I Quit Smoking

My mom was a lifelong smoker too, passed away at 63 from lung cancer. Young people that smoke can't imagine the degrading and horrendous way you die from that, it took my mom 5 years to slowly suffocate and the last year was absolute absolute horror.

I smoked from 17 to 34, about a pack a day. I quit back in '84. It was July in Arizona and I had such a bad cold (flu?) that I could barely breathe much less smoke for about a week. Once I felt better I went to the cig machine to buy a pack and just stood there for a minute contemplating the cost and decided to hell with it. The withdrawal pains were masked by how sick I'd been and I've never felt the urge to start up again.
A couple of weeks later I was having my Little Debbie snack cake for lunch and couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. I finally realized that the cigs were numbing my taste buds and I was now able to taste how bad those things were. I used some of the money I saved to upgrade to Hostess.

Dream last night. I bought a pack, fired up one, then put it out and lectured the young lady I was with about the dangers of even having one after quitting.

I won't go into details on the lady, that's not fit for this thread.

Anyway, apparently I'll always have this recurring dream of smoking. It's a permanent dent in my psyche.

Read the entire thread and I am grateful for it as I need some help stopping. I am touched by the personal stories and things people have shared here. I feel compelled to add my story. I am a smoker. I grew up in loveland, co and the kids I thought were cool smoked and chewed. Started age 12 or 13. Chaw to of course, copenhagen. Smoked heavily i guess you could say. Reds, lights, pall mall, camels, you name it. Bugler tins, lol awesome. I bought filters too! Prerolled them. Buddy turned me onto good tobacco too. Dunhills, davidoffs, players, nat shermans. Met wife and have smoked menthol for long time, mostly native american spirits. I smoke cigars, inhale them, and smoke them when I golf three, four in a day. Have been only chugging cigars when I golf (note that used to be 3 to 5 times a week) and play softball on tuesday nights. I have been pulling the filter off cigs for years now and smoke them filter less. Now only golfing one or two times a week and softball I need to make a move. Having a hurt back and not being able to golf is huge as I cant imagine golf without smoking. I dont want to die young and have my kids miss me. I am glad I found this thread as I need help. I feel like I was meant to find this forum to find this thread. I dont want to pledge ill quit and fail.

applescrap said:

Read the entire thread and I am grateful for it as I need some help stopping. I am touched by the personal stories and things people have shared here. I feel compelled to add my story. I am a smoker. I grew up in loveland, co and the kids I thought were cool smoked and chewed. Started age 12 or 13. Chaw to of course, copenhagen. Smoked heavily i guess you could say. Reds, lights, pall mall, camels, you name it. Bugler tins, lol awesome. I bought filters too! Prerolled them. Buddy turned me onto good tobacco too. Dunhills, davidoffs, players, nat shermans. Met wife and have smoked menthol for long time, mostly native american spirits. I smoke cigars, inhale them, and smoke them when I golf three, four in a day. Have been only chugging cigars when I golf (note that used to be 3 to 5 times a week) and play softball on tuesday nights. I have been pulling the filter off cigs for years now and smoke them filter less. Now only golfing one or two times a week and softball I need to make a move. Having a hurt back and not being able to golf is huge as I cant imagine golf without smoking. I dont want to die young and have my kids miss me. I am glad I found this thread as I need help. I feel like I was meant to find this forum to find this thread. I dont want to pledge ill quit and fail.

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I posted on this thread in January of 2015, but I actually "quit" late December of 2014. Proud to say I am still smoke free and at the very beginning I was reading this thread a lot. Now, I honestly can't even picture myself smoking again. You got this!

Just had this odd memory of me working in France. They gave me a large empty room in a building to work in, and I wrote code and smoked my arse off every day in there for weeks. My laptop had only a few included songs with the OS, so I put Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King on repeat and literally played it all day long while I debugged the firmware on the system I was working on. Very vivid memories of the smokey room and that song playing, it was nuts. Dunhills, always had them in France.

^^ actually, the music was used in a commercial that came on and of course put me right back into that room in Paris. Funny the way sound and smell and taste associations work in my brain.

I haven't smoked since 1988, but I know that if I smoked a cigarette today, I'd be smoking more than a pack a day within a week.

bpgreen said:

I haven't smoked since 1988, but I know that if I smoked a cigarette today, I'd be smoking more than a pack a day within a week.

