Smoking and Quitting

Personal finances
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To my surprise, I didn’t find a smoking thread.

My background.. As a younger person, an active/competitive athlete, healthy lifestyle for the first good 40 years. Training + competitions about 10 times a week (kept me busy). A close family member’s serious illness created immense stress, and I couldn’t cope with it enough.

The constant uncertainty about another person’s survival (doctors gave a year to live) made me feel bad and affected me in many ways. A few hours of sleep, stress, fatigue, constant search for information on the topic, and emotional pain led me to seek relief from intoxicants. Alcohol didn’t really appeal, and it only worsened my condition, especially the next day.

From that, I drifted into smoking cigars/cigarettes. At first, only with some brandy. From there, things escalated to the point that smoking became daily, and nowadays, a pack a day goes, and 500€ a month to this unpleasant “hobby”.

Now it’s time to put a stop to this pleasure. The reasons are both health and financial. A win-win situation in quitting. An absurd hobby at the expense of health.

I would gladly hear experiences from those who have quit, how they managed it.. Cold turkey, or have people gotten help from replacement products? Acetium, nicotine products, medical help?

There are a good 10 years until retirement, so I would rather use this money to pursue things important to myself and my family than burn it into thin air.. I would also gladly minimize the risk of cancers and other diseases.

Dreaming of buying, for example, a motorhome, an apartment in a warm country, etc. Quitting smoking also brings this goal a step closer.

The goal is also to start some level of exercise. Weight is not a problem for me, nor is body composition. I have competed actively in several sports, including powerlifting, basketball, karate, and swimming. The foundations are strong, but due to numerous injuries, I haven’t engaged in sports for the last 10 years. Back problems, shoulder problems, golf/tennis elbows, constant inflammatory conditions in the forearms.. Etc.

If people have successful experiences with quitting smoking, then tips are welcome. Thanks in advance for the peer support🙂

I have such an absurd idea that I will withdraw the money concretely from the ATM, and every day I don’t smoke, I’ll put that good 15€ into a box so I can concretely see how much money per month/day goes up in smoke.

An athlete never sees a healthy day, but hopefully with these changes, fewer sick days🙂

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Champix and the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking helped me, and I’ve been smoke-free for over 10 years now. Before that, I smoked at least a pack, often one and a half a day, for over 15 years.

Maybe more important than Champix was that book and understanding how addiction works; several examples really hit home. For instance, how every smoker thinks they need a “calming smoke” and fails to notice that without the addiction, they wouldn’t be nervous in the first place, so they wouldn’t need anything to calm them down. Or how a smoke supposedly tasted so good after a meal, and only after quitting did I realize how idiotic the whole idea of inhaling cyanide into your lungs after eating being somehow enjoyable really was. I used a lot of self-suggestion—I badmouthed smoking to myself, and it worked.

I don’t believe that the “I want one but I’ll stay strong” approach works, or at least it’s quite painful. Psyching yourself to hate smoking is much easier than suffering for months or even years while craving cigarettes.

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From a doctor’s perspective, a couple of points. Smoking involves much more than just the biochemical addiction caused by nicotine. There is also a significant social and psychological addiction. For quitting to be as successful as possible, it’s good to identify all these forms. What routines do you have associated with smoking? If you have, for example, post-meal or every-morning routines, you need to be able to replace these with other routines. Also, are there specific people in your inner circle who also smoke? You need to get these people to commit to your smoking cessation as well, so that they don’t create temptation or urges during the early stages of withdrawal. These are just a couple of the most common things that many people find really challenging.

Medicinal products can also help. Champix has had supply issues for a long time, so it is not currently available. A medication called Bupropion can be used, but even then, it is important to make a careful plan and use the medication correctly.

Generally speaking, some people manage to quit cold turkey, but quite a few do not. It depends a bit on personality and life situation.

Feel free to send a DM (private message) if things feel difficult; I can help out and even write you a prescription if needed.

