Need some help

[madialex]

Ok Guys, this is not really pickup related but in a way it is.

I need some motivation to quit smoking, stories of past smokers etc.... I consider you guys my friends and this is one of those things you would turn to a friend to help with.

It is affecting my health obviously but it is also dragging me down mentally and emotionally. I am tired all the time, no stamina, I have no drive to do anything anymore, stairs, Ha fagitaboutit.....I have 4 beautiful children that deserve more than what I have become and I want to do something about it. As of tomorrow morning I am not going to light up any more. Please you guys, help me through this. I know this is an unusual request but I have no one else to turn to. I have no family to speak of other than a donor I call my dad, everyone on my moms side of the family except my aunt and a few cousins have passed away, the ex wife, ha i'd rather die from cancer than ask her for anything.

I had a lump on my neck removed recently that wasnt cancerous but there is another near where the other was and I am scared to death about it. Smoking is a vicious thing that is worse than drugs to get off of..... Anyway, I appreciate all the advice you guys have given to me and others here over the years and hope you all can help with this, I really need it.

[Ruel]

I was a smoker for some twenty years before I managed to quit. What I found about trying to quit is that you can't do it gradually. You have to do it abruptly. The first "no smoke" week was the hardest for me. I experienced dizzy spells and nausea. After that, it was all downhill.

[Joe Gwinn]

Do it cold turkey, but with the nicotine patches if necessary. Slow does not work.

Talk to your doctor. I suspect that the prescription stuff is far better than the over-the-counter stuff.

The nicotine is not the danger, the tar in the smoke is the danger.

What also reduces the risk by about 90% is to chew tobacco, versus smoking it. But quitting is far better.

[NightWinder]

You could get hipnotized. I heard it was rather scary though. A friend had it done, and the next day, someone drove up at the red light smoking in their car, and he instantly thought "death"? He still does'nt smoke......
Nowadays, I smoke once in a blue moon....smoking to get high, not to die

[Possum]

another way...

Look into EFT, google it, its helped alot of people with addictions, you use it when you feel the urge, some people do it or have it done once and the urge disappears forever. Its a very simple energy system done by tapping on energy centers, you can learn it in about half an hour, I've got videos of it curing people of addictions and traumatic stress disorders, amazing stuff.....

[NightWinder]

In all sincerity, you can do it, and you'll get stronger and wiser to what triggers your urge....Follow what Possum said. Try anything, but remember you can heal your body by educating yourself. 12 hrs after you stop, your heart already has begun to heal itsself. I'm told it takes onwards up to 3 yrs befor your going to completely rid your body of the damage you've done to it. YOU CAN DO THIS!! Kep telling yourself that. You already took the biggest hurdle! Desire to quite!!!

[Spence]

Looks like I'm doomed. I make excuses to spend countless uneccessary hours in my workshop so I can smoke. Or I call in on a luthier friend where the smoke den representing Britain's Olympic challenge is ......

[kevinT]

Quiting smoking was probably one of the hardest things for me to do after 10 years of doing it. But i can say that it is in the top 5 best things that i have ever done for myself and family and one of the most gratifying accomplishments because it is very difficult to do. When i started the process, I especally missed smoking with morning coffee, after a meal, after sex, smoking at band practice, and drinking

To me the first 2 weeks were the hardest..because you have to break the actual physical habit of lighting up at certain times that you were used to and also fight the nicotine cravings. Then after that it's psychological... especally when you see people smoking in real life or in a movie and remembering how much you had enjoyed it ..don't watch any old Humphry Bogart movies...

IMO..If you can quit for 1 year then you've beaten the addiction/habit. At that time, you'll probably ask yourself: why did i ever light up a cigarette?...i never needed this shit! Then you'll get depressed thinking about how much money you've spent over the years on those damn stink sticks.

