Quitting Smoking

[JBroll]

you are right... and i am wrong.

i apologize for making you feel personally attacked. my intentions were not to belittle.

if you feel i have been arrogant in any way, you must understand ...i was merely generalizing.

a lot can be said on this subject... and in this particular domain, people can misconstrue the primary effort due to the sterile environment of a forum.


once again, my apologies and ...i hope you quit smoking @setyouranchor

I don't feel that I was personally attacked, but I very strongly dislike people who assume more than they should - not only is it a bit cocky, it can lead to devastatingly wrong conclusions. I don't have any problems with generalizations, but they have to be done properly.

Again, I don't doubt that you're trying to help... but there's no way that ignoring reality is a good part of anything that the OP needs right now. What's more, even if I assumed your claim to be true, the solution would not be to attack smoking but to attack weakness. In any case, if you're going to generalize, do it right and learn from what you're assuming to be outliers.

Holy fuck... a bit overdramtic, don't you think?

You do come off sounding like you have a massive ego, Jeff...

When being subtle fails, I try being as direct and blunt as possible. Sometimes it works.

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't have much of an ego - the quoted post wasn't about someone attacking my ego (or control of my ego) but about someone making false assumptions in the face of someone directly contradicting them. Assume too much and you can prove anything...

Jeff

 

[timislegend]

sometimes people do things because they enjoy them. Not all smokers are helpless, dependent, spineless weaklings.

with all due respect, jeff... this is what you stated.

none of this statement involves you.

if it does... this is why i apologized.


i believe that you may have misrepresented yourself... which may have caused my obtuse generalization. i am a man who will admit when i am wrong... i am also a man who will examine my own misconduct in an effort to reinforce the truth.

but i don't see where my statement is at all not relevant to the synonymous post. i am aware of your aggravation, i get that you are attempting to dominate in rhetoric.

i don't claim to know anything about you... however after the very few posts you have made on this thread, i am starting to get an idea.


once again, sorry for my malfeasance.

 

[GarethSE]

When I quit smoking Tobacco, I just substituted it completely with Cannabis rather than flitting between the two.
I, personally, am completely addicted to the ACT of smoking, and I think that's far more crippling than anything chemical.

But I guess that approach isn't about to work for you since you don't dig Cannabis.

But honestly, it needs to be "the right time." A lot of people say they want to, but they don't, they're just in the throes of attempting themselves to think so, but you tell yourself something for long enough and you'll eventually fool yourself into believing it, and when it comes to quitting tobacco smoking, it's a lesser of two evils.
One day it will just "click" and it won't be a problem. You need the desire first though, the genuine desire.
I find the change in my dietary choices to be a similar situation.

I was eating a lot of shit food, pizza, instant noodles, microwavable stuff, boring, cheap easy tasteless crap basically, oven pizza was probably my heroin for a while, pretty much.
I wanted to cut it out because I could feel what it was doing to me, making me feel sludgy and slow and depressed and shit all 'round, but despite that knowledge of it being bad for me, I couldn't stop, just like smokers.
Then one day I just sort of, up and quit, started cooking a meal every day, taking the time to prepare vegetables, grind and mix spices, get into the zen of cooking and really devote some time to it and not only enjoyed the meals more but felt healthier. All I needed was a single taste of the immediate health benefits a healthy meal full of fresh vegetables.

How I'd best relate that method to smoking is set aside a day real soon to get out of town and go be in a place where there's clean air, not like, a less busy street, genuinely clean air, not a car for miles around type thing, and DON'T SMOKE all day. Take big deep breaths and really make the attempt to taste the air, do this before you leave town as well, get a taste of the gasoline in the air from being around cars, really focus on picking these things out.
The association of the symbolic act of getting out of town for fresh, clean, unpolluted air and the physical act of no longer smoking should be just the ticket.

Anyway, I'm babbling, good luck man. I hope this helps somehow.

