Smoking, how to stop it

[every_mothers_lover]

I am trying to find ways to help my friends who want to stop smoking.

What ways are the best, without having to buy the stupidly expensive gum/patches etc...

How did you quit, etc...

 

[Bandit58]

You tell me and we'll both know

Seriously cigarettes are one of the hardest addictions to beat. My husband still smokes about 15 cigarettes a day. When we met he was smoking 35-40, and before that he'd been known to get through 70-80

We've tried gum but it upset his stomach. You can get generic nicotine patches (Quit X) for about $20 a pack from the budget chemist. If you're tricky like us buy the highest strength and cut them in half that way you get twice the amount of patches

Put all ashtrays away. Make a rule you only smoke outside. This has been a help in him cutting down.

Identify your triggers. When do you smoke - with a coffee, when drinking, socialising, after dinner, on the phone? An idea that might be helpful - try wearing a rubber band on your wrist and when you feel the urge to light up, snap it against your skin a few times. By the time you've done that the urge should have passed.

I quit cold turkey in 1986. I lived 10km from the nearest shop at the time, so I stayed home for two weeks - went absolutely nowhere. By the time I went out again, I'd lost the desperate desire for a cigarette.

Good luck to your friends

 

[shyrebel]

Have you tried putting a gun to his/her head and dare him/her to smoke. If he/her does then...bang, no more smoking.

 

[Weird Harold]

I successfully quit for six weeks in 1971 by going Cold Turkey -- I changed my drink of choice as the only trigger I needed to eliminate. A started smoking again because of a stupid supervisor that thought keeping me out on the flightline in 110F+ conditions was doing me a favor.

Fast forward to April 2007 and a three day stay in the hospital for a blood clot in my shoulder: Two packs a day down to nothing and it was driving me nuts. They put me on the Nicoderm Step One patch to stop me chewing their bedcloths and to allow me to de-stress enough to bring my blood pressure under control -- Since I had the hardest part of quitting behind me when got out of the Hospital I went on a generic version of the Nicoderm patches ($22/Week instead of $48/Week) and followed the plan nearly to the letter -- I stretched stage two an extra week because I still had serious cravings on the stage two patches at the recommended time to change to Stage Three.

Without the patches, I would never have been able to quit. Swimming every day helps, but I still have cravings and triggers, but if my experience with alcohol is any guide, those will last the rest of my life. Hard Candies -- lifesavers, butterscotch lozenges, etc -- have replaced the cigarettes for the habit triggers (and added fifteen pounds) but I'll trade those fifteen pounds for the mess I let tobacco make of my health and budget.

(I've been swimming (nearly) every day since the end of June and have just started to regain some of my wind and strength, but I have a LONG way to go to undo the sad state of my fitness cigarettes led to.)

However, your friends won't be able to quit until each of them really wants to quit. I've successfully gotten sober and am working on being able to declare succes in being smoke free -- I have to say "rock bottom" was a LOT further down for smoking than it was for drinking; especially after having "failed" once before.

 

[NorCalGirl]

This probably won't be helpful

I started smoking in college. Never a heavy smoker, and it was initially mostly social - in bars, out dancing, etc. I continued smoking, maybe a pack a week, for some years after college. Most of my friends did not smoke, so I wouldn't smoke around them. Didn't want to smoke in my house. So, that basically left the car, and the bar, dance club or casino.

When I learned I was pregnant, I quit cold turkey. Stayed away from the cigarettes for about 5 years, and then one day foolishly started smoking again.

Smoked for another few years and then one day, I ran out of cigarettes, but didn't have time to swing by the gas station for a pack. The next day, I had the time but not the money. And so on. And I've been smoke free for 6 months now. I don't want to start again, and I hope I won't.

For me, cold turkey has worked but like I said, I wasn't a heavy smoker. I've heard that the nicotine patches work for some people, and also trying to avoid the situations where you most often smoke. That can be very hard to do. A friend started chewing on cinnamon sticks, just to have something to hold and suck on.

Good luck.

 

[buxxxom]

Chantix. It's a prescription obtainable from your doctor. My husband, a smoker for over 20 years, quit in 6 weeks with help from Chantix. It's a pill you take twice a day for a length of up to 12 weeks. The first week you take the meds, you continue to smoke. The drug binds with the receptors in your blood and take the place of nicotine, so you don't get the effects of the nicotine, and you have milder withdrawal symptoms than you would have if you quit cold turkey. By the end of the first week, the physical addiction is over, and you keep taking the meds to deal with the mental addiction. Insurance covered our cost, and we only had our copay. He's approaching his one year smoke free anniversary next month. I give my highest recommendations for this medication.

 

[Abradix]

I found the rubber band on the wrist to be effective. Make it a nice thick one so it hurts... Aversion therapy has proven its worth to me.

 

[fgarvb1]

The most important thing is to be ready to stop.

When they are sick and tired of being sick and tired, when they have had enough.

They will stop.

Then they will look BACK at the point they quit at...Not forward to when they will finish quiting.

Good patches and pills help some. and Tic Tacs.

One should warn them to start taking the ZYBAN a week before stopping and that each level of the patches is like quiting all over again.

The truth is until you stop everything, or do anything else you have NOT stopped Smoking.

There is NO such thing as quitting for a week, month or year. Either you stop or you don't.

Tapering off as much as possible before hand will not hurt.

I could be wrong, I only smoked for thirty four years two-three packs a day before I stopped.