Quitting smoking cigarettes due to health problems. Any tips?

So. When it relates to health problems and a doctor tells you that you need to quit smoking. He means it. My mom was a heavy smoker for 33 years. She quit cold turkey because of stage 4 cancer was causing trouble in her lungs and her lungs were colapsing. When it comes to health. It isnt a joke. You ned to try something else like a stress ball when you wanna smoke.
 
id suggest you take it with your physician.. they can help you with tips and guidance to quit smoking.. i actually managed to quit after 2 years with only willpower :P so i guess i got lucky there
 
I am on the verge of quitting smoking too because recently I noticed my shortness of breath and some serious chest pains, blood in my phlegm, and some other non pleasant side effects of smoking. Thinking it's best if I do it cold turkey, not rely on any placebos, patches, or any other alternatives. Good luck to you, if your mind is set on quitting you will be able to do it, if not than you are just fooling yourself.
 
I was 21 when i quit. I stated when i was like 13 or so.... lol.... anyways i started dipping at age 19 or so and quit smoking (same addiction and cravings and such) then i started to hate smoking so i started smoking because i figured it was easier to quit cause i didnt like it anymore (silly me). but when i finally did quit i used the patches. they worked pretty good, you will still crave, but not crazyly.... but the most important part is to just never pick up a pack again (sounds easier than it is). also keep urself busy ;)

good luck man
 
A really good friend of mind using an electronic cigarette that uses a syrup like liquid for flavoring - with awesome flavors. No more smelling like cigarette smoke. Plus all your smoking is water vapor. I can find out which one he uses because he is pretty much religous about it, and have gotten oodles of people to get off cigarettes.
 
Snooch said:
A really good friend of mind using an electronic cigarette that uses a syrup like liquid for flavoring - with awesome flavors. No more smelling like cigarette smoke. Plus all your smoking is water vapor. I can find out which one he uses because he is pretty much religous about it, and have gotten oodles of people to get off cigarettes.
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Those are just as bad if not worse then the actuall ones themselves. The syrup can cover the inner coating of the lungs and cause your lungs to stick together. If you dont have a problem smoking 5 cigarettes at once then go ahead and smoke the electronic ones. Depending on what kind he has it could be much more then just water vapor also. The water vapor can contain other harmful chemicals and the electronic ones are definiatly worse IMO. Ide read up on those because they are reallly harmful to your lungs and cause a greater risk of cancer then the normall ones.
 
A lot of great advice here. Thanks everyone. So far, I've gone from 20 to 25 cigs a day to 7. Yes
I know that isn't a complete stop, but 7 cigarettes beats the hell out of over a pack a day. Going less than 7 is rather difficult, but I believe I am on the right path.


I'm considering the prescription drug that Cwhit told me of.

ALSO,
I see my cardiologist in an hour. Then, I will hopefully get the full reasons as to why I feel so crappy all the time, even though I'm sure a large part of it is due to cigarettes.
 
I've tried to quit maybe 3 times now (starting attempt 4). I started maybe 5 years ago and would go through a pack in 2-3 days. My mother smoked for maybe 40 years, my father smoked cigars for maybe 15 years and my brother has been smoking for the past 9 years. My brother has taken Chantix, and he tells me it doesn't stop the cravings. All it will do is kill the buzz you get from cigarettes, which makes it seem that smoking isn't worth it.
Hang in there. Addictions suck but they can be beaten.
 
Cloakedsphere said:
Those are just as bad if not worse then the actuall ones themselves. The syrup can cover the inner coating of the lungs and cause your lungs to stick together. If you dont have a problem smoking 5 cigarettes at once then go ahead and smoke the electronic ones. Depending on what kind he has it could be much more then just water vapor also. The water vapor can contain other harmful chemicals and the electronic ones are definiatly worse IMO. Ide read up on those because they are reallly harmful to your lungs and cause a greater risk of cancer then the normall ones.
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From Friend:
"I'd personally like to see where you got your information. The juice used in E-Cigarettes, so long as you pick a reputable, USA vendor, include 4 ingredients: Water, Proplyene Glycol, Nicotene, and Food-grade flavoring. Electronic cigarettes have no by-products of combustion, specifically tar and carbon monoxide. Nicotene itself is a naturally occurring substance. For example, want some natural nicotene? Go eat some cauliflower or a tomato. Proplyene glycol is classified as safe by the FDA, and is even used as the carrier in asthma inhalers. Additionally, Proplyene Glycol is water-soluble, and for it to coat the inside of your lungs is a physical impossibility. There are no "harmful chemicals." To this day, there has never been a reported side-effect or death from electronic cigarettes. I'd encourage you to check out E-cigarette-forum.com, there's plenty of information there."
 
