It is for certain people, but not typically. I know two people who quit cold turkey and my fiancee knows another one. Everyone else has fought and struggled, relapsed, or shifted to e-cigs.
Strangely this can be true for hard drugs too. As I understand it, biology is a big part of it, but psychological, social, and circumstantial factors are pretty important too.
Used to smoke 2 packs a day. Quit 20 years ago. Quit because I figured I always smelled like smoke which greatly diminished the dating pool. I missed it every day until I managed to get hooked on nicotine pouches. Was using 10-15 of the 8mg On every day. Managed to do that in secret for years. Quit those about a year ago after my wife found out. Now I get to miss smoking AND nicotine pouches every single day. I love nicotine. I miss it every single day. I think about it all the time. If I ever found myself single again I would go back in a heartbeat. I am salivating just writing this. It is evil shit.
I quit smoking and got on the nicotine lozenges. I was eating a bunch of lozenges, almost constantly. Then I started kinda smoking again, but didn’t stop the lozenges. Then I had a stroke which left me with a permanent disability, likely partially caused by wild blood pressure swings due to high levels of nicotine.
I quit by default after 3 weeks in a rehab center. The lesson here is… quit before the hospital. It’s worth it.
Nonsense. You got this. I believe in you.
It’s quite easy to stop smoking. I’ve done it several times already
Pretty much a Mark Twain quote lol
Holup
Funnily enough, that’s exactly how I stopped smoking. I smoked for around 17 years and had been trying to quit for nearly 15 of them. I did everything from pills to nicotine substitutions, hypnosis, and even that laser therapy. It would work for a time, but eventually, within a month or two, I’d be back to smoking.
Then, one day, I was in a really foul mood and just didn’t want to deal with people. I ran out of cigarettes right at the end of the evening before bed and figured I’d buy some in the morning. Woke up in a worse mood the next day and decided to just stay home and ride it out. It is best for me to avoid people when I get like that, so that’s what I did. The following day, I woke up in a better mood and was about to head to the corner store for a pack when I realized I’d already gone near 36 hours without one, so thought why not wait an hour. An hour passed, and decided to wait another hour, and then another, and another. Before I knew it, I was heading back to bed for my second full day being cigaretteless.
At that point, I decided to continue my smoke-free streak and just quit. It’s been nearly 6 years since my last cigarette, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.
Context: I’m a disabled veteran with severe PTSD, anxiety, depression, and mood disorders caused by TBI’s. I have days where everything seems to act up all at once, and I’ll self isolate because it’s just safer for everyone if I’m alone during those times. Furthermore, I started smoking while in combat to help take the “edge” off, and as such, the nicotine addiction was extremely difficult for me to get beyond because it got wrapped up in my PTSD and anxiety issues.
Basically, what I learned from my many years of trying to quit is no matter how you “try” if you don’t truly want to quit, you won’t succeed. You have to want to quit more than you want that next cigarette.
Good luck to anyone out there still struggling to break a nicotine addiction. Stay strong. You can do it.
My wife and I both quit cold turkey, independently of one another before we met. It was like we discontinued a hobby our ADHD brains got bored with.
That’s how I quit.
Woke up one morning and didn’t want a cigarette.
Now they’re basically sitting on the shelf with my warhammer stuff, my armada gear, boxing gloves, golf clubs, piles of video games etc.
I wish i could stick a hobby haha except smoking.
I’m doing it for the bit, a week ago i got high and thought how funny it’d be to stop smoking because drugs told me to. So i did lmao
It’s hard, but there are more adults in the U.S. alive today who have successfully quit smoking than currently smoke.
Check out SmokeFree.gov for free science-based resources!
One day at a time.
I don’t smoke and I never will and I’m just here to emphasize how disgusting smoking is for non smokers. I literally can hardly breath when someone smokes next to me. Sadly, my nearby city has a lot of smokers.
Whenever I need to pass by someone that smokes, I hold my breath for as long as possible. I understand you’re addicted, but come on, stop using that poison. If not for yourself then for others at least, or maybe at least while in public.
