I know it’s gross, unhealthy, a stupid habit, makes no sense.
Trouble quitting cuz it’s something to do with hands, fidgety, restless, oral fixation I think, and it gets me out of the house. Can’t find a habit to replace it with.
There is no way you could reproduce this now, but when I quit smoking, I worked in a place where everyone smoked, so I got it second-hand for quite a while after that.
As a former tobacco user as well, I will share something that I think we should enjoy.
I’ve been re-watching the X-files. I do occasionally let my 5 yo watch. So, the smoking man was in this one, and my kid actually asked what a cigarette was.
I’m so glad how we’ve changed smoking from common to my kid not even knowing what it is after around only 20 years.
There’s a movie with a sure-fire method, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye. Just find someone willing to “help you” like Quitters Inc.
A friend of mine is a Doctor. This is what he suggests to anyone who is truly interested in stopping.
- Smoke as much as you need to
- Start rolling your own, unfiltered.
- Put the pack somewhere inconvenient, like car trunk or in a hard to reach box in the garage
- Only every smoke outside, under an open sky. No cars, no houses, no awnings, no umbrellas, etc. No matter the weather.
He says this makes it accessible but inconvenient and not as enjoyable. Eventually the inconvenience will start to outweigh the need until you end up quitting. He says he has like a 80-90% success rate with those who actually follow through
That’s the thing about quitting you kind of have to want to.
Some will still want to quit, but the extra steps might have the opposite effect of just not being able to stick to those self-inflicted constraints. I know all too well how it won’t happen until you actually want to quit, I’ve since quit as well, but I know it wouldn’t have worked for me, I’d have abandoned this plan in a matter of days, not so compatible with my usual ADHD scatterbrain. Too much organization.
Vapes, going down from 8mg to 0mg over a while, then eventually just having the habit left to drop, was what worked for me. YMMV, of course.
That’s excellent advice. It’s like training a dog - your brain stops associating the release of dopamine with cigarettes after a few bad experiences,
Reduce first but have attainable goals. Go easy and steady.
For some folks cold Turkey works best but it might not be for you.
Most importantly, find a reason that’s really important to you.
Maybe try sports - something measurable. It easier to tell yourself no after a cardio as you realise how it ruins what you just achieved.
I quit cigarettes cold turkey with the help of raw fettuccine. It’s useful for fidgeting, restlessness, and oral fixation. I ate about 3 packs and drank lots of water in the first 3 days, just staying home. In those 3 days, you don’t want to go out, people will suck, air will suck, the sun will suck, everything sucks. After 3 days I was able to stop thinking so much about cigarettes. In those first 3 days, I wouldn’t recommend leaving the house. Also after quitting for a while the smell of cigarettes might make you nauseous which is an extra buffer to keep off of them.
Siegmund Freud would recommend picking up cocaine to replace smoking.
(Ok, he actually used it as a substitute for alcoholics and continued doing so after his first client died of a cocain overdose, but close enough.)
Psychoanalyse is like any other religion. They do what the books say not to do.
I suggested to a friend years ago that he keep all of hit used butts in a jar beside his bed. He came up with this idea that he should add some water to the jar.
The reminder every time he got up or went to bed that the black goop shit was the same stuff he was putting into his lungs every day eventually got him to stop. He couldn’t even look at the jar anymore — and certainly didn’t want to add to it. That thing was nasty.
Sunflower seeds
It’s not just a habit, it’s a chemical dependence. If you really want to quit, I suggest vaping. It was invented to be a smoking cessation tool as you can easily taper off the amount of nicotine, while still performing “the ritual”.
Once the chemical dependency is gone, then you can go for a walk or something to keep yourself busy, but until then you’ve got an addiction to deal with.
Source: I used vaping to quit a 10-year, pack/day habit.
Are you stuck on vaping then or is that easier to quit?
YMMV. I know it’s a good step down for some folks, especially as you can get carts with decreasing levels of nicotine. But in my case, the accessibility of vaping (which I did inside and in smaller more frequent doses, unlike how I smoked) set me back a bit and I felt like I started quitting all over again.
I quit smoking via vaping a few years ago. Idk how easy it is now, I know some laws have been passed regarding the availability of different juices.
But essentially it just gives you more control. You can gradually step down your nicotine content over the course of like a year or more if you want. At the end I had a bottle of 3mg/ml and a bottle of 0, and I would mix them to get even smaller amounts. Eventually you’re just not using nicotine anymore.
For some people tho it goes the other way. Lots of times it ends up being the case that nicotine consumption goes way up, or people end up vaping + still smoking anyway. Which is…pretty bad lol
So yeah vaping can be a very convenient way to quit. It worked for me. But there’s a reason doctors don’t recommend it
Highly recommend vaping for cold turkey quitting of cigs. Once you taper the vaping nicotine dosage down to a few mg/mL., you should consider a product like fum, which is a non-vape flavored oral fixation device.
That’s literally the worst idea
Why?
Replacing an addiction with another doesn’t fix the addiction
Not all addictions are equal. The plan I suggested gradually reduces harm. It’s better to aim for harm reduction rather than cold turkey quitting which frequently leads to relapses.
Ok let me say the issue in a different way. Both are nicotine. You have the exact same addiction. You aren’t even quiting your just changing the flavor of tobacco. If I start drinking vodka instead of beer and say I am trying to get over alcoholism, you would say I am insane because that won’t work.
Always act like you’ve just smoked one. What would you do next? Just go and do that now. Also, roll like 10-20 joints and smoke em when you crave a cig. You can only do that for so long until you’re like nah I’m good on smoking I’m too high to have more.
Also you can still get out of the house, just go outside the house and do what you would do without a cig. I would go on my porch and read a book or my phone while smoking. I still went outside and did that but without a cig. After a while you’re like why am I out here. And do other things to spend time outside like hiking, exploring, pick up a sport, camping, etc etc. some ideas anyway.
For me, I started thinking about the cost and the smell every time I had one. I quit cold turkey a few weeks later and felt grossed out every time I had one after that. I quit in 2009 and haven’t had a cigarette since 2010.
Cigarettes smell really disgusting to me now.
Switch to vaping, learn to make your own juice, slowly titrate your nicotine down over a period of a year or so, work on kicking the oral fixation without having to worry about withdrawals from nicotine. Worked well enough for me
I’ve tried to quit cigarettes more times than I can count, and replacing it with vaping has been the only thing that’s worked for me. Haven’t had a puff of a cigarette since June of 2020. Is it good for you? Hell no, and I’m still working on cutting vape too. But, it’s got to be better. I don’t wake up coughing every morning anymore, and I can exercise more without wheezing.
Sunflower seeds helped me. Watch the sodium intake.
There is a book my friend swore by. I think it’s called “how to quit smoking”. By the time he finished it he said he had lost all interest.
It’s kind of well known, and I’m sure you can find it if you Google.
Perhaps Alan Carr’s “The Easy Way”?
My favorite chapter of that book was titled the Benefits of Smoking.
The author uses a nice technique - reducing the concept and practice of smoking to absurdity. Reductio ad ab-smoke-dum, if you will.
This is it. It’s not the worlds most well written book, but its repetitiveness and concepts are effective. Worked for me.
Yes! Thank you!