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I've been smoke-free for almost 17 years. I absolutely agree with bpgreen...one cigarette, and I'd be back at it. That day I quit in 2001 was the LAST time I'm quitting smoking!

glenn514

See post #4. 3 or 4 years later in college I tried one. I almost passed out. During my college years I might have totaled a pack, all when drunk. And I saved myself thousands of $$$ to spend on better things.

I think I started about 16, and eventually quit at 45. I was tired of being a slave to them. I used the nicorette gum and never looked back . I always enjoyed smoking ( Winston’s and Marlboro ),but I can’t imagine starting again, it’s rediculously expensive, and a lot of the money goes to no-smoking advertising.

Wow, I was only 10 months into my escape from the addiction when I wrote my previous post. Very happy to say that I am still completely nicotine free and haven't smoked a single cigarette for two years and two months now. Like somebody else mentioned above, but with a different date obviously, Wednesday February 16th 2016 is the last time I will ever quit smoking.

best of luck to all who try to quit this horrible habit.

3 years and 9 months. Successfully Nicotine-free.

Just thought I'd revive this thread on the off-chance it might help or encourage anyone else to break the shackles.

Ogri said:

3 years and 9 months. Successfully Nicotine-free.

Just thought I'd revive this thread on the off-chance it might help or encourage anyone else to break the shackles.

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Congrats! Do you smoke in your dreams? I don't have those too much anymore.

I gave up smoking when it got too expensive. That was when the price of a pack of cigarettes was 35 cents, a tax was added and it went to 40 or 45 cents. I decided I had better things to spend my high school allowance on. That was only 2-3 months after I started.

Tried to smoke in college... Almost passed out once.

edit: I see now that I made this reply twice already.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes is $6.28, which means a pack-a-day habit sets you back $188 per month or $2,292 per year. Ten years of smoking comes with a $22,920 price tag. But depending on where you live, you could be paying much more.

That is a pretty fancy brew rig in a year and in 3-4 you could have a top of the line rig.

I've been clear for over 10 years now. I had an internship at large botanical garden (250 acre) that was entirely tobacco free. I went cold turkey then, because I figured the weeding and mulching would keep my mind off of it.

I'm just over 3 months smoke free. Went cold turkey. Feels great. Man do people that smoke smell horrible.

I'm 3 years, 3 months and 4 days of being smoke free. I missed it for a few weeks, then got over it pretty quickly. Its amazing how much better I feel, how much better I can taste things, and I quickly realized how nose-blind I had been. Boy does cig smoke stink! I'm never going back.

I quite over 20 years ago on a bet. It would have been harder at the 2 week point if I didn't know that I would win my bet in just 2 more weeks. I did an extra month to double prove my point. I tried one after 2 months and hated it. The only time I am really tempted now is after dreaming about smoking. It is so weird. The dreams really have nothing to do with smoking but I will have one lit somewhere in the dream and I wake up with the urge. It goes away in day though.

My parents smoked when I was a kid, then around 1976-7 they started running commercials very heavily about the dangers of smoking and I asked them why they would do that to themselves, convinced that they were going to leave me an orphan. They quit until 1997 when my sister was killed in a car accident. I guess it helped with the stress and depression and I was past the 'orphan' stage. My dad smoked until he died of a brain aneurysm in 2010 and my mom quit again soon after. We've never talked about why but if I had to guess, she might have overheard my daughters complaining about grandma being smelly. She moved back down from Oregon to spend time with them and knew that smoking was messing up the quality of that time, as well as possibly the length of that time.

I started smoking in 1968 by 1988 i was at 2 packs plus a day. My son was 4 picked up a white pencil put it in his fingers and said "Im smoking just like daddy" i threw nearly 2 cartons out and never touched them again. Best thing i ever did both for myself and the family. (I should probably thank my son, im sure he doesnt remember it but he changed our lives.)

passedpawn said:

Congrats! Do you smoke in your dreams? I don't have those too much anymore.

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I can't recall having any smoking dreams recently, maybe only in the first year of quitting.

Very occasionally I get a slight urge for a smoke but it's easy to remember, the 4 decades of trying/failing to quit, and therefore very easy to convince myself that I don't really want one.

