I have been asked, How . . .

[rrich]

The question has been over the years, "How did you do it?" As in how did you give up smoking?

The real answer is "I didn't."
Let me explain. There are two parts to smoking.
There is the smell of fresh tobacco. There is that first drag to savor. Just that initial mental pleasure, OMG. Then there is the physical. . . .

Keep the mental pleasure and stop the all the physical nastiness. Here is the game plan.

Keep your cigarettes with you. Your pleasures are already in your mind. Oh! It is time for that cigarette. Imagine that you are lighting up and that first drag. Put your fingers up to your mouth and inhale deeply and hold your breath as long a you can. Imagine that first drag and how good it tasted and felt. Just savor all that pleasure and eventually exhale. If you still have the urge, repeat that first drag. After the second time and possibly third, you don't really need that cigarette.

WOW! You just overwhelmed your senses wanting a cigarette. Will this technique work all day? Probably not, but that is OK. Go ahead, have one. If you made it through two today, you can do three or four tomorrow. By the end of the week you will probably make it through the whole day. Keep it up. At some point you won't need to put your fingers up to your mouth and by the end of the week you'll be able to say, "I haven't had a cigarette for 4 or 5 days." In a month you will be a non-smoker. Use the breath holding trick as often as needed. Like I said, it has been 53 years this month.

Good luck my friends.

[Chris Parks]

I had a more straight forward method, I walked out of the xray place after they told me they could not see the bottom half of my right lung (Pleurisy), threw the nearly full pack of smokes in the bin outside the door and never thought about smoking again. I must admit that for some years afterwards I did not mind smelling fresh smoke but I never had the urge to take it up again.

[DavidG]

My reason was simple.

My wife said that if I gave up smoking then she would buy me a Vicmarc VL300 evs.
I went cold turkey that night.
I have a nice lathe.

[mattocks]

I'm a cardiac nurse.
I used to spend a lot of time trying to talk people into giving up.
Now I just say "thanks for keeping me in a job"

[AlexS]

I'd tried for years to give up with no success, I think partly because I wasn't feeling any ill effects. I started riding a pushbike 25km each way to work - I'd have a cigarette immediately before I left, then another as soon as I arrived. Then I started riding with some other guys and couldn't keep up, so decided to quit. Every time I felt like a smoke I'd have a drink of water. At work, I'd find an excuse to go to another floor, and run up & down the stairs instead of using the lift. Then I used my ashtray to store paperclips. That made it permanent.
In the first 2 weeks after I gave up, my time between home and work dropped from 55 to 45 minutes, and they used the stuff I coughed up to surface the Pacific Highway.
I lapsed for a while quite a few years later, when I started smoking cigars, because I loved the smell of the smoke and the taste, but had no trouble giving them up - just stopped.

[Chief Tiff]

To me it was environmental; I only smoked at work or was away but at home I didn’t feel any desire. The fact I could smoke like a chimney for 3 months straight on an overseas deployment and then go home for two weeks without touching a ciggie really annoyed some of my oppos! But as soon as I’d arrive at the dockyard gate; BANG! the craving for a smoke kicked straight in and it was overpowering. I could fight it for a day or two but succumbed every time.

In realised that in order to properly quit I needed to change my environment; this was achieved by emigrating to Aus nearly 17 years ago so that was another benefit to moving Down Under!

One problem though, I remained a sucker for cigars, pipes and shisha. It would start as “just one cigar when we get into port”, but then that became my new environment for triggering the smokes. In the end I just had to accept to myself that I was as weak as wee-wee and could never again have “just one” because one would become many again very shortly.

I’ve been totally clean now for over 6 years and I’m determined to stay that way with just one future smoke in me; in my hutch I have a single Romeo Y Julliet Churchill “short” along with a bottle of 1987 vintage port. That year represents the year I first entered the workforce (RN Artificer apprentice) so they will be hit on my retirement day!

[Tonyz]

Keep the mental pleasure and stop the all the physical nastiness. Here is the game plan.

Keep your cigarettes with you. Your pleasures are already in your mind. Oh! It is time for that cigarette. Imagine that you are lighting up and that first drag. Put your fingers up to your mouth and inhale deeply and hold your breath as long a you can. Imagine that first drag and how good it tasted and felt. Just savor all that pleasure and eventually exhale. If you still have the urge, repeat that first drag. After the second time and possibly third, you don't really need that cigarette.

was just browsing sections Ive never been to before and found this thread.
was interested in this comment having recently spent time in Uganda with a group of people from my church. One of the team had a box of Favourite chocolates. Now one day one of the empty wrappers blew away.
I watched in awe and amazement to see a kid about 8 years old grab it.
Then he carefully wrapped up his imaginary chocolate, put it in his pocket walked around about 5 minutes,
then puts hand goes into his pocket, his face lights up crazy as he pulls out this chocolate,
looks at it,
smells it, beams with joy.
the slowly slowly unwraps this imaginary chocolate,
smells it again
then slowly puts it onto his outstretched tongue
and draws it into his mouth.

I was spellbound at the intense pleasure he had with his chocolate.

for his reward a real one happened to fall into his hand, I didnt/could stand to watch the outcome, I was a blubbering mess at the simple things in life we have, but that your imagination can be so powerful.