 

[JBroll]

with all due respect, jeff... this is what you stated.

none of this statement involves you.

if it does... this is why i apologized.


i believe that you may have misrepresented yourself... which may have caused my obtuse generalization. i am a man who will admit when i am wrong... i am also a man who will examine my own misconduct in an effort to reinforce the truth.

but i don't see where my statement is at all not relevant to the synonymous post. i am aware of your aggravation, i get that you are attempting to dominate in rhetoric.

i don't claim to know anything about you... however after the very few posts you have made on this thread, i am starting to get an idea.


once again, sorry for my malfeasance.

I would not make a statement like that without a specific example in mind. (Assuming that someone would is not very charitable - it's one thing to ask for an example, but what you did is a little closer to flatly contradicting someone with no attention paid to the possibility that they have specific cases in mind.) When all is said and done you - by making the claim you did - would be the one responsible for putting up *serious* backing for your statements.

I'm not at all attempting to dominate in rhetoric - I'm trying to say that careless generalization and overly ambitious assumptions can lead to *disastrous* errors.

You claimed to know more about me than you seem to realize with

you are only using the word "enjoy" to inflate your egoic reasoning.

by implicitly telling me that I was not only wrong but lying about it - and you did so again by assuming that I'm aggravated. (Honestly, if anything I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to find a new-ish member that I didn't want to whack with a large, inflatable cartoon hammer, and since you haven't completely eliminated yourself yet I was optimistic.) Again, I really don't doubt that you're trying to help someone else - a noble intention if there ever was one - but being aware of your assumptions is a *very* important part of analyzing the world around you and you went well beyond where you should have gone.

As far as knowing more about me from the posts here... it's not looking like you're learning much about me - you may be learning about your idealized straw man, but it's not likely that I'll fill that role. I have all of those silly little icons under my avatar for a reason - if something is unclear, you don't know if you've properly read my tone, or any question *at all* comes up, it's far safer, less confrontational, and more convenient to just ask me directly. If you want to see where I'm coming from, why I posted as I did, and what I had against your claims, PM or IM me (either soon after this post or tomorrow evening) and I'll clear things up as carefully as I can - there is no personal distrust or frustration, and I don't hold any kind of grudge against you for any reason at all... I really just saw bad things coming with the assumptions you made and the approach you took. (In the future, I'd appreciate it if you didn't assume that I was feeling insulted and personally attacked - I spend a great deal of effort assuming that everyone around me is sane, rational, patient, and not out to look for stupid arguments, so when - after essentially calling me weak and dishonest - you speak as if my motivation were not about what I stated but about some stupid, petty bitchfit, my patience runs a little thinner than I'd like.)

Jeff

 

[JBroll]

How I'd best relate that method to smoking is set aside a day real soon to get out of town and go be in a place where there's clean air, not like, a less busy street, genuinely clean air, not a car for miles around type thing, and DON'T SMOKE all day. Take big deep breaths and really make the attempt to taste the air, do this before you leave town as well, get a taste of the gasoline in the air from being around cars, really focus on picking these things out.
The association of the symbolic act of getting out of town for fresh, clean, unpolluted air and the physical act of no longer smoking should be just the ticket.

One of the back-breaking straws in my case was similar. For me, it wasn't even so much about the clean air (TCU-area Fort Worth isn't bad, but it's not perfect by any stretch) but about a change of pace and a sort of reboot between day-to-day nonsense - I get to do whatever I want with the vast majority of my time and I *still* need breaks and reboots, so I'm curious if the helpful part may be more a matter of "Nothing around me is the same, so I can be whatever I want and nobody will know the difference!"

My example... I went out of town for a conference and got to spend my entire day living, thinking, and breathing mathematics. At any given moment of the day I was either picking someone's brains for a new idea or watching someone pick them for me in a seminar, and this gave me a chance to reset a lot of things that I had been curious about changing - some changes became permanent and others didn't, but some disruption from autopilot helped a lot. I went a long weekend without smoking and didn't miss it - when I came back, I finished up and gave away what little handroll tobacco I had left (more a matter of obsessive-compulsive tendencies than anything else, since I hate waste) and didn't touch it again.

