Giving up smoking...

[alicia_fan_uk]

Is that where the smoking term "blowback" comes from!?!?.....

[Deano!]

He's lucky she didn't smoke!

[jimslip]

I gave up over a year ago and it was a nightmare for 6 months. Because drawing on a fag is the most efficient way of getting sugar into your blood, if you stop after many years you start feeling faint and even asthmatic at times.I thought I'd become diabetic. I had to go on a special diet and finally for the last 4 months have never been fitter.

Was it worth it? Sometimes I wonder, but I'll never smoke again.

[Tequila_Woods]

Urgh...Wish i could give you some advice. Iv 'quit' about 5 times in the last year for anywhere between a day and 4 days and always go back n start again. Its a pain in the arse.

[Zorro]

Max

How is the quitting going?

[max_tranmere]

I have stopped but worked out a way of continuing to do it without actually 'smoking' as such. You have a ciggy but dont inhale, you just expel it from your mouth like cigar smokers do. It is like what TV actors who dont smoke themselves, but the character they are playing does, always do. Can anyone see anything negative, healthwise, from doing this? I 'smoke' about 20 fags a week in this way - it equates to about seven on a night in the pub, which I do about three times a week.

If people wonder why someone would do that and not just quit completely I would compare it with drinking alcohol-free lager - you are drinking beer but not actually drinking beer. You go through the motions, feels and looks the same, but you are not taking that thing into your system.

[jimslip]

The problem with this idea is that you are repressing the need to smoke and you'll probably start again. It is documentated that giving up smoking is harder than kicking heroin.

Many years ago I gave up successfully for 6 months with hypnosis. In retrospect, I think if you did hypnosis but repeated the session every month, it could work.

Just keep trying, it is a battle of wills between you and "Nick O'Teen". If its any help the scariest thing about smoking is Emphysemia, ie dragging an oxygen bottle behind you for the rest of your life.

[andy at handiwork]

I used to assist a cameraman who was a high-achiever; whatever he set his mind to, he would excel at it. He announced one day that as he'd started sub-aqua lessons, he was giving up smoking forthwith. As there HAD to be something I could do better than him, I gave up as well, with a grand gesture of throwing 19 fags out of the camera car window as we drove up the M1. The 'anti-litter' part of me is still feeling guilty about that bit. He resumed smoking quite soon after, but I stuck with it, to prove I could even if he couldn't. 30 years later I'm still 'clean'.

[modfather]

It is hard no doubt about that but first and foremost you have to want to give up, i gave up 12 years ago after smoking for 18 years. What i will say the first month is the worst chronis nicotine urges etc but they only last a minute or so, also the coughing up tar in the sink in the mornings reminds you why youre doing it!!!