JB 883

I smoked about a pack a day for 15 years. For the last two years it was 30 a day but they were weak cigarettes. "light" non-menthol. It seems like that night time breath rattle and the hacking/coughing went away within a few days. I KNOW for fact though that by Thanksgiving it was completely gone. I was in the hospital for something unrelated to smoking and they said my lungs sounded really good.

A few times in life I have smoked a joint or two. Not a habit by any means. Anyways, if someone quit smoking tobacco but tried a joint, would it cause someone to have strong urges for tobacco again? I think that would be my main concern if offered a joint.

I am not sure if you will see this or not because we typically disagree but - First of all, know that Joel has never used tobacco in his life so he doesn't know first hand what an addict goes through. That is to say, it is better to listen to actual addicts (like everyone on this board) Also - statistics don't mean a hell of a lot. You know how often they will LIE about things to get you to fail and hopefully buy their B.S. product or whatever? You are no longer a smoker. For my money, I would gamble that even when you do get off the gum, you will NOT relapse. You may have some nicotine withdrawals but i doubt the urge to smoke will be any stronger than what it is right now. Your quit is coming up on FIVE months. There is no way in hell you are going to start smoking again, NRT or not. Breaking the smoking habit itself is worse than nicotine W/D. We all know smoking is more than just a nicotine addiction - it is a complete habit, routine, etc. And you know you have layed that habit dormant. You know what Jo? You are strong enough to KTQ regardless of some "statistic" that says otherwise. Don't even worry about starting up because you know you have no desire and you have made it through the three day, week, AND month battles. If you ARE worried that cigarettes will creep back in, remember this at least - since you broke the smoking habit, you have the time right now to plan the next battle should there be one if you quit gum. You got this.

Maybe this is a little late but remember this right now - Eight days ago you probably felt like just giving up the Quit and smoking. But you didn't. You made it. There may be weak moments or other big battles in the future but you were able to KTQ during those first three days. You are going on two weeks now. I hope this reaches you when you really need it.

Kev don;t let nobody run you off.

Mrtitwank, the ignore function seems to do wonders. Hopefully Jillar and nosmokingjo have done the same for me

Is "old pharte" the same thing as what QT calls "lido deck"? In other words, a year or more without smoking?

One of the online groups recently crashed and burned. Another one stopped taking new members due to technical probs with the forum. They had a no-relapse policy though so anyone who relapsed was out. So, Quit Train is the big one right now. We enjoy trying to help others keep their quit. We do not judge if someone relapses. It is not condoned but you know, it happens. The only thing we can do is try to do better today than we did yesterday.

96th of january. Problem is, by the time spring DOES get it's sorry ass here, it will be kind of ruined. We will feel short-changed. Like "well yeah it is the middle of June and it is consistently above 60 but we never got to enjoy spring." Mother nature is an ingrown wart hair on a dog's c*nt.

So today you have proven to yourself, for the seventh time, that you can get through the day without a cigarette. Use that knowledge to beat future craves. Look at it like this also - the first three days are the worst and you survived those. Have you noticed that already food tastes better, scents are more noticeable, AND your breath doesn't rattle when you are trying to sleep? So many good things come into our lives when we tell the cigarette to get the hell out.

It taught me this most of all - The smoking cessation things they try to sell (most notably vape) are sold by BS'ing people. Here is how i know that - So Oct 2nd i was going to quit cold turkey. I didn't have cash for all that BS like pills, gum, patches, whatever. I failed. Oct 6th I tried again. I have been successful since then. But... When i started reading into a lot of things about "Quit", I kept reading about how people try to quit but fail. Of course they had this miracle snake oil they would sell to help people quit. Because you know, cold turkey doesn't work in most cases. At least according to those trying to sell you something. My thought was, "But i managed to quit cold turkey. Took a couple tries but i got it. I didn't even have to open my purse either..." So yeah it kind of reinforced what I already knew - For anything you want to do, there are companies saying "You can't do it on your own, but we can sell you something that makes it possible". Plus i learned how nice it is to go through the day without worrying when I will get to smoke again. Like I take my breaks at work and the thought of stepping out for a cancer stick never crosses my mind. No, instead i think, "Ahh, time for a cup of hot chocolate!" Shut up, i am addicted to caffeine.