Some of the things that motivated me to quit in addition to improving my health were:

--I just got sick of burning holes in cloths and car seats, (I almost wrecked my car once trying to find the cherry that i knocked off of the cigarette onto the carpet.),
--eliminating the aggravation of loosing my matches or the lighter runs out of fluid at the worst time
--panic because you're down to your last cigarette, and you don't want to run to the store in a raging blizzard to get another pack.
--Having to smoke outside in winter or in the rain

What i've learned is in order to quit, you must really want to quit and you have to set your mind to it....or else it won't work...and you have to do it COLD TURKEY as others have said. Trying to quit piecemeal doesn't work (e.g., limiting yourself to 10 smokes a day, then 8, then 5 ..etc....) I tried numerous times to quit but unsuccessfuly, and then finally one day, i was driving down the road and KAPOW!....out of the blue...i told myself i'm never smoking a cigarette again. I crumpled up a brand new pack of Marlboros and threw them out the window...and i never looked back. That was in 1989...

[DrStrangelove]

Ok Guys, this is not really pickup related but in a way it is.

I need some motivation to quit smoking, stories of past smokers etc...

Do it. Now.

You sleep better, your senses of smell and taste improve,
and you smell better to people around you.

It's three days of gross irritation and then you are over it.

On the third day, sip beer to calm your nerves. If possible,
stay home to avoid blowing up at people.

If you can't stop cold turkey, use the gum. Like cigarettes,
gum mixes oral gratification with nicotine delivery, but without
the radiation and tars, unlike cigarettes.

The worst part of American cigarettes is the Polonium-210 from
phosphate fertilizer -- truly a chest x-ray worth of radiation in a pack.
In comparison, all the rest, the tars, phenanthrenes, and benzopyrenes,
are secondary co-carcinogens.

Eat carrots daily for their regenerative effect on bronchial tissue --
raw, cooked, juiced, shredded...whatever. Your lungs clear faster
when your bronchial cilia can move phlegm without coughing.

Nobody here wants you to quietly disappear, so you'll be
getting clean for your kids and all rest of us.

...but if you MUST disappear, we'd rather see you
kick, scream, and raise Hell first.

-drh

[Dave Kerr]

Quitting smoking is easy - I've done it at least 20 times. <rim shot>

Old, tired jokes aside, I think if you try quitting with the expectation that you will likely fail this time around may actually help you in the long run. It took me many attempts (and failures), including one run of 3 years before resuming smoking, before I realized that just one cigarette (or celebratory It's a boy cigar) would have me back at 2-3 packs a day inside a week. Staying away from those environments where I smoked most - especially barrooms - was a big help for that first week or two. And while the physical craving is gone, there's not a week that goes by where I don't think of lighting one up.

[Rob Mercure]

First off, let me offer you all the encouragement I can cuz if your task doesn't seem easy - it's cuz it ain't! Nicotine is a poison - period! And no matter what the additional poisons offered by tars and possibly radionucleotides, etc., nicotine is still a neurotoxin, a carcinogen, and mutagen, and tends to synergize other carcinogens and make then more effective at causing cancer. But if this were the only issues you'd have quit already.

What is well known, and has been well known for over 100 years, is that nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs discovered, far more addictive than heroin. So don't for a second feel that you're "weak willed" or a "failure" if you have trouble quitting or relapse a few times before you can abstain - again, if it were easy we wouldn't be discussing it.

If you've got access to a good municipal library or feel like doing an Amazon purchase look for "Licit and Illicit Drugs" by Edward Becher (sp?). This early 1970s publication by Consumers Union - the publishers of Consumer Reports - provides great detail about tobacco use, about how natives used it rarely and in strong enough doses to produce "visions" and how it took Europeans to transform it's use into an addictive manner; about how tobacco in cigarette form was recognized as being more addictive than pipe or chew and banned by about 1/2 dozen states around the turn of the 20th century (these laws subsequently repealed under industry pressure); about how almost every negative health affect of tobacco was recognized before WWII (lung cancer was considered an exotic and rare disease) and; how it is so addictive that men who had both quit heroin and tobacco stated that heroin was easier to quit - after the fall of Berlin German women would prostitute themselves to our GIs for a pack of cigarettes (and Sigmon Freud, after having part of his face/jaw removed due to tobacco induced cancer, still had cigars held so that he would smoke until it killed him [long before any nuclear testing I may add]).

