any piece of advice is welcome, thank you :-3
I tried quitting a number of times. Not easy, and demoralizing when you fail. You may have to try several times too.
When I finally did quit I had decided to put off my first cigarette in the morning as long as possible, reasoning that sleep was the longest I’d go without nicotine. One day I went the whole day.
A friend quit at the same time as me, using the gum. Six month later she was still using it, and gave up and started smoking again.
Probably help that I had quit drinking by then as well. Pretty hard to drink and not smoke, for me.
Find other ways to cope when you get the urge, ie vape etc
Or big balls daddy cold turkey it
Just stop doing it. You won’t quit until you really want to stop, and then it’s actually kind of easy. You hear this from a lot of people who quit, that all the circumstances and programs and nicotine substitutes are kind of secondary to the mental aspect of it.
I stopped a pack and a half a day habit of ~10 years cold turkey. It was either food or smokes.
As others have said, there is no effective short cut. Ultimately, it is all will power. At least it is easier now. When I quit, EVERYONE smoked.
there is no effective short cut
As someone who quit by switching to vape pens, I strongly disagree. There are multiple studies that show a success rate of greater than 60% when using vaping as a smoking cessation device. The next closest method is 3%. 3 fucking percent! Guess who owns those methods? It’s the tobacco companies.
Nicotine patches. It gives your brain what it wants with little to no adverse effects
The problem with patches is you don’t satisfy the oral aspect of the habit so you may need to chew gum or sunflower seeds to replace the act of smoking.
Nicotine gum or pouches may seem like a simpler option, but you can up your dose frequency too much to be able to ween off effectively if you do not have the willpower to keep to a plan.
Gum and patch also means you can not use a patch after a while and mindfuck your reptile brain into thinking the gum is what it wanted and not the nicotine patch.
This might help https://www.artofliving.org/in-en/happiness-program
I used nicotine pouches for a year then cold turkeyed at day 365
While I have no personal experience with tobacco addictions, there is an interesting literature review of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and MBI (Mindfulness Based Interventions).
I quit by switching to vaping and then working the nicotine level down to nothing and then quitting that. Whatever you decide to do I wish you the best of luck (and stick with it!)
Same here. Fuck the naysayers who say cold turkey or nothing. Do what works for you.
For OP: One caveat to the vape plan is you’ll likely need to get a vape that’s refillable so you can customize the nicotine level. Juul/vuse/disposables typically only come in one, or at best, 2 nicotine levels, which prevents effective tapering.
Also, don’t fall into the trap of vaping places you wouldn’t have smoked (e.g. in your house/car). That can increase your nicotine dependency.
Good luck!
I’m neither an expert nor do I smoke. But from what I heard, quitting smoking has two major points- one being the nicotine addiction your body has built up. The second one being your ‘emotional addiction’, I.e being used to smoking as a tool to decompress, socialize, take a break, fight boredom etc. which is embedded in your routines - this one might be harder to fight. Maybe try to identify those things and find alternatives, start installing different ways to cope and simultaneously take care of your bodily addiction via gums, patches, whatever is the right way for you.
Nicotine pouches
Get yourself a good nicotine vape rig. The kind that has a big tank so it’ll last all day and you can use whichever flavoured vape liquid you like best. Switch to that 100% of the time, right away, no exceptions. Don’t worry about how to quit vaping until you’ve gone without smoking for at least a few months.
It’ll be hard, but not nearly as bad as it is if you try to quit both smoking and nicotine at the same time.
I switched to a vape and progressively got lower nicotine amounts until I was at 0 and then stopping was easy.
Same. I just kept diluting the liquid with 0% nicotine until, months later, I realized I didn’t even want to vape any more.
I went cold turkey with the help of Wellbutrin. Best of luck!
Not a smoker myself, but I can tell you what worked for my brother when he quit in college.
AC went out in his dorm during an August heat wave, and it took forever for them to fix it. He decided that it would be a perfect time to go cold turkey, since he’d be so miserable from the heat that the few days of nicotine withdraw wouldn’t really be comparably bad. And he said it was right, he didn’t think about it during the worst part, and by the time they fixed the AC, he was 90% of the way through the process.
So if you live in one of the parts of the world moving to summer right now, it might be worth a shot.