Well, while it is possible that it could come back, at least there is a better chance that you will be fine in the long haul. Think of this like i said in some other thread - My step-dad almost died of smoking when he was like 46, he quit, and just had his 80th B-day. And plus, though I am no medical expert, sometimes i think doctors blow things out of proportion just to make a buck off scared people. That is why so many kids are labeled ADHD, most older folks have COPD, and most of America is overweight. Consider this - not everyone who gets lung cancer even smoked and maybe never was around tobacco smoke. There is also what Sazerac mentioned - Just how addicted would someone need to be in order to go through that mess for a cigarette? There comes a turning point for EVERY smoker when we say, "Ok this sucks, time to put them away".

It starts as hours without a smoke. Then days. then weeks. NOW you are talking months. And think of this, that "nicodemon" tried to strike when you were weak - had too much to drink, others were smoking, you were hungry, etc... And you RESISTED! You beat it even though you were down. You are now in a position to easily tell the nicodemon to go phuck himself when he tries to get you to smoke at any other time. More battles may come but you now have the weapons to fight hard.

A lot of quitters do end up relapsing though. The important thing for any one of us is protecting our own quit. To be honest, i didn't expect to last even one month when i decided to quit back in October. But here i am. And look at YOU, 2.5 years quit. Do not get mad if someone says you will "come back", you know better. Your Quit is here to stay. Unshakable. Think of it like this - anything we are doing or even try to do in life, SOMEone will want to challenge it. If you train with weights or practice martial arts, people talk about someone they know who is 10 times tougher than you. Want to talk about your car being fast? Oh dear gyod, on the web that is worse than talking religion or politics. Some go so stupid as saying, "your mom is a fag" or whatever. Like heavy metal? You soon hear "your mom is a fag who likes Justin Beaver." Want to quit smoking? people scoff. Point is, people always gotta be sayin something to discourage. YOU know your quit is rock solid. To hell with what others think when they say you will be back. People are difficult, that is for sure. The best we can really do is avoid interaction with those we cannot get along with. At places like work where we may have to interact, keep it strictly business. Even if we could knock the crap out of someone we do not like, it would not help anything. As much as we would LOVE to beat some ass. You are going through a rough patch in life right now, or sso it seems when you say your mood is not good lately. Whatever it is though, it will soon pass.

I did not make that chart. Looks like something i would make but I cannot take credit for it.

So what is the prognosis of it? If you are not smoking at all now will it not get worse? There are all the stories about someone who is diagnosed but keeps smoking but if someone has quit, then what?

Imaginary taste - Even after six months quit, I still get a daily crave, usually when up late at night clicking around on the web. I just think, "it will pass soon". It is like the crave hits and I think the smoking ritual in a good way. Like such comfort, taste, relief, joy, blah blah... But then I think, those stupid things never tasted good when I DID smoke. Maybe ONE out of 20 was alright but the rest kind of gross. One time when I was a kid i asked my dad why people smoked. He said, "For the flavor". I asked "what do they taste like?" He said, "Poop". Yeah I walked away kind of baffled. Decades later i am still like, "Smoke for the flavor, taste like poop, WTF?" So my biggest thought when a crave hits is, "it will taste great!" But then i remember how gross it was before and wonder WHY this thought happens. OK it is like this - There are certain foods I hate hate. NEVER, even when really hungry, have i thought, "Ya know, this or that gross food might taste good". Sometimes when I get lost in my thoughts about smoking, I DO imagine how good it would taste and feel but then out of nowhere in the same fantasy, the cigarette makes me choke. Like an erotic dream gone horribly wrong. Like a beautiful song playing and then the needle scratching across the album. So the chart below, Does it hit reality? Especially "in my imagination" and "when i start to smoke again"? 30+ year quit - Everyone is different but people wonder how quitting may help. My dad started smoking when he was 14. He quit when he was like 46. We went down for Sunday breakfast (oh it was awesome on Sunday Mornings! Eggs, sausage/bacon, toast, juice, milk, coffee...) But anyway one Sunday my dad is sitting there wheezing real hard. My mom is arguing with him that he needed to go to the doctor but he resisted. He could not even breathe but was trying to yell back. So mom calls the babysitter so my sister and I would not kill each other while she took him to the hospital. We went to see him a couple days later and he was laid up in a hospital bed, complete with oxygen tubes in his nose. He had some kind of lung disease and the docs told him in so many words, "quit smoking or die". He recently celebrated his 80th birthday. He has not had a cigarette since before he went to the hospital that Sunday morning. Before that he smoked two packs of Camel non-filter a day. Yeah, Camel non-filter. For anyone who does not know, that is about as lethal as it gets. I truly hope for every quitter out there that my assumption is true. That assumption being - "if you quit while you are still ahead, you will be fine". Taste chart -

