Author Topic: Stopping smoking: when?  (Read 67903 times)

Chris S

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #25 on: 15 July, 2008, 08:13:08 am »
In common with others here, I "just stopped" - in my case, after smoking for 25 years, latterly two packs a day. That was over six years ago.

I didn't tell anyone I'd stopped either. Nor did I think I had "stopped forever" for that's too big a concept. In fact, it was a dare to myself. I'd run out of smokes, couldn't be arsed to go to the shop so thought "I'll string out 'til lunchtime then go and get some."
When lunchtime came I thought "I wonder whether I can make it to teatime without smoking?", then "I wonder if I can do all day without?". From there it just escalated.

It was really tough - but what developed was a realisation that I wanted to not smoke more than I wanted to smoke, and for me, that was a BIG motivator.

Breaking the habit was the hard part. It's not about the addiction - it's all about little rituals you've built up over the years, reinforced day after day after day. All that needs to be broken down, and either replaced or discarded.

In effect what you end up doing is reinventing yourself. It was the best thing I could ever have done for myself, and those around me. I've never regretted stopping - though I hated it at times during the first six months. And now that I've done the hard work - it's a great feeling of freedom when I see snoutcasts standing in the rain outside a pub. YES!! I'm free of all that.

JFDI. For six months you'll hate yourself. Thereafter you'll be thankful.

I had a mantra that helped:

"I'd rather be 45 and wishing I could smoke, than 65 and wishing I hadn't."

I also had an image in my head, of me being about 65 and in my docs surgery getting some Really Bad News, then looking back to the person I am now and thinking "You bastard, you did this to me."

You might think you've damaged your body now, so there's no point stopping. That's not true - your body (mostly) heals itself. Depending on you, and how much you've smoked ("Pack Years" they call them), your lungs will probably never be as good as they would have been had you not smoked - but that's just tough - and you can be sure they'd get worse if you carried on smoking.

I used to use that excuse. Then someone said to me "If you want a tree, it's true that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is right now."

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #26 on: 15 July, 2008, 08:23:30 am »
I stopped 3 weeks before I was diagnosed with emphysema and now I'm paying the real price of smoking :'(

Rapples

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #27 on: 15 July, 2008, 08:25:01 am »

It was really tough - but what developed was a realisation that I wanted to not smoke more than I wanted to smoke, and for me, that was a BIG motivator.

Breaking the habit was the hard part. It's not about the addiction - it's all about little rituals you've built up over the years, reinforced day after day after day. All that needs to be broken down, and either replaced or discarded.


+1

I wish I'd said that, good advice

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #28 on: 15 July, 2008, 10:23:31 am »
When I used to smoke, I never fancied a fag when I had a bad cold, so I choose this time to pack up.  I had a few abortive attempts (one lasted a year, until I decided that it would be OK to have a fag with a pint - BIG MISTAKE!).
In the end it worked for me (I packed up over 30 years ago).  Good luck :)

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #29 on: 15 July, 2008, 10:48:16 am »
When I used to smoke, I never fancied a fag when I had a bad cold, so I choose this time to pack up. 

I did that too, in 1988.   Then I met the now mrs m.

I'd pretend I had a cold now if I were you and wanted to stop now.

FatBloke

  • I come from a land up over!
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #30 on: 15 July, 2008, 11:31:26 am »
This is VITAL. DON'T TELL ANYONE THAT YOU ARE/HAVE GIVEN UP SMOKING. What I mean is; let them find out. Be proud of yourself.
It took my then live-in girlfriend now the current Mrs FB 4 days to notice I'd stopped, my best friends didn't notice for 3 weeks.

I am now disgusted that I regularly used to light up in my best friends' house when they were both non-smokers.   :(
This isn't just a thousand to one shot. This is a professional blood sport. It can happen to you. And it can happen again.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #31 on: 15 July, 2008, 11:45:15 am »


Anyway in the meantime tell me good things about not smoking. Will I get a girlfriend?
Hmm? OK, get laid even?

Yes obviously and Yes lots


Opinions expressed may contain truths or traces of truths

Seriously though...I don't have any advice on stopping but if it helps then I can honestly say I really do find smoking an unattractive habit, even if it's a really gorgeous man doing it...it's kind of a deal breaker for me.

I'm sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, I have particular issues with it because my dad has always chain smoked, so the house and everything in it stank when I was a kid, there was a continual haze of smoke over everything, and I was very glad to escape that...but I do have friends who feel similarly about the whole 'kissing an ashtray' thing.

Good luck!


Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #32 on: 15 July, 2008, 11:56:48 am »
Lots of useful thoughts there - will peruse them properly this evening when I have time.

Good luck!

With the smoking or the getting laid?  :P

Luck needed with both I think.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #33 on: 15 July, 2008, 03:09:34 pm »
Well I did mean the smoking but the best of luck in all your endeavours!!

My boss sets great store in his white plastic fake cigarette nicotine thing, he used to smoke heavily when stressed a few years ago, but now he just wonders around with this tampon thing in his mouth at bad points. This is how I know when to give him a wide berth. Handy really.