My guy they (formerly I) know. After you’re hooked it feels out of your control. It becomes a mechanism your brain uses to alleviate stress or to relax. For me, for a long time, it helped me socialize, as I was alone in a new city, working a serving job. After it became a part of who I was, stopping wasn’t just ceasing buying and smoking cigarettes, it was now changing my identity and my personality.
I’ve quit now but I’m here to tell you its big ask of someone, and you shouldn’t judge folks who try and fail, but treat it as a vallient effort, and encourage them to try again.
I hear you though, having been a non smoker for a few years now I can smell it and I know what you mean. Just try to remember those are real people behind the addiction, and that for those of us old farts, some of us thought it made us look cool, and were led into it, despite the warnings.
I hear you. I had cancer in my neck and radiation to the throat, not from smoking ( i am a non smoker), but if I even smell smoke or on a heavy smokers clothing I start coughing. Same with smelling vinegar --go figure
It’s super hard to quit but I’ll tell you what helped me. I got altoids and every time I wanted a smoke I’d eat a mint. If I still wanted a smoke I’d eat another mint. At break I’d go out with all the smokers and I’d eat a mint. Driving home I’d eat a mint. It took a few containers of mints but I eventually got sick of mints (and cigarettes). After I quit I would still try taking a drag off a random cigarette and I absolutely hated it. Not sure if I rewired my brain or what but I was able to stay off the smokes. Good luck. You got this.
Pro tip: take your smoke money and save it in another account or a piggy bank or whatever. You will be blown away about how much your addiction was costing you.
I did the same with mixed nuts. I kept a big container in my car for stop-and-go traffic during my commute. It was the only way I made it through the first few months.
This sounds like excellent advice! I’ll try it!
I was very very lucky.
I turned 26 when I heard myself coughing like a 66 year old chainsmoker with cancerous lungs, found I was unable to run up stairs and out of breath after carrying groceries inside. I had to have a cig every morning so I would be able to have a shit at all, but if I did… that first drag sent me rushing to the bathroom, it got so bad, I had to light the first one while sitting on the loo, or i’d shit my pants.
That’s when I found myself disgusted with myself. I stopped, I simply stopped. From 38 cigarettes per day to 0. I am so happy it worked, because I am a very easily tempted personality and tend towards addiction in anything that gives my brain pleasure.
It took a year before I completely stopped coughing and two years before I could run up those stairs again, but one day I simply realized “Oh my! I’m not out of breath. What… what happened? Oh, yeah I quit smoking! Damn this feels nice!”
What I don’t understand is how people get addicted to smoking in the first place. It hasn’t been “cool” to smoke in my lifetime. Going near a cigarette as a non-smoker is gross as fuck. Who decides “I don’t care about my health or the gross smell, imma do this thing with no upsides” before being addicted?
Because it’s a drug that gives you a feeling. Some people enjoy the feeling that smoking gives them, the addiction slowly follows after.
The same works for just about any drug. I can assure you that heroin and crack addicts didn’t suddenly decide they wanted to be addicted to those drugs. Curiosity gets the best of people sometimes.
How do you get that feeling without making a decision to do something really gross? Why did they choose to smoke that first gross death stick?
because i was 18, a freshman in college, and just got dumped. i was all down about it and a friend offered me one and i thought, fuck it, why not.
then i bummed another a few days later and so on. bought my own pack within a week.
All it takes is one low point, friend. I’m glad you’ve never been there around the wrong person at the wrong time but understand that its not just a “hmm I want to smell terrible today ❤️” situation.
I did. Pack a day since I was …14?
20 years later, one day I just felt I was done. Threw the rest of my pack out, and didn’t go back nor had the urge to after a week.
Same here smoked almost 20 years and was just done so I quit.
Anecdotally, I found that ease of quitting was inversely related to the amount of pressure I put on myself to quit. I smoked for 15 years and always vowed I would never be a self-loathing smoker. I think so little of my attempt to quitting successfully that every time someone brings up quitting cold-turkey I need to remind myself that I attempted to quit on multiple occasions. - I simply didn’t feel bad when a strategy didn’t work out.
Ultimately I weened myself off of nicotine by vaping and stepping down the concentration of nicotine over a long period of time. I quit vaping in early 2020.