Yeah the craves do speak up now and then, sometimes louder than hell. Just remember when the craves hit out of nowhere (or even expectedly) just remember "It will pass in a couple minutes". I actually saw this chart about cigarette craves showing frequency and duration and it looked like they were mostly brief. So according to this chart, there is about 18'ish minutes a day when we are jones'in for a cigarette during the worst of the cycle. YOU though, you are long past the time of this chart so your crave time by now is likely down to about two minutes a day tops. You are doing awesome, keep it up...

It has been mentioned a few times that some smokers get jealous when someone else quits. Anyone CAN quit and there is great reason to do so. Quitting smoking (or not) is about one thing only - personal responsibility. Companies that make money off peoples' tobacco addiction are not responsible. Even if they shut down, someone else would be there to take their business. All you can do is quit for yourself. You cannot depend on someone else to have discipline or block you from buying. YOU have to have it. In this case, Whispers was faced with temptation and had no problems with KTQ. That is what personal responsibility is about. For a store owner/clerk, it is best for them to keep their opinions about a customer's purchase to themselves, unless perhaps complimenting them on a choice. No one would mind a compliment about their choices as a consumer. Upselling should happen only if someone is already buying something related. Maybe like if someone is buying smokes, THEN mentioning a special may be in order.

No real grand event. Just a bunch of small BS that added up and i finally said "Enough!" Neither finances nor social problems were the reason. What triggered it finally was a pretty bad cold. I was gonna quit Oct 2nd but that lasted four hours. Yep, I puffed and wheezed me cancer sticks. It was down to three a day. But that Oct 2nd day i said, "screw it, post pone the quit til friday". Oct 6th at 5:30 AM was my final puff. Back around 2004 or 05 I had "quit" for three weeks due to a serious cold. Then "just one". No way I am losing my Quit this time. The accumulations of BS that made me quit - I have a relative who is hooked on Ambien. One day we were talking about something and she said, "... but I have GOT to have my Ambien". I thought, "Am I that pathetic and addicted to tobacco?" I felt ashamed. I am kind of particular about my outfits. I would wear something new and nice the first time and it would stench of cigarettes that same day. It pissed me off. Like here is this "once in a lifetime find" of a new skirt or top and I already stank it up with my habit. I got tired of stupid cigarette ashes all over my car. My car is very clean even for being an old junker. But then cigarette ashes everywhere, hell no, ain't havin it. One day i broke out the Clorox Clean-up to scrub my dresser, vanity, and night stand. They went from nasty yellow smoke color to bright white. GYOD THIS SMOKING SCREWS UP EVERYTHING! Stankin-ass smoke, ashes, butts, disgusting. When i went to the gym, my sweat drenched clothing would smell like someone ate out of an ash tray then puked. I was afraid what if a stray ash caught something on fire. I smoked roll-your-owns and the cherry was not always stable. I only spent about $40 a month to smoke (rollies are cheap) but then thought, 'i could buy more clothes/LPs/Pepsi/whatever with that $40. It was just gross. Everything stank, it was wasteful, and honestly even in my early 40's I am actually thinking "What if all this stupid stuff I do actually ends up killing me?" So tobacco and i had to cut ties. I told it "Get yo stankin ass on outta here." So right now I have one of my favorite outfits. And it don;t stink of tobacco smoke.

He comes from a long line of titwanks. His earliest ancestor was the first to wank to a tit.

Not sure what it takes to be a weather "geek" but sometimes i tend to obsess about the weather. Or maybe on really hot or cold days, check weather for other parts of the world or nation. At the moment it is about 70 where i am and 70 BELOW in Vostok Antarctica.

Mankini? Good gyod what is the world coming to?

Well, have a good time. It will be a little less entertaining while you are gone but just think, you have us to come back to when the trip is over.

Doing awesome.