Stopping Smoking

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I there anyone here that has successfully quit smoking cigarettes. I have been smoking since I was 14 and I am 26 now so that makes 12 years of smoking. I have been basically a pack a day smoker for most of that time with some periods of 2 packs a day. I have tried the patches and gums a couple of times, tried the chantix stuff for 2 months and Ive tried going cold turkey. Going cold turkey I quit for the longest but that was only maybe 2 weeks. Ive tried to quit so many times and I keep telling myself that I'm going to quit but I fail every time. Ive heard about hypnosis and I'm really curious about that and wondering if it really works. Any tips out there for stopping.

Yes, hypnosis is a good bet. My dad cured his smoking habit in two sessions. Hypnosis with a pro is quite expensive but you save all the money you would spend on cigs. You could try an hypnosis audio file, couldn't say which ones are any cop though.

I read Allan Carr's book 'easy way to quit smoking'. It worked on me, and it's cheap (6 or 7 quid or so). You might find a copy free if you google. I don't know how it works, but it did.

Cold turkey never stuck with me. NRT just got me hoooked on NRT products.

I gave up smoking many years ago. Like the OP I used to smoke 20 a day, 40 a day at the weekends. This had gone on for many years. I too gave up two or three shorter periods like a couple of weeks, longest three months. However, I finally cracked it around 16 years ago. Never been tempted to smoke since. I think what is needed, or what worked with me was a change of attitude about myself:

If you stop smoking are you a smoker without a cigarette or a none-smoker? It wasn't a question of will power so much a change of attitude. I you use will-power it means you are trying to force yourself to do something that you only half want to do; it causes internal conflict and sooner or later you are likely to light up again. If you can start to see yourself in your imagination as a none-smoker then you have already won. Picture yourself in those environments where you normally smoke and imagine yourself there as a none-smoker. Repeat the image lots until you eventually consider yourself to be a none-smoker. It worked for me.

I started at 16 and I'm 26 now, so you have 2 extra years on me, but the way I stopped was a combination of some of the things mentioned above. A little willpower, a little attitude change, a little "just not lighting a cig", and a little of it being "hard because of addiction".

It helps if you make another fairly large change in your life at around the same time, such as moving house or changing job, or taking up a new goal in life that you intend to work towards, on top of your attitude change, because you're more likely to feel like you're no longer in the same situation as the person who used to smoke all the time. You are a person with a somewhat different life. That is a cliche, of course, but a significant change in your life does have a big psychological effect in making your routine less rigid and more pliable, your little bit of willpower goes a lot further in that situation, and your little bit of attitude change is also strengthened by the real tangible change in situation, making it much easier to stick to.

Every time since then, that I've been tempted to smoke, I remembered how much I had been coughing and clearing my throat, and how ANNOYING it was, and how much I didn't want to be doing it in 5-10 years time, at an even worse level, with little kids running around complaining to their mother that it was annoying them too. Even just the thought of that is so much more annoying than the annoying feeling of wanting to smoke, so if that little joke of a feeling thinks it's going to compete, all I can do is laugh at it, because it's not.

This will sound silly, but I started at 19 and quit at 30. It was hard at first, and I felt like crap for about 3 months or so. All the crud starts to come up and leave your lungs, but after that it is amazing!

I started out using the nicotine patches, and after about a week I sometimes forgot to put it on in the morning. I would realize it later in the day, and I couldn't go home to get one either. SO after this happened several times, I just stopped the patches and didn't smoke again. It wasnt easy- I cant say that enough! I got through the feeling like crap and initial cravings and then it was all good. The cravings didn't last long either- a couple of weeks, with AND without patches, so I am not sure those things were even working.

It has been almost 8 years now- 7 years and 7 months actually. For many of the years I occasionally had dreams that I had smoked a cigarette and then I would wake up feeling so guilty, thinking I had to start over from day 1, LOL.

An older gentleman I worked with once told me that he had quit "cold turkey" more than 20 years before and sometimes still wanted one. He would just tell himself, "not right now" and the feeling would pass. Rarely do I get that, but that is what I do now to. I don't think I have actually had a craving since I stopped though. It was more of a memory of putting that nasty thing up to my lips than a true craving for it.

I smoked for about five years, and quit two and a half years ago. I went the cold-turkey route. For me, always having a cigarette on-hand in case I "needed" it helped a lot to lessen my cravings, and I took up sucking on a lot of hard candies for a few weeks to help with the oral fixation.

Best of luck with whatever method you choose.

Note: Edited for typo.

i smoked 1 to 2 packs of camels every day for 7 years. quit cold turkey 16 years ago.

i often dream about smoking, and.i.miss.it... every.... g*ddamned.... day....

i have no useful advice, except: don't replace it with cookies and buttered crumpets

quitting was surpisingly easy for me.
my GF doesn't smoke, so i decided to quit
i simply stopped; cold turkey.

quitting was surpisingly easy for me.
my GF doesn't smoke, so i decided to quit
i simply stopped; cold turkey.

I know someone who quit with the aid of e-cigarettes. It's just water vapor or various smells/flavors that emulates smoking and is usually offered at varying nicotine levels to gradually become less dependent on it.

I believe there are 2 kinds of smokers - those who smoke, and those who LOVE to smoke. My husband and I both quit right before we decided to have kids. I had been smoking for 11 years and my husband for 8. For him it was an easy cold turkey, never look back sort of thing. For me it took many attempts from cutting down, to quiting, to going back, to the emergency pack in the house, etc. Even after a smoke-free pregnancy I went back to occasional sneaks outside. I would say it took about 2 years of trying to completely kick the habit once and for all. I've been a non-smoker for about 6 years now and I still miss it at times, but I'm much happier and healthier now. Besides, I couldn't afford it now if I wanted to.

Its been tough. I keep saying that I will quit tomorrow and it never comes. I downloaded a couple of hypnosis tracks and I have Alan Car's book on hold at the library. I think alot of my problem is my attitude and I have very little willpower.