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I feel like the whole thing is somehow related to constant stress and anxiety, or those feelings. Not so much to social smoking (I almost always smoke alone). I’m sure I’m somehow looking for that momentary relief from anxiety, even though you don’t even get that from smoking.

I haven’t actually tried to quit even once yet. I’ve only been at this “hobby” for about 5 years, and I believe that with my own strength of character, I might be able to break free just by quitting cold turkey.

Exercise has helped with these feelings significantly better, which is why I’ve thought about increasing it for when I quit. In a way, to replace the “pleasure” of cigarettes/cigars. I mean the post-exercise euphoria, sauna, and relaxation. So, physical exertion has also helped me with stress management on the mental side. Based on experiences from my active career.

There are no smokers in my inner circle, if you don’t count work.

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I quit smoking with the help of an e-cigarette. I could always take a drag from it whenever there was an urgent need. One puff or more. Additionally, I carried a small pack of cigarettes in my pocket all the time. I never let it get to the point where I had a craving but nothing to smoke. This way, staying smoke-free was a voluntary choice for me. Gradually, over the course of a year, the electronic version was phased out too. Now, 13 smoke-free years behind me,

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Many have praised this book and succeeded in quitting. Nowadays, the mere fact that you get the book and read it is enough to prove that you are serious about it. That could be one reason why it works; only the highly motivated try this method :slightly_smiling_face:

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You’re on an important mission, Tunturisusi! I have over 20 years of nicotine use of various degrees behind me. It started with smoking, and for the last 10 years, it was a can of snus a day. On this forum, many threads are the kind where I read along as an apprentice. This thread’s topic is my core area of expertise. :grinning_face: Indeed, for the last few years, it was a can of Odens a day. Multiple quit attempts, relapses, closing my eyes to the facts, and so on. Often I’ve toughed it out for a week or two, and then usage continued again. The first three days are the worst. After that, at the one-week, two-week, and one-month marks, there comes this strange “rationalization”—I look for reasons why it’s not worth quitting yet. I have now been without nicotine for about 3.5 months, and I can proudly say that I have quit. I no longer worry about future trips where I can’t smoke or use snus. I also managed to get my nephew to join the challenge, and he’s also feeling great about quitting. Here are a few tips: 1. Start listening to the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking (Stumppaa tähän). You’ll realize that it’s a nicotine addiction that you shouldn’t try to quit by using nicotine replacement therapy. You just have to stop the nicotine intake into your body. 2. Make the decision to quit. 3. Start enjoying the positive effects right from the first day and be proud of yourself. 4. Seek peer support from those who have quit and let us know here how you’re doing. 5. This is important: remember that even “non-smokers” have bad days. Bad days are not caused by quitting smoking! Hang in there!!

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Congratulations and high fives to the thread starter @Tunturisusi for having started putting in the work to quit!

I smoked roughly from age 15 to 30. I quit about seven years ago. The addiction is gone.

I was definitely hooked. I smoked a pack a day and scheduled my whole life around cigarettes. After waking up in the morning, when leaving home, when arriving at school or work, during every break, after lunch… I had to smoke at the beginning and end of every task throughout the day and evening; it felt pleasant and necessary. Missing a smoke left me feeling like something was wrong with life. The glitch in the world was fixed with the next cigarette.

I tried to quit a few times along the way. For example, due to illness, I might occasionally go a whole day without smoking, and after that, I’d struggle and scrape by for another day or two. However, without a genuine desire to quit, nothing came of it.

A very significant change came to me through a single mental image. Once, while smoking a night cigarette, I saw two possible futures in my mind. In one, I lived my life as I had until then: spent quality time with people important to me, worked, had hobbies, and so on, all while smoking. In the other future, I did those exact same things, but without smoking. I thought about what kind of body and life I would have in both of those futures, say, 40 years from now.