Jeff

 

[setyouranchor]

Anyway, I'm babbling, good luck man. I hope this helps somehow.

Thanks a lot for the info Gareth. Its all starting to make sense to me now. I know its not much, and as I'm not 110% ready (I'm still at 99% as I do enjoy 2/15 cigs, still not much i know) but today, I got up at 10 30, and tried out some of your guys tips, mind frames really. I had one cig when I got home today as I felt the craving but that was at 2:20. 4 hours of being up and about and not having a cig is a big deal to me... and ... it really wasnt that hard. I just broke the routine and dealt with it.

I know it kinda contradicts itself because I said it wasnt that hard but then that little demon craving came back and I had one. Guess I'm just weak, spineless and have deep insecure problems with my inner being

Anyhow, I know the day is close and it no longer seems like such a big task. Then again, it is kind of a confidence thing. Not "I'm not confident, I need to smoke!!" I mean I'm becoming more confident about the ideal of quitting and how its not that much of a goal if I want it.

Thanks so much for the help guys. Keep them tips coming!

Oh and Gareth, are you still smoking Tobacco?

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Took me 2 times of going cold turkey to quit. The first time I only made it a week, so it almost just doesn't count.

Then I met my wife and she was like "eww gross" so I quit. haha

Pretty easy motivator.

 

[setyouranchor]

I wish mah lady didn't smoke! Would make things easier!

Its annoying cuz I'm the one who convinced her to smoke in the car, at home and in her room haha

 

[GarethSE]

I've smoked tobacco on occaision, either with a bit of weed in with it if I'm with friends who smoke weed with tobacco, occaisionally cos I fancied a smoke and didn't have any cannabis, so it was just a temporary fix for a couple of hours and no more, and I don't mind that.

I feel perfectly healthy, no smoker's cough, excellent lungs, so I'm not worried. ^_^

 

[setyouranchor]

Fair enough dude, if you can handle it enough to go back and forth with ease, without addiction, then sweet!

Oh yeh, did you get yo ass down to Wales this summer?

 

[lilhermiejobo]

+1 to the cold turkey method.
I started smoking when I was 13 years old , although not much to start off with since I wasn't old enough to buy them , probably 2 or 3 cigarettes a day. By the time I was 16 I was approaching a pack of 20 a day. It wasn't rare, either, for me to smoke 2 packs in a day where I would be drinking that evening/night. My poison of choice was menthol 100s (they call them super kings here in Australia) and due to things like ( but not limited to) having to go outside to smoke even in the dead of winter (when I lived with my mother) I didn't enjoy smoking anymore by the time I was 21. The way I looked at it was pretty simple and straight forward; if you don't want to do something, don't do it.
My logic was that if I didn't want to repeatedly stab myself in the leg everyday, don't. At the end of the day, ultimately have to really WANT to not smoke anymore and once you reach that understanding with yourself it really is simple and straight forward because nobody is forcing you to smoke so you can easily just NOT do it anymore.
I'm only a couple months away from turning 29 and I'm still smoke free.

 

[Pot]

it´s all in your mind...want to quit...mentalize yourself of that and do it.....simple ...
shit, i´ve smoked for about 16 years and only tried to quit once , and it was at the first time i did it...

 

[DaveBlack]

I started when I was 17 and am now going on 26. Quit once for 2 months and another time for four months. Quit for the third time 6 months ago and hopefully this will be the last time. Although I've seen people go for ten years without it and then all of the sudden they start again. You have to accept that it's your choice to pick it up or put it down. I don't believe there's any sort of physical addiction.

It may seem like a lot to put out but the $150 bucks I spent on an E-cigg was one of the best investments I've made. I said fuck it one day and went cold turkey. Held out for about a week and then bought that, it was like heaven. Here I am six months later and the only time I really use the e-cigg is when I really really start craving like when I'm drinking. So I hardly spend any money on the cartridges. Maybe 10 bucks every 2 months.