Quitting Smoking

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Has anyone managed to quit smoking? I have tried several times and once quit for a few years. I am at an age now where it affects my health noticeably so I want to stop. I am reading Allen Carrs book and its pretty good at making me think about not smoking.

Yes, I stopped smoking successfully without further pangs. I was eager to stop, and that is important. Be chafing
at the bit to extinguish your last cigarette. The more it grieves you to smoke, the greater your chances
for ceasing altogether. I advise you to finish the book.

I've been prescribed Wellbutrin to help quit smoking before, and it usually works for me(when taken alone). But usually when I do bother to get my all my prescriptions, I get Adderall too, which makes me want to smoke more than usual, so they sort of cancel each other out, for lack of a better term.

I quit overnight following a chest infection but started again at a party around 11 months later. That was about 20 years ago.
More recently I have been a non-smoker for around 5 or 6 years [I can't remember] and again I did it overnight without nicotine replacement. I think it is down to your surroundings [I live alone] I don't mix with people so don't encounter smokers and I really didn't enjoy the foul smell or what it was doing to me health wise.

I've known several people who quit smoking, including my mother. She smoked for over 50 years, and then had her first heart attack. It was a "walking" heart attack, not the type where you immediately collapse. My older brother took her to the hospital and got rid of all the cigarettes in her purse. I returned an unopened carton to the store for a refund, and threw out all unused cigarettes at home that were left over from the previous carton. My mother was no longer driving, so she couldn't go and get them on her own, and none of us would buy them for her or take her to get them after she was released from the hospital. She needed an angioplasty, and the doctors kept her in the hospital several days longer than necessary for recuperating from that procedure, so they could keep her on strong meds while she went through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms. This procedure bought my mother another 10 years of life. Unfortunately 50 years of smoking had wrecked her body. She had everything you can get from smoking, except cancer, although she might have had that without anyone knowing about it. Her skin was wrinkled, she had emphysema, a heart condition, vascular problems, fluid retention, cataracts, memory problems, osteoporosis, and any thing else you can get from smoking. It causes or contributes to all of the things I mentioned, look it up if you don't believe me.

For your own sake, and that of your family, stick with quitting.

I heard about e-cigarettes about 10 months ago, and thought maybe it would be a useful method for me to quit smoking. I've smoked for 11 years now, and have come to terms (not a justification) with the fact that due to my severe respiratory allergies, nicotine and tobacco in small amounts can relieve my breathing problems. Totally counter-intuitive, right? But the problem I was struggling with was that nicotine is too addictive to have in small amounts for me.
So I tried the e-cig, thinking that I would use it for a month or so, taper off, and quit entirely. It didn't work out quite that way. But I quit using tobacco entirely. I've slipped only twice in 9 months, and on both occasions I couldn't even finish the smoke. It tasted disgusting. I just can't do it anymore.

The world of e-cigs was very confusing at first. I bought a kit to start out, and paid way too much. Since the ecig industry is largely unregulated, there are a lot of scammers out there who take advantage of peoples desperation about quitting smoking. There are also a bunch of great products that are available to folks who want to quit tobacco but just can't seem give it up, no matter how hard they try.
It has taken a bunch of trial and error to find a system that works for me. In a way ecigs has become a special interest of mine, even though I don't have lots of money to spend on fancy equipment.
I won't recommend switching to an ecig and then never quitting nicotine. But I find that my brain works so much better when I have the nicotine in my system. (That is a justification, I'll admit.)

The nicotine is dissolved in a liquid (I use organic vegetable glycerin), which then is heated to around 108 degrees. The glycerin then becomes a vapor which is easily inhaled. The resultant exhale is just water vapor.

Overall, the amount of money I spend is only a bit less than I spent on cigs, but my lungs feel better, and I love not stinking of burnt cigarettes. I quit right away after I got the ecig, and didn't look back.
If anyone is interested in more info on ecigs, I'd be happy to inform you more on the topic. I use a KR-808 system, with XL batteries.

In conclusion, ecigs can help you quit regular cigarettes, but may not get you off nicotine entirely. There is always going to be the withdrawal, and so far I've avoided it. But I have lovely flavors of vapor like French Vanilla, and Caramel TN cured Tobacco. Ecigs are more pleasant to taste and smell, and my health is vastly better for the switch. Overall, a good move for me.

I used to smoke 2-3 packs a day and was totally addicted, but then I found the perfect method to quit. Here's how it works: First, get a disease that causes severe abdominal pain whenever you smoke, such as Crohn's disease. Second, quit smoking. That's all it takes

Quitting is easy, I've done it more than once, I'll do it again!

once i realised the physical cravings disapear pretty quick (i read 48hrs) then i found it was not so hard. You won't be able to quit unless you really want too.

also, if you fail then there is no reason not to try again, smoking less is still better than more

The first time I smoked I spent 10 years trying to quit, and failing every time (I was a 2-3 pack a day smoker). When I did finally quit I realized that all those years I didn't truly want to quit - I just wanted the bad parts of smoking to go away. That's totally different than being willing to give up the good to get rid of the bad. I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd not tortured my self-esteem with my failure to quit before I was really ready.

Once I was (really) ready, I used the patch. It helped me by feeding my physical addition while I kicked my psychological habit and learned to go through my day without reaching for a cigarette at every phone call, car ride, etc. I was supposed to use the patches for 6 weeks, but I managed to be rid even of them in 3 weeks, because I was finally really motivated. I was stupid and started smoking again 8 years later, and it took me another 2 years to quit. That's when I learned that once you quit, if you smoke again your addiction restarts where you left off - it doesn't start over again (so when I started again my body wanted 2 to 3 packs a day almost immediately - not 1 or 2 cigarettes, like I thought it would.

I've now been free of smoking for another 5 years, and I don't plan to start again (unless some doctor tells me I have a week to live - then I'm smoking my brains out

The moral of this story is: Don't just think you can quit smoking because you hate what it's doing to you. Aim to quit because you're willing to give up the GOOD parts of smoking (the relaxation, the social ties, etc etc etc) to also be rid of the BAD.

The amoral of this story is: When you quit, stay quit, or your addiction (which is still there just as strong, but is sleeping until you take another drag) will kick your behind around the block.

I quit three years ago. I knew that something would replace the smoking, so I let it, to cushion quitting. I've put on around 30lbs since I quit. I traded cigarettes for peanut butter sandwiches. Now that I feel 100% confident I'll never smoke another, I've started at a new gym and have lost 15lbs in two weeks. Quitting wasn't that difficult, not like getting off Heroin as some would have you believe.

Alen Carr says something interesting in his book. He says all smokers stop and start smoking many times a day. So yes it is easy to stop smoking because everytime you put out a cigarette you have stopped smoking. The problem is that smokers always start again within an hour or so.