Again, perhaps the hardest thing you'll ever do - but well worth it as others have noted and perhaps the best gift you can give your children as I lost both of my parents to tobacco related deaths while in my 30s.

All my hope and prayers for you.

Rob

[madialex]

Thanks you all!!!

This is just what I need to help me, a lot of encouragement. You guys are the best!

Today was pretty good, I did slip up at the times when you all said I would, at work when all the guys take a smoke break, I lit up like nothing was even wrong, then I caught myself later and said what the hell am I doing? I am home now and focused again and wont let myself slip again tonight. Tomorrow is another day and I hope it will be better than today.

Thursday here in Va is supposed to be about 98 degrees, about 110 with the heat index, I may play hookie that day

Again, Thanks guys!!!!

[Rob Mercure]

Is "Va" Virginia? If so where? I'm in the "extreme S.W. end of the state."


To add a couple of tidbits. The "addiction profile" for nicotine, while unique, is more similar to that of cocaine than any of the opiates so any positive suggestions you see for breaking cocaine addiction may be useful.

Addictive drugs, in general, tend to be addictive cuz they mimic/mirror/replace substances that naturally occur within the brain. Production of some of these substances develops during adolescence and the presence of nicotine can cause the brain to "lose," or never develop, the ability to produce these substances. Thus the earlier in life one becomes addicted to nicotine the more difficult it becomes to quit as the addicts system lacks necessary neurotransmitter production - this is also true of other substances but I don't have specific data. The "bell shaped curve" generalizations derived from statistics are just that - generalizations - but with that stated if one becomes a habitual, several times a day, user of nicotine before age 14 the likelihood of quitting is almost zero, the "break even" -"50/50%" chance of quitting is around age 18 and anyone who starts after age 21 has almost a 90% chance of permanently quitting.

Again, this isn't meant to "doom" anyone who started early - generalizations are "made to be broken" - but to reinforce that quitting is harder for some individuals not due to any "weak will" but proven biological factors. Some folks just have it harder and need to both be more compassionate towards themselves and more willing to seek professional help. But I also think that this also places more responsibility on those who smoke to ensure that minors aren't given any opportunity or encouragement to smoke and on the rest of us to censure anyone who would assist minors in either starting to smoke or acquiring tobacco. To put it another way - assisting a child's tobacco addiction is "child abuse" of the most insidious kind.

Remember that tobacco is the single largest source of preventable death in this country killing around 400,000 folks each year, alcohol "only" kills around 20,000 and "illegal" drugs around 8-10,000 allowing one to make a quite "coarse" and "loose" statement that tobacco is "40" times the problem that illegal drugs are (of course this is misleading as there are other consequences of illegal drug use besides death and I really don't have good numbers concerning deaths that result from diverted prescription drugs but I know that valium is number two cause of non-accident preventable deaths).

Lastly, if one has African American ancestors it's likely that they were brought here in chains to feed Europe's growing nicotine addiction - by the time Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin - which greatly expanded slave holding territories - USA law had generally banned new importation of slaves.

Sorry if I'm a tad "preachy" but after losing my parents, many friends, probably soon my younger brother you may say I'm a bit "sensitized."

With respect.

Rob

[PoorMan]

I'm no smoker, but I lost my grandfather to lung cancer. I was very close to him and it was really difficult. It would be even harder for your kids to lose their dad.

Use your kids as your motivation. You love them and you surely don't want to cut your time with them short. I'm sure they'd like you to stick around too. You need to be there for them. Everytime you want to light-up you have to macke a choice. What's more important...your kids, or a cigarette?

I know it's hard but you can do it. I wish you luck, bro.

[black_labb]

ive never smoked tabacco, but my mother quit the day she gave birth to me, she did say that having a pack in the house helped her not need it, and if it wasnt there shed go out and buy one to smoke. how that works i dont know, and i wouldnt suggest trying it unless you feel the same way, because i can imagine it would work the other way around