In this way, a genuine desire to quit arose in me, after which it felt like quitting itself was just a matter of time. I used nicotine gum for about six months—at first so much that I wouldn’t have been able to smoke a single cigarette. At some point, paying for just the nicotine (meaning the addiction itself) started to annoy me so much that I quit the replacement products cold turkey. I felt terrible for a week, after which freedom began.

I recommend dividing the quitting process into two parts. At least for me, it was much easier when I first only had to break the habit of smoking and inhaling smoke. At the same time, you can break free from scheduling your life around the ritual of smoking.
The second stage is then stopping the use of nicotine once the habit of smoking is behind you. Withdrawal feels really bad, but after a week or two, you’ll feel better than you have in years.

Strength for the journey! You will succeed, if you want to!

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Would another category be more appropriate for this than stock investing…

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My wife and I smoked for nearly 20 years. After reading the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking (Stumppaa tähän), both of us quit cold turkey without any major difficulties, and we’ve now been smoke-free for 15 years. It’s some kind of self-hypnosis, but it worked really well for us at least. No substitutes were needed. A few acquaintances have quit the same way.

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Hi and good luck :+1:

Back in the day, my little brother quit, and it gave me the grit to realize that I can do it too.

Before you try to quit, observe your feelings while you smoke:
-how it tastes (usually the first one in the morning makes you feel good, the others feel more or less bad)
-does it interfere with your life, e.g. concentration, when you’re wondering if you’ll be able to go for a smoke soon
-do you have to worry about always having backup cigarettes
-do your clothes smell

Then next, think about what you would do instead. I started going for walks in the woods.

Personally, I would see it as a bad thing to replace smoking with, for example, some intense hobby that requires a lot of self-discipline.

Replacement products haven’t helped me. I think nicotine gum tastes so bad that I couldn’t use it for that reason alone.

Money is also a good motivator.

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My take on this is that quitting and how easy it is depends a lot on the individual. You can’t simply say that just because I did it this way, it will work for everyone else. The same probably applies to other substances as well. I smoked for probably over 15 years myself, but never more than a pack a day. During my last years of more active smoking, it was just a few a day. Nowadays, I smoke very occasionally, and I have no problem quitting again.

So, I’ve quit smoking probably dozens of times, and every time it just gets easier. It’s not worth getting discouraged if you happen to relapse for some reason; in that case, just give it another go. For me, a bet with a friend to stay smoke-free for a year served as a good initial boost back in the day. The stakes should be high enough that it actually hurts to pay. In my case, I think it was €500 at the time. Once you’ve been smoke-free for a year, you know that quitting is possible.

Nowadays, I might occasionally smoke during the summer while doing hobbies, but once I buy a pack to keep in my pocket, things slowly start to spiral. When I start smoking at work too, I always snap out of it and quit again. Something about it just draws you in occasionally, even though it doesn’t make any sense. Inhaling smoke into your lungs. But luckily for me, quitting is quite easy nowadays. I still wouldn’t recommend this kind of occasional smoking. It certainly wouldn’t work for many people :sweat_smile:

Anyway, best of luck with quitting!

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Back when I was young, I used snus for a good while. It does have nicotine and certainly causes addiction, though I have no idea if it can be compared to being addicted to cigarettes. I toughed it out for a bit, but then I made a “decision-driven decision” (to use a political term) and that was that.

It reminds me a bit of my years-long project to drop my weight to a more sensible level. I never really had much extra, but I tried on and off for years with poor results. I once talked about it with my father-in-law, who has always been thin as a rake. He remarked that it doesn’t matter if you’re a bit hungry sometimes. It only does you good, and eventually things sort themselves out as if by themselves.

This just strongly reminded me of quitting snus. My mental grit was just lost somewhere all those years, and finally, when that famous “aha moment” came from somewhere, it was easy.

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I started smoking as late as 25 years old at my place of study at the time — everyone smoked, so I felt I had to join in due to social pressure.