Thanks it did, and you did. Appreciate it!

Ogri said:

3 years and 9 months. Successfully Nicotine-free.

Just thought I'd revive this thread on the off-chance it might help or encourage anyone else to break the shackles.

Click to expand...

Hard to believe its been almost 2 years since I posted this. Reading it I wonder how much of my life I have taken. Happy to say other than the random cigar here and there I havent been smoking. Would be great but now I am nailing nicotine pills. Fear I am more addicted to them. I can eat them at work and its like smoking at work all day. I also think they messed with my gut and gave me diverticulitis. Well at least im not smoking in the sense of buying packs and cigars. Thanks for the support, much appreciated and this thread is cool and helpful.

applescrap said:

Read the entire thread and I am grateful for it as I need some help stopping. I am touched by the personal stories and things people have shared here. I feel compelled to add my story. I am a smoker. I grew up in loveland, co and the kids I thought were cool smoked and chewed. Started age 12 or 13. Chaw to of course, copenhagen. Smoked heavily i guess you could say. Reds, lights, pall mall, camels, you name it. Bugler tins, lol awesome. I bought filters too! Prerolled them. Buddy turned me onto good tobacco too. Dunhills, davidoffs, players, nat shermans. Met wife and have smoked menthol for long time, mostly native american spirits. I smoke cigars, inhale them, and smoke them when I golf three, four in a day. Have been only chugging cigars when I golf (note that used to be 3 to 5 times a week) and play softball on tuesday nights. I have been pulling the filter off cigs for years now and smoke them filter less. Now only golfing one or two times a week and softball I need to make a move. Having a hurt back and not being able to golf is huge as I cant imagine golf without smoking. I dont want to die young and have my kids miss me. I am glad I found this thread as I need help. I feel like I was meant to find this forum to find this thread. I dont want to pledge ill quit and fail.

Click to expand...

applescrap said:

Hard to believe its been almost 2 years since I posted this. Reading it I wonder how much of my life I have taken. Happy to say other than the random cigar here and there I havent been smoking. Would be great but now I am nailing nicotine pills. Fear I am more addicted to them. I can eat them at work and its like smoking at work all day. I also think they messed with my gut and gave me diverticulitis. Well at least im not smoking in the sense of buying packs and cigars. Thanks for the support, much appreciated and this thread is cool and helpful.

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Yea, I assume anything's better than the cigs. Good for you to move on from them.

Vaping is getting a bad rap these days, but I think it helped a ton of people get off the cigs, and that's a good thing. I think it looks pretty dumb, but my brother used the vape to quit smoking and it worked, so I'm a fan for that reason. Sadly, the Juul thing quickly became the next "cool" think for the kids. Man, we sure were dumb back then I guess.

I smoked from 1980 to 1990. Every once in awhile I have a dream that I'm smoking. It feels and tastes real in the dream. When I wake up I'm so happy that it was only a dream. The taste and lung feel hang around for awhile after waking up.

Been long ago enough now I stopped counting and no longer remember the anniversary. March sometime I think, and maybe 6 or 7 years ago?

I guess since I only smoked for a few months many many years ago, I don't get where people miss the taste. I never though it tasted less than nasty. Now just the smell makes me run to fresh air. So glad that people can't smoke inside public building any more.....

Both of my parents smoked. My father quit probably around 1990. My mother finally quit last year after she broke her leg and had to move to an adult retirement facility. She could technically still smoke there but she seems to have quit. After my parents divorced, my mom remarried someone and he was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years later. They both smoked like chimneys. Probably 1-2 packs a day each. I remember they told me he had lung cancer on Christmas day 1990. He was dead later that year. That is a death I would not wish on my worst enemy. He went through a few rounds of chemo but it must not have done much. He needed oxygen quite often, lost a ton of weight, could barely move at times, and struggled for breath all the time. And he smoked the entire time, but I guess when you are at that point, quitting smoking isn't really going to change the outcome. I remember like it happened yesterday the night he went to the hospital. He was crying and yelling "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" My mom called the ambulance and rode to the hospital with him. I fell asleep on the couch and remember her waking me up later that night and telling me he died. I was sad but I knew it was eventually coming. My mom wanted to blame it on asbestos because he worked for a few weeks in a building that later was discovered to have asbestos. She wanted to blame it on anything except what was obvious. She continued to smoke for 28 more years. I never understood that.

