The "I've quit" thread | Page 3 | GTAMotorcycle.com

The "I've quit" thread

I started smoking at around 13-14ish for the same reasons most kids start smoking. I was a sporadic smoker but I went through cigarettes like a fiend when I was at work. About 4 years ago I quit cold turkey and never looked back. I'm not usually one for self-help books, but I found that How To Quit Smoking by Allen Carr was tremendously helpful. For anyone who's struggling, it doesn't hurt to give it a try.
 
I started smoking at around 13-14ish for the same reasons most kids start smoking. I was a sporadic smoker but I went through cigarettes like a fiend when I was at work. About 4 years ago I quit cold turkey and never looked back. I'm not usually one for self-help books, but I found that How To Quit Smoking by Allen Carr was tremendously helpful. For anyone who's struggling, it doesn't hurt to give it a try.

Yep it works....unless you break the rule: don't take another puff. I did and got screwed 2 years ago.
 
I consider myself an Ex Smoker and must always be wary of the possibility of starting again but as time goes by it's easier. I have a friend who started again after quitting over 11 years (he has since quit a few months after me). I was not wise enough to be a Non Smoker. I smoked for more than 30 years and quit many times, sometimes over to a year. What always got me started again was either going through a stressful time or hanging out frequently with smokers. Eventually I would feel I deserved "just one". Of course it wouldn't be long before I was back to it totally. It wasn't until I finally realized it's like a switch and it's either on or off and anything in between is just fooling yourself. I never deserve one- not even one drag and that's how to leave the switch off. I haven't had one drag and it's been almost 5 years. On my 5th anniversary I might reward myself, or maybe not, it was the best gift I ever gave myself anyway.
I guess I reached a point where I felt that I felt so pathetic pissing my good health away while so many children face such terrible diseases that they never asked for. I was asking for it. I knew it was probably a matter of time before a doctor told me I had 6 months to live and that's when the procrastinating stopped.
Anyone who is seriously trying to quit I commend you. PM me if you feel it might help. For some quitting seems to be easy, but I wasn't one of those people. I helped my GF quit and she is celebrating 3 months soon and she says she'll never look back. I used the patch as she did and it really does help make the physical part a bit easier.
 
Ew Smoking is gross... everyone should quit, you're all a burden on our healthcare system and you smell gross. I've heard Champix works pretty well.

I'm not supporting smoking but I recall reading somewhere back in University that the health care argument is a fallacy. The extremely high taxes on ciggs actually put more money into the system than the health care costs take out. Feel free to call bs in this one, it's just one of those tidbits of info that seemed to have stuck with me.
 
I'm not supporting smoking but I recall reading somewhere back in University that the health care argument is a fallacy. The extremely high taxes on ciggs actually put more money into the system than the health care costs take out. Feel free to call bs in this one, it's just one of those tidbits of info that seemed to have stuck with me.

This sounds a bit off to me,

1. are all cigarette taxes going into health care? i am not sure if thats true;
2. a burden doesn't necessary have to be an economic one, if it increases wait times and so on; and
3. the taxes on cigs are also supposed to serve a deterrent role, its not merely meant to recoup costs anyway.
 
This sounds a bit off to me,

1. are all cigarette taxes going into health care? i am not sure if thats true;
2. a burden doesn't necessary have to be an economic one, if it increases wait times and so on; and
3. the taxes on cigs are also supposed to serve a deterrent role, its not merely meant to recoup costs anyway.

1. I have no idea, I'm guessing probably not.

2. A very valid point.

3. Yes the high price is partially to act as a deterrent. But let's be honest here, cig are one of those things that the government can tax as much as they want and ppl will still pay. Hard for ppl to defend those "poor smokers" who have to endure yet another price increase. It's a very convienant way for gov to create revenue. Tobacco industry profits, (don't forget about the farmers) and government profits too.
 
