Need Advice!!!! People who quit something and succeeded

Plongmire1 wrote: »

I'm going to quit smoking but need to hear success stories and how you quit. Or what did you quit and how?

I just looked at my cigarettes one day, decided I didn't want to get emphysema, threw them away, and never looked back. I drank coffee as a calming routine instead.

Now that I think about it, I quit nail-biting when I was 15. I basically just decided. I also quit eating meat In my 20s. For this, I had to convince myself. Once I was convinced it was a net positive I stopped. Both times it was cold turkey. For nail-biting I started putting on bright colors on my nails that would easily show if the nail polish was chipped. I started growing my nails too. For meat, I stopped buying meat and at events, I would look elsewhere until it became a habit.

I don't know where that willpower came from honestly. Maybe as one of the commenters said: where there is a will there is a way.

I smoked a pack a day of Marlboro reds for 8 years. When I became pregnant, I quit cold turkey. I was now responsible for someone else. That was all the motivation I needed. The cravings never went away though. Twelve years later, I was going through a stressful situation and started smoking again. I only smoked about a half a pack a day of Marlboro lights this time. After smoking for 13 years, January of 2022, I quit smoking cigarettes again. This time, I quit for me. I tried using hard candy for my cravings. I ended up putting on 20 pounds and now I'm here. Like food, I get cigarette craving too. When I first wake up in the morning, after a meal, and when I feeling irritable or stressed. Sometimes, I would to have a cigarette instead of eating. Now, I drink water. It's a lot about will-power. You have to really want to quit, be determined, motivated, and committed.

For years I quit and then started up. I finally succeeded when I took a course from the American Cancer Society and we were slowly weaned off cigarettes. The leader also told us that we had to accept that we could NEVER have another cigarette...something I hadn't accepted. I also started playing the recorder at the time so learning something new helped. That was almost 40 years ago.

I quit smoking in my 20s. I got nothing out of it, it cost money I didn't have and knocks something like 7 minutes of your life. I was smoking out of habit and killing myself for no good reason. I stopped one habit cig at a time, and got down to cigs I 'needed' rather than the specific times of day that I was used to smoking. At this point I was already not smoking for most of the day and soon didn't 'need' them at all. Then it was just smoking when drinking - that was harder to break, but we could still smoke in pubs and clubs back then. Then it was just when I was on holiday where cigs were cheap. Then I switched cities where no one knew me as a smoker and never smoked again!

On reflection I could have done it much quicker, but I can't say it was difficult.

Plongmire1 wrote: »

I'm going to quit smoking but need to hear success stories and how you quit. Or what did you quit and how?

Quit smoking now the 2nd time (1st time lasted for 2-3 years). Quit drinking sodas as well now the 2nd time. But to be honest, I don't think there's like a secret recipe or thing you can do. For me it was always just a decision. With the smoking it helped that both times I started with 2 weeks of covid, so that gave a boost to begin, but all in all, it's about making a decision and stick to it.
What can help when you want to linger back:
- Think about how much money you save (usually quite a lot)
- Think about how much better you feel, how much you help yourself long term (depending on what you are quitting, there might be more or less)
- Think about why you quit, as people can have several reasons
- Think about how strong you are, how proud you are of yourself every day you are not doing it
- Replace with some other (healthy) habits. This one actually might be a little cheat code, because quitting something usually hard more because of stopping a habit, than anything else like nicotine or stuff like that. So to mitigate the pain of losing a habit, you can pick up a new one.

Also sorry to say, but smoking is especially hard. It's much quicker to stop eating sugar and things like that, and also just accept that one does not simply quit smoking forever. It will always try to come back and you will always have thoughts you should do it. But what makes it a little easier is you save a ton of money, and you feel the effects quite soon and quite significant, so usually you can keep it up for long periods just by thinking about these things.