Cigarette smokers

Camels, Marlboro, etc. Bunch of pansy smokers. Real smokers smoke St Moritz or roll their own. Actually, it was quite fun to roll my own in high school (I'm old enough to remember when smoking was allowed in school). You roll your own and you'll learn every narc in the school.

I accidentally quit with chewing tobacco.

I quit with Chantrix once. Started backup when I got to the second blue box of that crap and wanted to rip someones spine out. It was pretty much stop taking that crap or do a header off a bridge. That crap messes with your mind bad.

Poop,

Quit for as long as you can. Start back up and quit again. Keep trying. Go for a week, then smoke a week, go two, then smoke two. Keep trying. Every cig you don't smoke is better for you. Just keep whacking at it, don't give up.

Good luck (PS I never smoked, but got off my high horse awhile ago).

That stuff is BAD news..... all it is is a relabled antidepressant. If you're predisposed to mental health conditions, it can be a major problem.

"Just walk away. Just walk away and no one has to die."

I started smoking when I was 13 by stealing cigs from my stepdad. Winstons. I managed to work my way up to a pack a day habit before he noticed them dissappearing, so that tells you how many he smoked. My mom smoked too but hers tasted weird. I began to smoke more and was up to two and a half packs a day when I realized I had been smoking more years than I had been a non-smoker. I quit sucessfully for two years. After a couple years and living with someone who smoked I started again - cant tell you how much I beat myself up over that one - smoked for another three years and quit again.

The only thing I can tell you from all that is quitting is easy. Staying a non-smoker is hard and it doesn't get easier for several years but it's worth it. I still wake up sweating in the middle of the night furious at myself for buying a pack of smokes just to realize it was just a dream. Man it feels good to realize it was just a dream.

Peace to you and good luck in all your endeavours! Happy New Year!

ditchdigger wrote:

poopshovel wrote: The last time I quit, it was for almost a month. Cold turkey. The day I bought a pack was the day that I was seriously (no berkeleying joke) concerned that I was going to berkeleying murder someone; with my bare hands if necessary.

Have you considered enlisting the help of a doctor? They have medications specifically designed to dial down those homicidal reactions

Yeah, I've been on those medications. After about two years of not caring that my favorite song was on the radio, not caring that my daughter took her first solid food/first steps, and not being able to make love to a woman, I decided I'd rather smoke. "Self-medication" might be hostile to the human body, but at least it doesn't deflate the human spirit.

Everybody in my family, and everybody in my wife's family smoked. My mom and I were the first to quit, about 10 years ago. I finally got my wife to quit (the chronic cough was driving me crazy). She started up again, the day her mother died, because of smoking. She has since quit again, but I strongly suspect that she sneaks a few a day. A few a day , I don't care, but if she starts that chronic hacking again, I won't wait for the smokes to finish her off.

FWIW, I used Zyban, also an anti-depressant. It worked like magic.

Here, you can't smoke anywhere. The government preaches about the dangers of smoking (think of the children), and passes anti-smoking laws, yet collects insane amounts of tax revenue from the same smokers. I live on the border of an indian reserve, and also in tobacco country. The natives have set up shop on the reserve, and manufacture their own. The plant keeps on getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. These smokes are sold tax free, in 100's of little huts, and trailers all over the reserve, to non-natives, at a fraction of the price (as little as $7/carton) of regular cigarettes. This is not legal, but the government doesn't want to piss off the natives, so they do nothing. I know people that do smoke runs to the city, and make $5/carton, selling cases of smokes a week.

It's an interesting situation.

For me, quitting smoking was like eating an elephant: one bite at a time. I had tried several times before and made up my mind that dammit I was going to quit. I still had 3 smokes left in a pack, I left them and my lighter on the bedside table while I was out running some errands.

I could see them, taste them, I wanted a smoke SO bad. I decided right then I wasn't quitting.

When I got home I ran (not an exaggeration) to grab them, lit one with hands shaking, took a drag and nearly threw up. The nicotine hit me like a sledgehammer. I stubbed it out immediately. That's the last one I ever smoked.

For the two or three months after that I had to constantly fight the really strong urge to smoke, I just dealt with it one urge at a time. It started getting easier finally. Every time I have thought about lighting up (yes, it still happens occasionally even now) I remember how sick that drag made me and the urge goes away.

