoking about 30 to 50 a day

[alicia_fan_uk]

No offence to Max with the following comment, but I've never understood the term "social smoker".

Unless you smoke in a lounge/club etc of tobacco aficionados, I find it one of the most anti-social (yet hitherto relatively socially acceptable.....although admittedly decreasingly so) activities going.

If I was a "social fart-in-people's-faces" person or "I'm just a social piss-on-other-people's-clothes-in-the-pub" kinda guy, I'd be seen as equally weird and disturbed.

Sorry, just an aside there.

alicia_fan_uk

[max_tranmere]

'Social smoking' is so called because you smoke only is social situations like the pub or at a party. I agree that smoking is hardly a sociable thing, unless you are with other smokers, although years ago I remember no one really noticed smoking - people could obviously smell it but it wasn't a big deal. It's only been in the last 15-20 years that people have had an issue with it and made their partners go outside to smoke and so on. Previously a non-smoker had little problem working in an office where their colleagues smoked or sitting in a lounge in a house surrounded by smokers. Now it is noticed more. I was always in favour or a ban because by the time it was being considered people who didn't smoke were fed up with it and I've always thought that those people who are against it and didn't like it shouldnt have to have it in their faces.

[Ned]

I have no advice on stopping as I've never smoked, but if you manage it don't become one of those ex-smokers who can't stop banging on about how much they want a fag, and remind others every five minutes how many days it is since they last had one.

Fucking pain in the arse they are

Good luck with it.

[Deano!]

The only thing I can offer is a quote from Mark Twain (I think) who claimed that giving up smoking was easy - he'd done it hundreds of times.

[Zorro]

I was a twenty a day man, my girlfriend, a non smoker, gave me a blowjob a day for everyday I did not smoke for the first month. It was a great incentive and got me through the hardest bit (month 1), 7 years later and still not smoking.

They say the addiction takes 3 days to get over, it is the habit that is the hard bit.

Good luck, as good as the blowjobs were, I would not want to go through giving up again.