That’s how it started: 15 years and a pack a day, two packs when drinking. In my thirties, I had some major dental work done, and at that time, the dentist told me that because of the implants, it was high time to quit. I still smoked normally for another ten years after that, and at age 40, when a routine check-up on the implants was done, the doctor said my teeth were still okay, but smoking was slowly starting to have an effect, specifically on the gums. That was enough of a “stopper” for me.

I then spent about a year struggling with various nicotine replacements — gum, pills, and spray. And I ate candy. I think I put on a few extra kilos.

Gradually, the use of replacements decreased and finally stopped altogether, I don’t even remember how anymore. I didn’t avoid situations where others were smoking; for example, if the rest of the group was smoking around me on a terrace, I held my ground. You have to keep living a normal life and put yourself in situations where others do things their own way, and then I make my own choices.

But right now, it’s been 8 years since my last cigarette. In the beginning, I literally tucked the money away and used it to travel to the Caribbean, America, and Thailand. That was motivating at the start. I still don’t dare to smoke a single cigarette — though these days I don’t even crave it anymore. But I know that if I smoke one, I’ll be going for a whole pack next. I know my own lack of willpower, and that’s why I have an absolute zero-tolerance policy.

Good luck to everyone struggling with this. The improvement in the sense of smell and taste is a great thing, and above all, the fact that you no longer have to plan your life around where and when you can smoke the next cigarette!

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And then the cigarette money into the stock market… About a couple of years ago, I managed to persuade a person close to me to save their cigarette money in the stock market when they were thinking about quitting smoking.

They didn’t understand the first thing about stock/fund saving, nor were they interested. Apparently, they had saved whatever they’d managed to save in their life into a savings account, because they didn’t dare to save anywhere else. I said I could help out or even ”manage” your portfolio. We made a simple investment plan for them. For the plan, I told them to put that 200€ a month into the portfolio for the next 25-30 years, I’ll take care of your portfolio, and I guarantee you’ll have a lot more money there than if you keep puffing those cigarettes for the next 25-30 years. I told them not to touch the money until the 25-year mark, saying that this saving won’t feel like anything since it hasn’t felt like anything to blow that money into thin air every month for 20 years. I showed them a compound interest calculator and opened my own portfolios to shed some light on what can be achieved with long-term saving, and so there was one less smoker and one more stock/fund saver.

Around Christmas, we looked at their portfolio together (they hadn’t looked at it once since starting), and the look on their face was worth seeing when they realized, perhaps only at that point in concrete terms, what two great decisions they had made. :money_mouth_face: And from there, I went outside for a cigar with a glass of something, while they stayed behind marvelling at their portfolio… Of course, I only smoke a cigar a few times a year myself if I’m having a few glasses of something good. I quit actual smoking back when you could still get a pack of Marlboro for 18.90 marks…

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No books or overthinking, just stop and never continue again. That’s how it ended for me, and that’s how it will end for you too, if you just want it to.

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I quit cold turkey back then after my morning cigarette, partly because I wanted to support my wife, who also quit after becoming pregnant. I worked myself into quite a state of hatred toward smoking, and I might have been a bit annoying preaching to others, but I haven’t had a single puff since. I also didn’t drink any beer for nearly a year after that. All in all, I smoked for about 15 years, and it’s now been about 20 years since I quit.

I don’t dream about buying a pack anymore—those dreams did continue for years—but even now, if someone is smoking, the smell of the smoke from the cigarette itself does smell nostalgically good.

Good luck with quitting; in the end, it’s about who’s in control—you or your cravings.

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I smoked a lot between the ages of 18 and 24 and decided I would quit when I had children, and that’s what happened. However, I still smoked when going out to bars for a few years after that. I decided that smoking would end when I visited Moscow, and that’s where it ended. A culture that is somewhat alcohol-oriented and very pro-tobacco, so I decided to leave it there. So, a simple decision was enough for me.

