The Poolie Bunker

Coughing in morning
Heaviness on the lungs
It stinks
It's time to pack in, the question is; how?

I've started in an unorthadox way by smoking rollies for the past fortnight which are friggin horrible. The point was to lose the pleasant experience of smoking fags. Now I've got enough left for about five fags and after that I ain't buying any more. Patches are at the ready but after failing a thousand times I'm in need of inspiration.

cut off the first 2 fingers of your right hand!

if it works let me know and i will try it.....

crap answer but willpower. thats it.It's ages since I smoked and there weren't patches and stuff then so I suppose I had no choice,but I think the biggest thing is really wanting to do it.
I remember having to change my routine a lot for a while,I always had a fag with a cuppa and always with a pint so I was antisocial for a while.
ourkid put the money he used to spend on fags into a bank account every week,that seemed to help as an incentive.
Good luck

I don't know to this day how I managed to stop, as I'd tried to give up several times without success, even tho like you my lungs felt in a total mess from smoking. One thing for sure was that it was no use trying to do it by cutting down, because
if I bought a packet at all, I would just smoke them all same day.

One thing that helped was changing my routine temporarily, because there are some things, like having a drink or a cup of coffee, that your mind just associates with ciggies, so stop doing them for a while. Also might help if you think of just getting thro one day at a time without a cigarette, until eventually you find you've got thro, say, 10 days, and the craving is by that time so much less.

Another thing is, it's hard, but you can do it. Good luck


(Just realised Dawlish has said half of this already, but never mind)

i just woke up one morning and couldnt be bothered to go to the shop. so i decided to see how long i could last without one.

everytime i had a craving i would go for a walk and drink ice cold water (gave me a 'hit' at the back of my throat like a tab did)

i took it a day at a time and i am now two years a non smoker, without the need for patches.

and to be frank, it was easy. i put three stone on like but feel a thousand times better for it. havent had a single illness or cold or anything since i quit.

this probably wont help you one bit though!

Had tried all ways for many years with no success.
Got in from the pub one night, looked at the fags I had left in the packet, thought what the fuck am I doing to myself, crumpled it up and have never smoked since.

I guess that in order to pack up you've really got to want to, and I mean WANT to !!

Ithangu

As has been said really really wanting to quit helps enormously.

I had all the patches and gum which gets you through the first 10 days or so, much easier than I thought.

Substituted extra strong mints for ciggies for a while and that also helped.

You know you have quit when ciggie smoke gets on your nerves.

Good luck

I got a bloody great big mortgage so I had to stop cos I couldn't afford them. As anyone who's been addicted knows though you can always find an excuse to "just have one" and then you're away again.

One of the things I did was to count each day, hour even, that I didn't smoke as an investment (in suffering) and that if I had a fag I'd be throwing that away and would have to go through it again.

I must be addictive cos it took me two years to count myself as not wanting a fag and after decades of not smoking I know if I had one I'd be away again.

So set yourself a timescale over which you're going to give up (try six months) and start ticking off the hours first and then the days. If you want a fag have a look at the number of days you haven't had one and realise what a waste of effort it would be if you stuck a fag in your mouth. Do that long enough and you'll beat it.


Good Luck!

I had no intention of stopping smoking until my gran was diagnosed with lung cancer. And she hadn't ever smoked.

It was a snap decision, and because I really wanted to I saw it through. I put a bit of weight on as my beer consumption went right up but it soon came off.

Keep giving yourself a reward for not smoking, eg a cake or something at the end of each day. That's supposed to work for some people.

I am into my second given-up smoking period which has now lasted 13 years. The first one lasted 6 or 7 years and ended because of cheap French cigarettes and boredom.

The first time I used the willpower method but I made a big thing of the event, counting down the days like you would towards your holidays or watching your team in a play-off final.

The second time, the woman I was living with at the time suddenly had a flash of inspiration one night and started shouting WE HAVE TO CUT DOWN THIS IS DOING US NO GOOD. So I agreed to cut down, but as anyone sensible knows cutting down is just kidding yourself. After about three days of counting the hours to the next fag I said fook it and just stopped. It didn't take much more than about a week both times for the hankering to stop. During that week the thing I missed the most wasn't the smoke it was the gestures. The weird thing is if someone gives me a cigarette, lit or otherwise, to hold as occasionally happens, I still find myself moving it towards my mouth as if about to smoke it. Not that it ever gets as far as my mouth mind.

Smack.

As far as I know it's cheaper, you don't fund single mothers with it, it's not prohibited on licenced premises, you get active encouragement and assistance in giving it up, when you're ready to grass your dealer up you'll get a court award and if you get imprisoned for it, you can sue the authorities for making you do a 'rattle' which is giving up cold turkey, which you're going to have to do anyway.

So smack's the way for me!!!!

How many times have you given up since I've known you??

Successfully or otherwise?

I've done it loads of times so it can't be that hard. I'm giving up again when I go to bed but I bet I start again in the morning.

best time to stop is when you have a sore throat/man flu

plan

have a smoke
eat gravy chips and egg fried rice
no drinking
two cigarettes straight after
you won't finish the second one.

5th day clean is the worst

I quit years ago when i was on the dole for a short time. it was tabs money or pools money and pools won hands down .

If you pack in smurking tabs, can one still smoke a spliff, crack, ecstasy or is it just the tabs that have to stop

you can suit yourself

YOU have the CHOICE to make....

i am going to start on monday found out that my work pays either for patches for you or if thats not you cup of tea they they pay for a hypnotherapist for you. myself i am going for the patches as dont want to act like a chicken everytime a car horn goes off

NOT STARTING....works every time

As mentioned earlier you have to WANT rather than wish you weren't a smoker.
If you WANT to stop then hypnotherapy is a great idea, as are other kinds of therapy.

One thing they do, which you can do yourself, is to imagine (really imagine) the feeling that smoking a tab gives you. Make sure you do that with the reality of what it does to you physically, and the risk of developing lung cancer etc, the benefits that stopping can give you, including plenty more years of (hopefully healthy) life.
Feel the smoke going down, inside your system. Realise what its doing to you.
When you've got that properly, double it, so you're increasing from one tab to two. Keep going, three next, increase the feelings. Then keep that going until you reach twenty - or however many you can smoke in one day.
Thats what you're doing to yourself, every single day. You should be choking yourself. But at least you're saving time this way by getting them all out the way in one go.
Obviously it works better with a hypnotherapist because they help you access your unconscious/subconscious mind which is where change is far more likely to happen. After all, your conscious mind already knows how bad it is for you and what is likely to happen to you if you continue.

Another thing people have said that works for them is to always have one tab in the drawer. That means you're exercising power. Consciously and constantly thinking of not doing something means that you have to think about doing something in order to think about not doing it, if you see what I mean.
For instance, do not in any way, think about a pink elephant. I said DONT think about a pink elephant. Its hard innit? Some people say having a tab there means they are more in control.

It might also help to think about the people you knew who lost their lives or had their lives drastically damaged whilst you were in the army.You were lucky in some ways. You came out intact. Dont you want to prolong your life? Keep as healthy as you can while you can? Life is random. Make the most out of it and good luck.

........... or have have 'chat' with those who have found out too late they wished they hadn't started..it makes you think and act.

Just curious, what made any of you want to start in the first place? Or how did you start?


Please note, serious question.

Peer pressure.

It was skill you had to acquire to sample the 'additives '. Layer on I had absolutely no trouble leaving the ganja behind but was left with a terrible baccy habit. Sort of says things about legal and illegal drugs.