As a true hypocrite, I was a casual smoker for about 5 years around 1998-2002 between graduating from college and meeting the woman who would eventually become my wife. Maybe a pack or less per week. I probably quit 17 or so years ago. I don't remember the exact day. It just kind of happened. I knew the girl I was dating didn't smoke and I liked her and I didn't want me smoking to mess it up, so I just stopped. I don't really understand why I started smoking. Maybe it was growing up in a smoking household until I went to college? Being young and feeling invincible and thinking "I can quit whenever I want"? I don't know. The smell was horrible, they sure as hell didn't taste good, my fingers stunk, my sense of taste was shot, and it never calmed me down the way other people said. It always made me jittery. I never realized how bad smokers smelled until after I quit. I guess I got used to it growing up in a smoking household. Now, I have to steer clear of anyone around me that is smoking.

Looking back, having experienced seeing my step father die of lung cancer, I am flummoxed as to why I started smoking. And I could never understand why my mom kept smoking after that. I tried to get her to quit and she said she wanted to quit and tried several times. Hats off to anyone who is able to quit. Nicotine is a hell of drug, I guess.

hezagenius said:

it never calmed me down the way other people said. It always made me jittery.

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I tried chewing tobacco once and that is exactly the way it made me feel. I was working 109 hours a week at the time and one of my co-workers offered it as a 'lift', but those jitters just made me feel terrible!

I've been a smoker for many years and recently quick two years ago.

amusermix said:

I've been a smoker for many years and recently quick two years ago.

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How long did it take until someone else's smoke smelled bad?

For me it was 3 months. I was on break at work and suddenly realized that the second hand smoke stunk. Then I started to notice it coming from other cars when driving down the road! That was almost 30 years ago and I still can pick out small amounts of it in the air.

I don't notice and the smoke doesn't bother me. I'm just amazed at how stupid I was to smoke a lot.

BruceH said:

How long did it take until someone else's smoke smelled bad?

For me it was 3 months. I was on break at work and suddenly realized that the second hand smoke stunk. Then I started to notice it coming from other cars when driving down the road! That was almost 30 years ago and I still can pick out small amounts of it in the air.

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I can detect it all the time. Ironically, I love cigar and pipe smoke. Bring it on. Two of my near neighbors smokes the cigars and I love it on the evening air.

applescrap said:

Hard to believe its been almost 2 years since I posted this. Reading it I wonder how much of my life I have taken. Happy to say other than the random cigar here and there I havent been smoking. Would be great but now I am nailing nicotine pills. Fear I am more addicted to them. I can eat them at work and its like smoking at work all day. I also think they messed with my gut and gave me diverticulitis. Well at least im not smoking in the sense of buying packs and cigars. Thanks for the support, much appreciated and this thread is cool and helpful.

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I don't even smoke and have no idea why I clicked onto this thread. I read your story above from two years ago, not realizing it was an old post until reading this one.

Anyway, just wanted to say way to go, man. Hopefully you can get rid of the pills too but, regardless...well way to go is all I can think of to say. Stay strong.

I quit August 26, 2014. I still call it my second birthday and ask the wife for presents

kh54s10 said:

I guess since I only smoked for a few months many many years ago, I don't get where people miss the taste. I never though it tasted less than nasty. Now just the smell makes me run to fresh air. So glad that people can't smoke inside public building any more.....

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I guess I had gotten used to the smell of cigarette smoke when people could smoke inside. I didn't like it but could tolerate it in those days. I now can smell smoke coming from cars 3 or 4 ahead of me on the road. Some people reek so bad that I have to stand 5-10 feet away from them.

Anyone quit during the panicdemic? I figured the combo of smoking and the 'rona would be an incentive.

Well, technically, I did quit during the pandemic. But, that was coincidental.
For some time prior (months) I had decided to quit on March 1, 2020, the same day I retired.
And I did in fact quit "cold turkey" on that date, have stayed quit, and tbh don't even think about it anymore ('cept when prodded - so thanks for that )

Yes, by then it was already known that smokers were especially fooked wrt C19 infection (well before the attenuating power of a boosted vaccination), so The Spousal Unit and kids were especially happy...

Cheers!