You could also try smoking lighter cigarettes for a while, so-called “mountain air,” then you’ll realize that smoking makes no sense.

It triggers dopamine as well, which is why it would be good to come up with something else to replace it, such as exercise or some substitute activity. Understanding that the biggest thing is the thought of smoking; you need to get rid of the fact that it has become a habit in various situations.

It can help to realize that it is extremely dangerous and completely senseless to breathe toxic fumes into your lungs and potentially ruin your life prematurely with various diseases. And you shouldn’t justify it by saying that diseases happen anyway and life is short, etc. Smoking makes no sense, and it doesn’t help with concentration or restlessness except for those with mental health issues and those who cause their own concentration problems by smoking. There are so many better things to do in life, like breathing fresh air and tasting different flavors, which can be truly appreciated better without tobacco.

Good luck to everyone on their journey to quitting! You will surely succeed if you have enough motivation!

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My own suggestion for quitting is that, first of all, you truly understand what smoking and the generally poor lifestyle habits associated with it do to the body. When a person reaches middle age, they start to notice the reaper taking its toll among their circle of acquaintances. Many don’t live to enjoy their retirement, and this is usually not a coincidence but quite clearly and unequivocally the consequence of the lifestyle habits the person had in previous decades. This can be avoided by correcting those habits. At any age and with any background. The risk of cancer begins to drop rapidly, and the hardening of arteries and plaque buildup can be stopped immediately. It is possible to improve the situation from what it is. With a very high probability, you can then enjoy your retirement and lead an active, functional, and healthy life into old age.

My next suggestion is the opposite of what doctors say. Start vaping immediately. Get good equipment and a cheap backup device. Several flavors and the ability to adjust the amount of nicotine. Not a single cigarette anymore. You first get rid of the smoke based on combustion and its numerous harmful substances; this is priority number one. Within just a week, you’ll notice the tar clearing from your airways, your skin looking younger, your junk (!) coming back to life, your oral mucosa and gums starting to heal, breathing feeling light and easy, and your mind being alert instead of depressed and foggy. You have been walking around as if wearing heavy clothes and have now been freed from them.

Next, however, you will start to crave a single cigarette, because your airways have cleared and the old smoker has become—as crazy as it sounds—addicted to that congested and grimy feeling. Only a combustible cigarette can soot up and sear the airways in a way that returns the old phlegmy state and momentary sensation that had become “normal.” You fight against that one cigarette that would restore that state. That state must not be restored under any circumstances.

In my opinion, the philosophy of surrender applied to alcoholism does not work for quitting smoking; it is, above all, a battle, and the enemy is “one cigarette.” So, you unapologetically increase the amount of nicotine in the vapor until it hits hard enough that you can skip that one cigarette (for doctors, the advice is to replace, reduce, quit, but never increase). The next day you can return the nicotine to a low level, but do whatever it takes in that moment when you are about to give in to that one cigarette.

The good thing about e-cigarettes is that many people eventually get tired of playing around with the liquids and the hobby just ends, and by that point, you haven’t smoked a cigarette in ages.

If, however, it turns out that you are next addicted to the e-cigarette, you are much healthier than before but addicted nonetheless; then it is time to start nicotine replacement therapy according to doctors’ instructions. Getting rid of vaping is much easier than getting rid of smoking. Often it indeed happens quite naturally. This can be encouraged by lowering nicotine levels until the mere act of vaping starts to feel pointless and ends through that. By then, you’ve grown tired of the habit and gotten rid of the nicotine.

I recommend this if you have several failed attempts at quitting behind you.

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It occurred to me that this approach actually worked for me when I felt like having a cigarette. If you start to crave a smoke, just think: “I’ll smoke tomorrow if I still feel like it.” And then tomorrow, you think again: “I’ll smoke tomorrow if I still feel like it.” It somehow helped knowing that you don’t have to suffer from the craving forever if you don’t want to, but that I can make it through today and see how I feel tomorrow.