+1 for Allen Carr's "The Easy Way to quit smoking"!!
Pack a day for 20 years, tried Zyban, Nicorette, the Patch, etc. time and time again...
2 and a half years ago I finished the book, told my wife I was going out to the garage for my last smoke then a short motorcycle ride and have never had the urge again, and I was near/with smokers as early as that night. It doesn't disgust me, it doesn't make me sick it doesn't even bother me to smell it or be near someone smoking.
Ever since that day I have about the same chances of becoming a heroin addict as I do becoming nicotine addict. Just ain't gonna happen.
Plus I now get the enjoyment (as Allen Carr mentions) of NOT smoking that even non-smokers don't get to enjoy.
I do not talk about me quitting much but have had numerous friends, co-workers who doubted it but read the book and sure enough never smoked again.
 
I lived in Ukraine for 2semestres of school and there, if you said "no" to someone who offered you a cig, they would ask "what's wrong with you", so I started. But I never took it serious. I always felt I had the control to drop it or pick it at all times. I smoked for 3years over 10cig/day, but I would cut it down by much in the summers when the sports begin with the good weather.

If I wasn't into doing competitive sports, I would be a full-time smoker. Now I may smoke if I'm drinking beer. And I rarely drink since it equals "not riding".

I'm not angry at it or paranoid if I'm going to be hooked up or anything.

Smoking is occasional for me because there is a place and time that I enjoy not smoking, and there is a place and time that I enjoy doing it.
 
Helped my parents make cigs back in the 70s. Experimented in my pre-teens. Smoked in high school and college. Met a girl and quit. Lost my job and moved to the GTA. Started smoking again about a pack a day. Lost my aunt to lung cancer and watched her die too young. Same year my second child was born.


Quit cold turkey. Didn't mark a date and don't keep track of how long or look for milestones. I just don't smoke anymore.


And I loved to smoke. I enjoyed it. Especially with a pint or after a meal.
 
I got on captain blacks when I was 14. It was more of a social thing - my buddies and I would buy slushies from the gas station in the summer and just pass around a captain black because the combination tasted amazing. The day I had my first full captain black to myself was the last time I ever smoked one. I used to do 14 laps to warm up for my run...I was done 6 laps in FOR A WARM UP!

But I've often toyed with picking up smoking just to see if I can quit. It's sort of stupid, but I'm REALLY curious to see how I'd fare.

Is Zyban the drug that makes smoking taste like crap? My co-worker was telling me about this drug that was originally marketed as an antipsychotic drug (that's why the story checks out)...but they realized that it also made the crazy people stop smoking. From what I was told, you take the pill & continue to smoke, but by the 7th day, smokign tastes so disgusting to you that you actually legitimately want to quit.
 
I started smoking at about 19 (when I went to bars with my friends). About 6 years later, my new wife said we should quit. I lasted a month and she never smoked again. After trying "cold turkey" for a couple of years I decided on laser acupunture - with little success. Shortly after I was back to a pack a day. About a year later I enrolled in "Quit smoking" using hypnosis offered by the learning annex. I have never smoked since...going on over 20 years now....:cool:
 
I smoked for 10 years. One day I drove past the gas station and when I realized I figured I'd just grab one off a co-worker and head out at lunch, but when I got to the office none of the regular smokers were around. I went in and started working and when lunch came I really wanted a smoke but it wasn't unbarable so I didn't go. Same thing on the way home, so I challenged myself to see how long I could go. It's now been a year and a half without so much as a single drag.
 
I got on captain blacks when I was 14. It was more of a social thing - my buddies and I would buy slushies from the gas station in the summer and just pass around a captain black because the combination tasted amazing. The day I had my first full captain black to myself was the last time I ever smoked one. I used to do 14 laps to warm up for my run...I was done 6 laps in FOR A WARM UP!

But I've often toyed with picking up smoking just to see if I can quit. It's sort of stupid, but I'm REALLY curious to see how I'd fare.

Is Zyban the drug that makes smoking taste like crap? My co-worker was telling me about this drug that was originally marketed as an antipsychotic drug (that's why the story checks out)...but they realized that it also made the crazy people stop smoking. From what I was told, you take the pill & continue to smoke, but by the 7th day, smokign tastes so disgusting to you that you actually legitimately want to quit.

