How did you stop smoking?

I never was a heavy smoker but I did smoke off and on since I was 14. I cut even further down when my kids were small but quite completely about 35 years ago. I was at an office party for my family’s business, lit up and got such a look of disgust from my BIL that I just quit at that point. I wish sweets were as easy to give up!

I quit 30 years ago. That was back when smokers could smoke anywhere they wanted and I smoked in the office. The guy that sat beside me, who was an ex-smoker himself at the time, threw a 100 dollar bill down on my desk and said “that’s yours if you quit smoking.” I said I would quit as soon as I finished the carton I had at home and tried to give it back to him. He said no, keep it so you will quit. I finished the carton a week later and stopped at midnight on July 11 cold turkey. I kept that 100 for 1 year to make sure I had quit and then bought a little gold pinky ring with it to remind me to never smoke again.

I smoked for 40 years, was up to a pack a day. Then I read this: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/easy-way-to-stop-smoking-allen-carr/1100625699?ean=9781402771637 and just quit. That was 7+ years ago.
I missed it as a habit, not as a physical thing. The book addressed the thought processes that are part of the smoking addiction, and I shifted my thinking.

^^ I drank a can of Diet Cherry Coke for many years at my “cigarette break” down time until I read last year that even one can a day can increase the chances for Alzheimer’s. I wonder what pleasure I’ll be giving up next?

@janbb: I am finding that aging is requiring me to give up various pleasures. Ugh.

Cold turkey, in my 49th year.
Was hard for about a week, after that no pain.
26 months and counting, smoked for about 30+ years.
Quit before, once, for seven years (from 30th).

@rebbel keep it up!

Thank you, @janbb, I will.

When my smoke budget grew larger than my food budget, I decided it was time to quit. I threw them in the trash & I’ve NOT looked back!!! Actually, that’s a lie…it’s been over 20 years & EVERY time I hear a lighter light a cig, I flinch & have to remind myself WHY I stopped to begin with. Yes, it is easier now to resist than it was in the beginning; but, I’m smart enough to know that I can’t smoke just one & I truly do NOT want to get back on them!!!

I quit thirty years ago next week!

I had gone out for a bicycle ride, and climbing a hill, couldn’t breathe and wanted to vomit from my lungs. Walked to the top of the hill, and rode to another Hill. Same thing happened. When I got to my car and put the bike on it to drive home, I lit up a smoke, and couldn’t believe what I was doing to myself. Every cigarette I had that evening I told myself I was killing myself.

Had my last smoke at 9 the next morning. Went cold turkey, but I had reached the point where I had to stop. Withdrawal took about a week or so.

Burnt my throat when my classmates tried to group pressure me into it.
Never touched another one.

Only tried once with friends and never tried it again. So that was the first and last time I smoked. I know many people who quit smoking but started something else. I don’t know if that’s true in your (op and those who have responded on this thread) case as well?

^Yes. I substituted food. I gained 20 pounds within about 3 or 4 months but I was just consumed with quitting smoking that I didn’t care. I’m 5’2 and that is a huge amount of weight to gain so quickly. My boyfriend at the time said I was fat and it hurt my feelings, but he was correct. I started a diet and walking the next day. It took me 3 months to get it off and an extra 5 more pounds.

He had staff for that.

Was 17yrs ago almost to the day, wife & I quit cold turkey together never gone back, never will.
We’d had several “dummy runs” over the previous couple of years & were smoking menthol cigarettes at time of quitting so pretty much weaned off, were down to less than 10 a day.
Best decision ever, our kids were very young at the time & were definitely a motivating factor.

No, we had kids for that, unlike the crusty germanic virgin who literally can’t stop butting in with painfully predictable comments as i am writing a post.
Amusing to see how much of an impression i’ve made, but your affection is vomit inducing :D

Congrats to all that have quit! I have to admit…I had one extra assistance. The air on the submarine was not the best. When you lit up a cigarette there was almost an oily sweet taste to it. It was horrible. I figured I didn’t need to pay to not enjoy myself. And giving away 6 cartons was my guarantee…if I went back to smoking, that was wasted money.

First time I quit for 8 years, cold turkey. I was convinced that God would not let me have a baby until I quit, so I quit. We had tried for 2 years to have a baby. I kept telling God that if I got my period again I was going to start smoking again, but I never did…...that really seemed to get me through. I got pregnant 8 months later.
Picked it back up in 1993 or so. :( Most recently I quit 5 months ago. Used Chantix so it was much, much easier. The mental addiction is really hard to over come, though.

I just stopped.
When I was deployed nobody talked about it.
My girlfriend, a doctor, did not lecture me about it.
But she clearly did not understand it.
So I stopped.
I still have buds who smoke but I don’t let them smoke in my house so they started to vape.
A great solution to a social problem

A friend of mine who quit 10 years ago, told his then 5 and 6 year old daughters that if he quit smoking they had to promise him they’d never so much a LOOK at a cigarette. I didn’t make my grandkids promise anything, but I made sure they know. And to know the disappointment they’d feel if I started smoking again helps me to resist.

First time: cold turkey, ~age 22. I stayed off them for a five years or so and then had one and got back on them for a few months and quit the second time with nicotine gum. Been off them for nearly 15 years now. There was zero “mental addiction” it was 100% physical.