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Today is my first day without cigarettes at all. A word of advice to all that want to quit.. NICORETTE GUM. My goodness, it helps SO much. Today is my first day using it, and it's remarkable how the cravings have gone away.
 
I haven't ever picked up smoking luckily because my grandma had 5 rent houses and my dad and I did all of her plumbing, electrical, roofing, siding, lawncare, well.... everything. When renters would move out we would go in and clean the houses and get everything to a rentable state again. Cleaning the walls after heavy smokers had lived there for a few years, smoking in the house, made me never want to put a cigarette to my lips ever. The tar would literally run down the wall in thick brown runs and the water bucket quickly became impossible to see to the bottom and soon the sides of the bucket were obscured even and that was the stuff left over floating in the air, not all the stuff they had directly sucked down into their lungs. I pictured what the inside of their lungs must look like and I felt bad for them because I knew there was going to be medical problems later resulting from it. I believe having kids do the same thing I did when I was a kid would cut kids getting addicted to smoking by at least 90%. I have helped many of my friends stop smoking over my life and I was shocked that no one has mentioned one of the key factors in quitting.

The first is of course what people have mentioned before that YOU have to WANT to quit and are serious about it. Quitting for other people or because someone is telling you to will never work without the conviction of you doing it for yourself. Don't make excuses! Analyze to yourself what you are saying when you say what your troubles are with quitting and make sure they are really hurdles in quitting and not just making excuses to make it easier not to quit. You have to be honest with yourself. If you lie to yourself it makes it that much easier to lie to others.

Second is, as they stated, get rid of any and all cigarettes you have and do not buy any more, for any reason, at any time! If you do not have them around you can't give in and smoke one. One always leads to two, then three, then just a half pack a day, then you're eventually right back where you started or even continuing on to smoking more. A great idea I was going to mention was touched on by someone a few posts before is to have a jar and every time you are craving buying a pack or carton take the money you would have spent on it and put it in the jar. You will quickly get an appreciation for how much money you can save with quitting. Make small goals with what you want to do with the money to reward yourself and it will help keep you motivated! Set them high enough it will take a week to reward yourself, then a couple weeks, then a month. I wouldn't set the goal higher than a month's payout though until you are at least a year into quitting or you will start to get frustrated and it won't be the motivational tool it's supposed to be.

The biggest influence and most effective part of quitting I have observed though is the reason for this post, which only one person has lightly touched on, and that is YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!!!! We are very social animals and our friends and family greatly influence us even when we don't realize it. You need to tell ALL of your friends and family that you are quitting and that this is very serious and a top priority for you. You need to tell them that you do not want them to give you a cigarette under any circumstances and to stay strong about it, even if you are being weak at that moment and telling them you want them to do otherwise. My friend here at work was having a rough day and we went for a walk outside to talk. We ended up passing by where the smokers stand and he stopped and asked one of them for a cigarette. I told them not to, that he had not smoked one in 6 months and not to be the one to help him fail. They all stuck with not giving him one for about 5 minutes, but one of them is a friend of both of ours and my other friend begged him enough he found the situation tough to be in and said he was going to take a cigarette out and throw it as far as he could and the first one there could smoke it or break it depending on who it was that got there first. He wanted his hands clean from what happened to try to not make either of us mad with him, but if my friend had told him off the bat to never give him one he wouldn't have been in that tough situation. So my friend went for the cigarette that was thrown and I knew better and just tackled him instead. lol I pinned him down and we talked about it for about another ten minutes and he finally agreed to not go for it and that it wasn't worth everything he had achieved so far. He has stayed smoke free for almost two years now, but sometimes you have to rely on other people's strength and judgement. If he had tried to stand on his own strength that day it would have been the first step on a very slippery slope. If you have friends or family that don't smoke and you are feeling weak at a point and want to go to the store to get some cigarettes, call them up and ask them to come over and hang out to help keep your mind off it and put the money in the jar! I have made many late night trips to friend's houses to help keep them strong and get their mind on other things and if they are true friends they won't have a problem doing the same. If you have friends or family that smoke and want to quit too it is great to do it at the same time and hold each other accountable! Check in with each other daily and have consequences for times that you slip. Everyone will slip and it's not the end of the world, but the consequences have to be big enough that it hurts and will help motivate. With that same friend mentioned above we set it up that every time he slipped and had a cigarette he had to buy me a soda out of the vending machine here at work. Those cigarettes quickly became very expensive with sodas being $1.40 each and was a big help in keeping him from giving in for "just one...." If you have friends and family that smoke and don't want to quit ask them to at least please refrain from smoking around you. If they are truly friends then this shouldn't be a very big issue for them. No one is strong enough to handle everything life throws at us by themselves. Successfully quitting requires a strong foundation in a support group of people for you to lean on. The part of this, that was touched on, is us here at eGO. There is an immense population of people here that would like to help and understand what you're going through, as seen in the number of posts so far. Definitely keep tapping into this resource, but make sure you have a local support network as well! Online friends can only help so far and are powerless when it's a late night and you're about ten minutes from grabbing keys and driving to the store.