I have known a few people that smoked "socially" for years and did have control. They could go on and off no problem. My little brother did the same thing. Then they have something traumatic like losing a parent, divorce, etc and then they start. Cigarettes are one of those insidious things that can take control before you realize you have lost it.
You're a young, intelligent guy so just don't start. Why would you want a monkey like that on your back? Would you try to get hooked on crack just to challenge yourself?
Dad-like preach rant over.
 
I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, and I never will.

In fact, I remember the day I was offered my first cigarette. I was in a Tim Horton's just outside my high school in crappy Mississauga. One of my best friend and a ladyfriend he was interested in were having an afterschool chat when she pulled out a cigarette and offered it to us. He accepted; I declined. I understood concepts like "consequence". The three of us were in the Gifted program in school, so it's not like they "didn't know better" or anything like that. He took it because he wanted to be cool in her eyes. It worked, as several months later they dated, had a brief hate-filled relationship, and eventually went their separate ways, both degenerating and disappeared off the planet.

1) At first I was confused and irritated by the minds of smokers because I considered them unintelligent enough to take up such a self-destructive habit, knowing full-well what poisons and toxins they're inflicting upon themselves. When I ask smokers how they feel about dropping 10 years off their lives, and creating misery in themselves in those last 10-25 years of their living due to a severe premature decline in their health, the most common response I get is "I don't care.". Wow, brilliant.

2) Then I loathed smokers. In university smokers would gather inside the protective dual doors -- the only entrance between the parking lot and the main buildings, and smoke inside, creating a hotboxed chamber, and dropping their cigarettes on the floor. I would either be forced to walk through this cloud of poison, or detour some distance through the brutal winter cold to another. I would walk up to them, remove their cigarettes from their hands/mouths, and demand they leave. Or else. Honestly, I don't give a rat's *** what you do to your own body and your own health, but when you subject me to suffering caused by your stupidity, you cross the line, and are extremely inconsiderate in your existence to be doing so. You've crossed the Chemical Warfare line, would you like some equally harmful retaliation? I suspect you would be just as angry.

3) Then I learned that tobacco companies have been screwing you poor folks over for decades by making you chemically addicted, adding nicotine to cigarettes, keeping you weak and defenseless slaves to their products -- much like how a heroin junkie is addicted to the euphoria of his drug. He, too suffers wildly in his lack of access to his drug, just like you do to yours, and realized ok, some of it isn't actually your fault.

However, #3 became less and less relevant, the more I inescapably experienced #2.

You want to know why humanity is fuked? Look in the mirror at your retarded, inexcusably self-destructive habits and how not only are they bad for you, but how they're directly negatively affecting those around you.
 
Thanks for the cool story bro... now I wanna go hide in a dark corner get into the fetal position and suck my thumb and make weird noises....I feel so violated....bastards.
 
Viper, your rant reminded me of a sign one guy had in his office decades ago. This was in the 80's when you could still smoke in your cubicle or wherever. A non-smoker had a sign something along the lines of "Your cigarette habit generates smoke, which you don't mind spreading onto me and my clothes. I like to drink beer, which generates urine. Don't smoke near me unless you're prepared to have me come over and urinate all over you."
 
much like how a heroin junkie is addicted to the euphoria of his drug. He, too suffers wildly in his lack of access to his drug, just like you do to yours,

I think cigarettes are a little easier to access than heroin...

You sound very angry, maybe you need a nice relaxing cigarette?...
 
I tried to pick up the habit when my g/f and I split up last year. Until this point, I was a comfortable 'social' smoker (i.e. MAYBE once every 6 months). After buying the smokes, I fired one up while driving home and couldn't make it half-way through the cig before extinguishing it and leaving it in the cupholder (I don't like littering, so I wouldn't throw it out the window). 20 minutes later, I could still smell the extinguished cigarette and couldn't stand it anymore... I threw it out the window and haven't touched a smoke sense.

Ironically, thinking back to that day makes me want to grab the pack and fire another one up.
 
I think cigarettes are a little easier to access than heroin...

You sound very angry, maybe you need a nice relaxing cigarette?...

As I understand it, cigarettes are actually more addictive than heroin.
 

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