Cold turkey almost 15 years ago. I had been trying to get pregnant for a few years without any results. Three months after I quit smoking I found out I was pregnant.

I replaced smokes with TicTacs. Every time I wanted a smoke I grabbed my little box of breath mints. Now I’m hooked on those. ;)

I used sunflower seeds in the shell when I quit cold turkey. I’d keep an ash tray close by for the shells, so it was similar to my smoking habit.

I smoked through college. I was about a pack a day smoker. I quit when cigarette prices went up to 75 cents a pack (Kinda tells you how long ago it was doesn’t it), a big jump because it was decided to heavily tax them to get people (like me) to quit. I just refused to pay that much.

It went like this: I went in to my regular gas station/convenience store to purchase a pack of smokes. The clerk said that will be 75 cents. I was appalled and pissed off but bought them anyway. I resolved to never pay that much again and never did.

I smoked that pack but remember spreading it out over several days instead of just the one day. For several weeks my friends who did smoke would offer me one and I would take it and smoke it. After a while, they got tired of supporting my habit as well as their own and quit offering.

So, they didn’t offer and I wouldn’t ask or buy but by that time it no longer seemed necessary. Sure, over the years from time to time I would want one and even smoked one if it were offered until one day I didn’t. Never took another,

Still enjoyed the second hand smoke however, until they quit letting people smoke inside.

It still doesn’t bother me if others smoke around me but my wife, also a former smoker decades ago, cannot stand the smell anymore.

Just wondering, smoking back then seemed to be a social activity. Now it seems to be a singular or individual activity. Very few people I now associate with smoke so I don’t have the background anymore. Do people still share cigarettes when they get together? When you smoked did you? Did you resent it when people bummed one off you or were you happy to share?

Despite my best efforts my son took up smoking in his teens. I had not smoked since before he was born and did not allow it in the house. My daughter experimented a few times in her high school years but it was not her thing and she never developed the habit fortunately

My son says quitting isn’t hard, and he should know he has done it so many times.
I believe the hardest part was that he and his wife both smoke and it is much harder to coordinate two people than to do it yourself. If both try at the same time it gets easier but it never seems to last, one or the other of them always goes back and when they do, the other is not far behind. Stress of one kind of another is usually the contributing factor to restarting. I must be much more challenging when you are trying to quit and your partner goes out on the porch for a smoke.

For about the past year they have been cigarette free but are vaping. I was surprised at how much money you can spend doing that.

Yes, it was a bit difficult this time around because Rick smokes.

My colleague has quit smoking for some years. He can’t stand someone smoking beside him. He dislikes it so much! Do you think that’s bizzare or quite possible?

@imrainmaker I think that is plausible. It probably took great effort for him to quit and he worries that he may not be strong enough to hold out when opportunities present themselves. Or he may have actually developed a disgust for smoke and smoking as part of his method of overcoming his earlier addiction.

Of course it’s possible. It could also be just him being a Nagging Nancy.

When I was in college, in the 70s, we were allowed to smoke in the Student Union. My schedule include a break in which I, and others, would watch MASH. Well, I always sat on an outside aisle, near as ash tray. One day I lit up…and almost instantly the guy in front of me started fanning his face and heaving big, put out sighs. He never said a word. It just all body language drama and contempt.
I put my cigarette out immediately. I think I’d taken that one hit, so it was basically an entire cigarette in the ash tray. But he continued to fan himself and sigh loudly and heavily for the next 8 minutes or so, the normal time it takes to finish a smoke.
Your friend could be doing something like that @imrainmaker. Have you asked him about it?

@imrainmaker As a former smoker, it is not bizarre nor is it merely “quite possible”. That seems like a normal reaction to me.

People who smoke are off-gassing all day from the stench on their clothes and on their skin and in their hair. It is much worse than being downwind from a lit cigarrette, which is pretty bad in and of itself..

I’m now very sensitive to someone smoking around me; I think many people are now that smoking is uncommon most places.

People who smoke in enclosed places…yeah, man. They STINK. Especially if they don’t wash regularly.
It broke my heart when I was teaching, to have a grade school student come in reeking of cigarette smoke.

I can’t stand the stench of a smoker. It literally makes my throat sore if I’m near it for too long. I will hold my breath until I can get away from it.

@Dutch I was teased in grade school because I smelled like smoke. My mother had a 3 pack a day habit. :(

We went to see a lady here in town about a side by side freezer. The house was a run down, beat up, filthy rental. I walked in and damn near got knocked out from the fumes of marijuana stench! It’s literally been years since I smelled it. It was kinda nasty…mainly because it was so old and stale. Everything that’s stale is nasty. She was a nut case, all the way around, BTW.

@Dutchess_III how was the freezer?

It was a NO.

We did find one for $40, though. It works like a banshee. It’s an upright so it takes up less space in our tiny utility room so that’s good. I’m cranking out the home cooked freezables like mad! My grandson who will be 19 next month, is coming over tomorrow so we can un-hoard the upstairs of the house. I pulled some home made roast with carrots, etc. out of the freezer. I’ll make home made bread tomorrow too. He’ll eat like a king.
Spent most of the day the other day cooking up and freezing spaghetti sauce.