EDIT: The events above are not in chronological order. My friend buying me sodas when he gave in to the temptation and had one was when he was first starting out before the cigarette race at 6 months of not smoking.

All of these things need to be in place before drugs or patches or gum will have the needed effect. By all means use everything at your disposal to quit, but without the first three the likelihood of success will be much lower. If you wish to not fall to the temptation you need to remove the temptation all together!
 
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I'm 32. I've been a smoker (even when I wasn't actually smoking) for 17 years. What I mean by "even when I wasn't actually smoking" is that I still felt that I classified myself as a smoker, even when I'd quit for months at a time.

A little history:
My parents were both hard core smokers, 2-3 packs a day. My mother quit for a few months both times she was diagnosed with cancer... Cervical cancer in 1994 resulted in a full hysterectomy, and then in 1997 they found transferred cancer cells near the umbilical region. She went through two courses of radiation and chemotherapy. Mom is still fighting her addiction, and is still currently a smoker.
My dad smoked just as heavily. Because of serious health issues (due to surviving a gun shot to the face) he underwent numerous neurosurgeries, and would be hospitalized for up to or over a month. The MOMENT he was in the car to go home, he'd ask my mom for a cigarette. He always said he'd quit smoking if he got cancer. He lied to us. My dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in November of 2010. He went through radiation and chemotherapy, but the cancer was too advanced. He passed away from complications from an infection on June 29th, 2011. The death certificate stated his system had gone "septic".

I have attempted quitting smoking by going cold turkey. That was hell, and was probably worse for my friends and family than it was for me - I was a total monster.

I have attempted quitting smoking using the nicotine patch. That was worse hell - because the nightmares got so vivid, so horrific that I stopped sleeping for days at a time. And then I would crash for 24 hours straight. And the nightmares came back. I had to stop using the patch.

I tried Wellbutrin. It had little effect at all.

I figured I'd be struggling with this beast for the rest of my life, with no relief.

Then I tried Chantix. Several months after Dad was diagnosed with cancer, I started Chantix. At first I suffered pretty bad nausea. I found that following the directions to the letter (small meal, FULL glass of water) and then sitting for about 20 minutes got me past that. I was smoke free the last two times I visited my dad. And I was smoke free for his funeral. After that, I fell apart.

When I quit, my husband was trying to quit as well, using the patch. He did pretty good, but he was still smoking here and there. When Dad died, he stopped using the patch and was smoking more. I had an issue getting my continuing prescription of Chantix (doctor went on vacation) and felt defenseless. It was so easy to step outside with my husband after dinner, or before bedtime. I started smoking again, because I'm not only addicted to nicotine, I'm also an idiot. I was so embarassed by my failure, so guilty for not quitting even after Dad died, that I even tried to hide it from people.

Fast forward five months. My new quit date is March 1st. I'm using Chantix again. It worked for me, and while the side effects were at times rough, I feel that a new lease on a smoke-free life is worth it. I have three daughters, and I absolutely have to be alive for them. I'm ready to quit. I'm prepared. And I'm not going into it alone.

Not every one can quit using Chantix. I couldn't quit cold turkey - nor with the patches, nor Wellbutrin alone, nor the gum. But Chantix worked for me, until I stopped taking it too soon, and went through a kind of numb period. The main side effects I had were nausea and weird dreams. It does block the pleasure receptors some how, so after 2 months, I did have a decrease in enjoyment of certain things (coffee, chocolate, ...). But it wasn't so life altering that I suddenly became suicidal. My doctor has said that adding Wellbutrin to the regime may cancel out a few of the negative effects of the Chantix.

I do have a ton of weird little tips that have helped me in the past, that I'll be employing after March. I'd be happier to share them - but I'm positive that this post is already way too long. So, taking a break, recouping a little, and will come back in a bit to write all of them down. Chantix is my biggest and best tip, because it really worked.
 
^^^ These stories are ... WOW! ^^^

Thank you for sharing.
 
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