FACT: Quitting smoking makes me want to kill random people for fun

I’ve quit before (6 months or do) so I’m a relapse at this point.

Last time, I had just graduated and wasn’t starting work for a while, so I barricaded myself in my room, handed my keys to my parents and basically hid in the middle of nowhere until I could function.

I’ve tried pulling off a quit when not in that situation and it was impossible for me.

Now there are three places I can buy smokes 24/7 less than half a block away, and I work next door to another. And both my roommates? Smokers. My coworkers? Smokers! Plus, no vacation.

So my options are irritating patch or abject failure!

Edit: on the plus side this thread is a great place for me to drop crazy bombs! Big help being able to just page vomit when I’m getting cranky about the lack of the smoking I’m missing. Despite the constant influx of nicotine, I’m seriously jonesing for a smoke.

So I had to quit smoking because of some weird (fortunately not health related) circumstances. I went through a couple of packets of gums and did it with relative ease - I had no other option anyway. Now, a few months later, those circumstances are changed, I could smoke if I wanted, and I’m starting to experience cravings all over again. I hate my brain and he hates me back.

Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. Tell your brain to fuck off.

And then take a deep breath and another.

The craving will pass.

Learn to hate it. If you’re smell sensitive, go eat where someone is smoking. If you’re a fancypants, go to the projects and associate smoking with the downtrodden. If you’re worried about health go hang out in a hospital and watch all the folks with oxygen tanks. Hate is a very useful emotion in this case.

H.

Yes, the last thing I want to do is to start again just because I could. It was stupid enough the first time, and now I know what I’d be getting into. Just wanted to share how bullshit an addicted brain can act, I mean when I realized the cravings were coming back -and after thinking a bit the reason why- I was like “no fucking way!”.
And the most annoying thing is I’m having to cut back on alcohol too, because I always associated the two things and now I can’t seem to enjoy one without obsessing about the other.

Anyway, to post something beside me venting, the trick that is most helpful in keeping me in line is to remember how back then I always wanted to quit (just never finding the right moment to do it) and how I envied non smokers. Now I’m there, I have put in 95% of the required effort and hassle, and I’m not going back for no fucking reason just to have to start again from scratch. Success through laziness.

What? My Nipples Could Fall Off? Color me intrigued.

I realize this will likely not apply to many folks here … but, you never know.

What if you just don’t like your nipples and want them to fall off? What then, Mr. Smarty Guy.

I can’t remember if I’ve read anything concrete on this or if it’s just folk wisdom, but is a pack a day the threshold at which a smoking habit becomes brutally difficult for most people to kick?

I was one of those half-a-pack people (and not for that long) so I can’t really relate to peoples’ war stories.

Jason, how did you quit your half-a-pack habit? Did you ever feel as if you were hooked? I’m not sure it has as much to do with the number of cigarettes you smoke as it does your relationship to the cigarettes you do smoke. In military boot camp and various other times in my life, I was unable to smoke any cigarettes (or only a few), but as soon as I graduated/moved on/got better, I immediately started smoking again, at the same rate I had been smoking when I stopped.

I smoked when I drank, and, having moved to Britain - better yet Scotland, land of healthy habits - I started getting packs so as not to be a nicotine burden. My smoking migrated out from a bar activity to smoke breaks at work (everyone at my factory smoked) to just whenever.

For price reasons I switched from dainty Marlboro Lites to unfiltered Golden Viriginia rollies, so “half a pack a day” more or less means “10-12 cigarettes a day.”

As for why I quit, I had a friend with a pretty nasty cough and had a few kind of alarming windedness/coughing episodes myself, particularly one day when I was (literally) running late for work and found myself hacking and gagging on the sidewalk for a few minutes. I stopped getting tobacco and didn’t get back into the habit of bumming smokes, stayed out of the breakroom, etc.

But it was clearly an order of magnitude easier than quitting a proper smoking habit, which is why I asked if anyone’d heard of some threshold (pack a day eg) after which quitting tends to be serious business.

Yeah, that’s maybe not hooked. Hooked is when you cough like that and you’re thinking as you’re hacking that you can’t wait to stop choking so you can light up a cigarette and calm your nerves which are ragged from all the coughing.

At that point, pack a day or just a few, you are hooked and it’s going to be a bitch.

If you run out of smokes at 2AM during a blizzard and go out to buy more rather than just going to sleep, you’re a smoker.

I agree with Tim, likely it differs for different people so you can’t really draw a line in the sand and say that it would be easier to quit if you only smoke X cigarettes a day.

You have people like my mom who has smoked every day her entire adult life and never quit. She probably smokes around a half a pack a day and has got it down to as few as two or three but never quit.

I also think you were lucky Jason, it seems you were pointed in the direction of smoking more rather than less, but were able to stop more easily when you were right on the verge of becoming a more regular smoker.

I think the trouble with it is, it is a highly addictive behavior and drug so even if you aren’t smoking a pack a day, for many people, it ends up being extremely hard to quit. In your own case, you had drinking as a trigger for smoking - I think that is true for a lot of people, which makes it hard not to do it in certain situations (and when you are less likely to be able to resist the allure, temptation, habit).

I have quit a lot of things in my life. The two hardest were drinking and smoking. I thought quitting smoking was the hardest thing I ever did in my life for a long time (I quit 28 years ago) but then, for me, learned that it was harder by many orders of magnitude to put the plug in the jug.

Congratulations on quitting, but this is a good reminder that if you start again, you might not have such an easy time of stopping again.

Stusser, good point there, you can use some of those checks you do for booze, like what lengths you go to to smoke. In my case, I remember I smoked a cigarette every morning before I even got dressed, and that even if I was really, really sick I had to still smoke (even if I had a bad cough and cold, it took a lot before I wouldn’t smoke).

PS - if you are having breast implant surgery to in theory enhance your attractiveness, but willing to take the risk that your nipples will fall off which probably doesn’t do a lot for your appeal and continue to smoke, you’re hooked.

I only smoke when I drink. I roll my own, Drum Halfzware. If I’m not drinking I have no craving to smoke at all. In fact if I’m not sitting down to make a night of it, I don’t smoke either. Like if I have a few drinks with dinner, no urge.

You’re in good shape, then. Whatever it is that hooks people, you ain’t got it, though that doesn’t mean you should increase your smoking.

H.

You and my doctor are in agreement. :-)

And all the ex-smokers are thinking: Lucky bastard.

So are the current smokers.

Lol, yep.

Shit…