I don't think he knows we all call it his tampon though...

onb

  • Between jobs at present
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #34 on: 15 July, 2008, 03:57:57 pm »
I gave up almost exactly 27 years ago ,the reason the test was positive and eight months later a beautiful baby daughter arrived .I gave up as the 1st mrs onb was advised to .She started up again soom after she got out of the hospital and I didnt.Early doors I told everyone I had given up  to much derision and you will never do it types of comment ,I can be a stubborn sod and comments like this only fuelled my will to stop.Dont consider yourself as someone who has given up more a non smoker.
.

Pete

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #35 on: 15 July, 2008, 08:28:29 pm »
I've never smoked, so I'm not much help on the how-to-give-up stuff.

I can post a dire warning, though.

Elsewhere (astronomy forum), one of the most active, helpful, popular (and funny) forummers, posted late last year that he'd had a bit of bad news.  He, a lifelong smoker in his late 40s, had been ordered to give up, a year or two previous, with good reason.  Now, he'd had a letter from his consultant vascular surgeon telling him that he had a complete occlusion of all the arteries in his lower leg and the prospects were dire.  He actually published his letter in facsimile on the forum, as a warning to others.

Early this year they decided that his leg was past saving and he had it amputated.  He spent three months in hospital.

Early in June he was fitted with an artificial leg and was thrilled to be able to get about again with no more than a stick, to move into a bungalow, to re-start his hobby which was running a sort of used astronomy kit exchange.  All through his illness he continued to post on the forum and his optimism and cheery disposition was a pleasure to read.  I never met him but, like all of us, counted him a friend.  He was a passionate Wales supporter.

It wasn't enough.   :'(  On 13th June he collapsed and died of a pulmonary embolism, almost certainly smoking-related.  His loss was a tremendous blow to the forum, felt keenly by many fellow-astronomers.

Please, please, don't let this happen to anyone on this forum, ever!  Or any other!

Enough.  I felt, I really needed to post this, get it off my chest.

Chris S

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #36 on: 15 July, 2008, 08:57:14 pm »
That is really sad Pete  :(.

Amputation is not uncommon in smokers - as with diabetics. Stopping smoking and getting regularly active in a properly cardiovascular sense (weeding window boxes won't cut it) is the only sensible thing to do before the problems start.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #37 on: 16 July, 2008, 02:57:11 pm »
I made a definite decision not to start smoking at 12 or 13.
My first clinical attachment as a medical student was with a vascular surgeon (an ex-smoker).
Watching young men's legs getting whittled into stumps reinforced my earlier decision. Finding out they'd lost their sex lives earlier was a revelation.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #38 on: 16 July, 2008, 03:01:20 pm »
Just stop, Simon. Stop stop stop. Do it NOW.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #39 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:25:09 pm »
Finding out they'd lost their sex lives earlier was a revelation.

Now we're talking. More gore please.

Just stop, Simon. Stop stop stop. Do it NOW.

Why what's happened?  ;D It's that bit about the sex life isn't it?  :P

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #40 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:27:00 pm »
If you're not smoking now, you've stopped.

Now just forget to start again.

HTH
Getting there...

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #41 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:32:32 pm »
I stopped when my rowing coach [Eric Halliday, RIP] told me to either stop smoking or drinking or I would never be any good at sport.

So Simon - which is it to be?  Beer or tabs?

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #42 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:35:11 pm »
I don't drink, Mike, haven't done for two years.

Not smoking or drinking just seems too much.  :(

Julian

  • samoture
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #43 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:36:09 pm »
You obviously need a new bad habit to replace the smoking.

Go wild!  Don't eat five portions of fruit and veg a day! 

That'll do the trick.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #44 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:38:18 pm »
that's just crazy talk Liz. 

the gubmnt would catch you for that, 4 sure.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #45 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:38:34 pm »
You obviously need a new bad habit to replace the smoking.

You are even more right than you could have imagined.

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #46 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:41:57 pm »
Not smoking or drinking just seems too much.  :(

Whaddyamean?  I don't smoke or drink, and my life is one neverending riotous delight of...

Well, OK, maybe that wasn't a good example.

But I can report, over twenty years into my sobriety and not having smoked (well, barely) for at least eighteen years, that there is life beyond...
Getting there...

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #47 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:51:34 pm »
Finding out they'd lost their sex lives earlier was a revelation.

Now we're talking. More gore please.

Just stop, Simon. Stop stop stop. Do it NOW.

Why what's happened?  ;D It's that bit about the sex life isn't it?  :P

The sex life business is not gory any more than my 'dead' computer mouse is gory. Normal, appropriate stimuli elicit no response.
Hydraulic failure in the case of vascular disease, presumed electric failure for my dead mouse.

Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #48 on: 16 July, 2008, 04:59:25 pm »
Finding out they'd lost their sex lives earlier was a revelation.

Now we're talking. More gore please.

Just stop, Simon. Stop stop stop. Do it NOW.

Why what's happened?  ;D It's that bit about the sex life isn't it?  :P
Nope, it's not, actually.

Valiant

  • aka Sam
    • Radiance Audio
Re: Stopping smoking: when?
« Reply #49 on: 16 July, 2008, 05:02:10 pm »
Simon, we should have a chat. Think of me as the short, fat Hitch.
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