Quitting Smoking

Dave Winer writes about his experience quitting smoking, and it reminds me of my experience quitting. Many years ago I was a smoker, and it took a couple of tries before I quit successfully.

My first attempt at quitting was doomed to failure. See, I noticed that my cravings were stronger when my friends and I went bar-hopping, so I told myself I'd only smoke when I was drinking. The result? I drank more often. Duh.

So I quit cold turkey, and that was well over a decade ago. I've smoked one time since then, about three years ago - not a perfect record, but not bad. The thing that made it easier to quit was that I stopped smoking right after the end of a relationship gone sour. I figured as long as I was giving up one bad habit, I might as well give up smoking at the same time.

Comments

[JesterXL]

Dude, I did the same thing. I quit cold turkey, and continue to drink mad quantities. Aussie's aside, even the Americans laugh at what I consider large quantities, still, it's enought to force 2 weeks of hard cardio now and again.

...now if I only I could quit drinking coffee... yeah right...

[freaksauce]

Me too, except the failed relationship time I managed to quit for a year then I got to Australia and started smoking again (well ok, I started in Thailand...ok ok, Heathrow airport!) So then it took me over a year for another "real" attempt which was the start of April and I'm still going strong. I started running to train for the City 2 Surf and Sydney Bridge run to give me something to work toward which seems to have helped a lot. Good luck quitters!

[Erik Madsen]

I've always believe it's not that quitting is difficult - it's starting again is too easy.

[Jeff]

I was kind of in the same position as you Nick. I smoked for a number of years and then quit about 3 years ago. I started only smoking when I was drinking, but as you said you just end up drinking more often so that you have an excuse to smoke.

Well, I'm proud to say that it's now over a year and a half since I had a cigarette, but I still find it hard at times. The worst times I find are (as many Canadian smokers will probably identify) when I head to Tim Horton's and grab my large double/double coffee. I can almost taste the cigarette when I have one of those.

But, overall, I feel a lot better, sleep better, and I'm much more productive than I once was. Congrats to all of us that have quit! And good luck to those that are contemplating quitting, it's definitely worth it!

[Alan]

My story is almost an exact opposite of yours, Nick.

I had given up smoking for about five years when I met a girl; she smoked, as did most of her friends she introduced me to. We often went out for a few drinks together and I decided that to be sociable I'd have the occasional cigarette with them. Alas, I found that the occasional cigarette while drinking was not enough and I started smoking regularly again. ;-)

The girl? We split after about a year...

[redstar]

Hi,
I used www.quitnet.com to help me quit.
Its a great support group. I went cold turkey.

I just checked my stats below:
Your Quit Date is: 10/13/2000
Time Smoke-Free: 1378 days, 13 hours, 55 minutes and 24 seconds

Cigarettes NOT smoked: 6893

Lifetime Saved: 1 month, 22 days, 15 hours

Money Saved: $1,550.25

I have also taken up running and weight lifting and really don't miss smoking anymore; at all !
redstar

[Thomas]

Yea, me too, I quited smoking for some weeks, and decided to only smoke when I was having a drink(beer mostly), oh my I was drinking then. Now I am smoking again, but I can get up and get decent work done ;)