Giving Up Cigarettes

The demons wail as if I were torturing someone I love. Day 4—I sleep well. Fill the new pockets of desperate time with Vonnegut. Indulge in ice cream and Werthers. Hell comes from the thought that I am giving up something after having had to give up so much. But that’s the adversary’s rant. Day 4 hurts from losses of loved people, places, things.

Indeed, try and think of it as a long term gift to oneself. pointing that out take time for yourself and not your habit. I wish you much luck and the best with it.

Breathtaking yet almost made me wanna break down… [-o<

3 weeks, 4 days–no cigarettes. Still wish I had one.

And then there is the sobering thought, which helps to overcome longing of another day- what if You don’t quit? With me it s liquor, and we all know the consequences of defying sobriety.

Ierrelus, if it is true that you are now 74 years old and still smoke, then I ask you: Did you never have some problems because of your smoking when you were some years younger?

Congratulations Ierr! :happy-partydance:

Not really. The problems now are expense and rhinitis.

Do you really want to give up smoking or not?

Yes. But this habit is a major demon. Each attachment, mental or physical, to smoking has become a hungry mouth, screaming for its erstwhile satiety.

It is not easy for you to give up smoking. Right?

When I - as a moderate or average smoker - gave up smoking in 2005, I first did not intend to give it up but to just smoke less, and after some weeks I smoked merely a very few cigarettes, then I thought „if so, then I can also smoke no cigarettes“. The whole process took merely some weeks. It began without the intention of giving it all up, and then it just happened with a little help of my friend: logic.

It’s been eight weeks and five days since I had my last taste of alcohol–this after at least a quart of beer per day for over 45 years. For me the alcohol was no problem to give up, but the cigarettes were and are.

My method for giving up cigarettes was a three-week program. During the first week I smoked one per hour and increased the time between smokes in weeks two and three until I was down to three per day. So far I’ve gone four weeks and three days without a smoke.

But you still smoke.

Still smoking over here. I’ll quit maybe next year when I’m thirty. Not in a hurry quite yet.

No I do not smoke. 5 weeks, 1 day–absolutely no tobacco. Funny thing, I dream I’m smoking and drinking. The dreams are vivid.

Yes, that’s ok. How many cigarrettes do you smoke per day?

Welcome to the non-smoking club then.

Funny thing - in fact. :slight_smile:

You want to smoke and drink again. Right?

Part of me wants to smoke and drink; part of me doesn’t want that. I went to an AA meeting for help. At the meeting, before and after, everyone was outside smoking. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be.

I can imagine.

Do you think that you will overcome the urge of the part of you that wants to smoke and drink?

When I gave up cigarettes (more than eleven years ago) I did not have any urge or demand or desire to smoke or to drink. Perhaps it was just the fact that the time of giving up cigarettes had come; so it was easy to do it.