I put on about 25 pounds almost immediately (your metabolism changes when you quit) and it took me about two years to lose most of it. I still weigh more than I should but it's a small price to pay for freedom from those damn things.

EastCoastMojo wrote: I still wake up sweating in the middle of the night furious at myself for buying a pack of smokes just to realize it was just a dream. Man it feels good to realize it was just a dream.

I quit smoking back in 1995 and I still have those dreams too. really wierd

EastCoastMojo wrote: "Just walk away. Just walk away and no one has to die." I started smoking when I was 13 by stealing cigs from my stepdad.

When my dad was dying in the hospital (liver failure), he asked me once how on earth he'd never caught me smoking or drinking before I was 18 (legal age back then). I said, "..well, dad-don't most parents catch the kids when they steal from the parents' stash?" He agreed. I then said, "..you smoked unfiltered Camels, and drank Schlitz. I sure wasn't stealing any of that BMW E36, especially after I got a job!"

EastCoastMojo wrote: Winstons. I managed to work my way up to a pack a day habit before he noticed them dissappearing, so that tells you how many he smoked. My mom smoked too but hers tasted weird. I began to smoke more and was up to two and a half packs a day when I realized I had been smoking more years than I had been a non-smoker. I quit sucessfully for two years. After a couple years and living with someone who smoked I started again - cant tell you how much I beat myself up over that one - smoked for another three years and quit again.

I was somebody like that for a long time. I was a scuba diver, did some hiking, etc., and I'd smoke for a year, quit for two, smoke for three, quit for five, and so forth. The last time I quit was when I finally got the chance to go racing (SCCA Improved Touring). Stayed clean for about two years..but the lady I was married to at the time had a big problem with what I was spending on racing. We resolved the conflict by my going into a partnership with a mutual friend of ours that wanted to start racing. He built his own car (ITC Mazda 323, handled well, but slow) instead of buying a professionally built one, and although I knew it was a bad idea, I went ahead with it just to keep driving. The thing snapped a balljoint on the infield course at Charlotte, and put me into the fence at 3B. Half-endo and three or four rolls. Mounting the seat to the cage was illegal back then, and the stock seat we had in it broke a mount. They say I had a cig in my hand about 30sec after the car came to a stop. After that, I got busy with life after child support. One day, I noticed I got short of breath, etc. and wondered why. The doctor said it was because I was smoking. I was about to tell her how ridiculous that was...and then realized I'd been smoking for about ten years straight. I really didn't realize the time passing that quickly. I guess I'd never realized what the things do to you because I'd never smoked for so long without an interruption.

EastCoastMojo wrote: The only thing I can tell you from all that is quitting is easy. Staying a non-smoker is hard and it doesn't get easier for several years but it's worth it. I still wake up sweating in the middle of the night furious at myself for buying a pack of smokes just to realize it was just a dream. Man it feels good to realize it was just a dream. Peace to you and good luck in all your endeavours! Happy New Year!

And to you!

Anyone else find a little bit of hidden irony in this whole thread? Smoker or not, I don't care... but- the white man is accused of getting the native americans started with the alcoholism as it were, and now, the native american is using the parcels of land the white man stuck them with, to manufacture and sell cancer back to the ancestors of the same people that forced them off their own land....... I really don't care, I smoke Parliaments (I have BAD OCD about certain things, and the recessed filter is a major comfort for me... soothes the tics I have associated with smoking) but it seems interesting to me. We give the Native Americans liver failure, they give us cancer.

I've been smoking for 13 years now since I started. I didn't really get addicted until about a year into it. Before that a smoke would just help calm the nerves or keep me awake while driving.

For that first year I could smoke or not either way. I could go for a week or two and not have a cig or I could smoke a pack in a day. Then I turned 21. Smoking and drinking together is what did me in. I only went to the bars really for the year that I was 21, but by the time that year was over that was it. I was hooked. Since then I've bounced between half a pack a day and a pack and a half.

FSC smoke do suck. The law went into effect in Indiana here last spring. My Camel Turkish Silvers do not taste the same at all and for what is essentially an ultra light they a bit harse on the throat now, too.

Somewhere along the line I heard it takes the average smoker 4 time to fully quit successfully. I've known people that just stopped and had no issues, and I've known some that have tried numerous time over many years and are still smoking. I know I should quit, but I also know what it was like for me earlier this year when I had my wisdom teeth out and couldn't smoke much. I know i should, but probably won't anytime soon.