Chew your way out of cigarette addiction

[Demetrius123]

There are several tools to give up smoking. Some work and some do not. Why? Probably it also depends upon the will of the individual to give up smoking. The quit smoking therapies in the form of home remedies, medications, grandmothers recipe or nicotine patch or nicotine gum are some of the most preferred treatments which helps an individual give up smoking easily. All of these are terms which in general or together are known as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT). The work of such nicotine gums or any other NRT’s is that they reduce the urge to smoke significantly thus helping them to give up smoking easily.
<SPAM SNIPPED>

[Ancient Dragon]

Ok, I'm going to pretend this is not just spam and put in my 2 cents worth. I quit smoking in 2001 after some 40 years. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but well worth it. I tried patches but they didn't work for me, most likely because I continued to smoke while wearing them. Finally I just told my wife "enough is enough" and tossed the cigaretts away. I substituted things to eat, like carrots. I ate so may carrots my skin turned yellow. And I ate everything that wasn't nailed down -- gaining about 50 lbs.

Now I don't miss them at all, and have saved over $65,500 figuring today's prices ($6.00 per pack), or enough to buy me two new cars or a new house.

[susheelsundar]

i do smoke, but not that much, i am not addicted to smoke, i don't understand, i did smoke weed too but i am not addicted.

[Ancient Dragon]

If you smoke cigarettes, then you are addicted. Doesn't matter how much or how little you smoke. It only takes 1 cigarette to do the dirty job.

If you don't think you are addicted then stop smoking because there is no point to it and you will save some money too.

[susheelsundar]

If you smoke cigarettes, then you are addicted. Doesn't matter how much or how little you smoke. It only takes 1 cigarette to do the dirty job.

If you don't think you are addicted then stop smoking because there is no point to it and you will save some money too.

sometimes, i don't smoke one for 'days'.

[Kraai]

Hello, my name is Kraai and I am addicted to sigarette smoking. I am like a chimney. The thought of quitting makes me light up two at once, just for incase.

[jon.kiparsky]

Now I don't miss them at all, and have saved over $65,500 figuring today's prices ($6.00 per pack), or enough to buy me two new cars or a new house.

Where are you living that a house goes for $65K? There's a two-bedroom condo down the street from me, $289K is the asking price...

[Kraai]

I don't think Ancient Dragon saved 65K. Unless the carrots and other eating stuff were free of charge?

[Agilemind]

Smoking is terrible for you and will kill you eventually, there is just no good reason to start.

Addictions are a tough thing to break, each person has to come to their own reasons to quit and have to really want it. My mother quit smoking cold turkey without any aids.

[Ezzaral]

I quit cold turkey as well.

Nicotine replacement therapy (gums, patches, etc) just puts off the inevitable nicotine withdrawal. Until you stop taking in any nicotine at all, you're still addicted. They claim that NRT helps you first break the "cigarette habit" and then you can just slowly ween yourself off the nicotine, but that's just bullshit. NRT only lengthens the process and puts money in the pockets of the people selling the products.

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man and getting off the gum or patch is going to suck just as much as stopping cold turkey from the start. You may as well save the expense and face the withdrawal head-on from the beginning. You're going to eventually aynway.

(And yeah the OP was just copy-paste spam, but since some discussion grew out of it, I suppose it should stay up without the link)

[jon.kiparsky]

Smoking is terrible for you and will kill you eventually

Serious? You think all (or even most) smokers die of illnesses related to smoking?

Citation, please.
Yes, smoking does cause heart and lung disease, and among the potential complications are cancer, and yes, you're right, a person whose sole motivator is being the oldest guy in the nursing home won't start.
All of that conceded, so you don't need to make that case.

None of that supports your claim that all smokers die of smoking.

(And no, I'm not a smoker, so you can't say I'm just defending my habit)

[jon.kiparsky]

Some of the claims made above look familiar:

If you drink alcohol, then you are addicted. Doesn't matter how much or how little you drink. It only takes 1 drink to do the dirty job.

If you don't think you are addicted then stop drinking wine with dinner because there is no point to it and you will save some money too

Until you stop taking in any alcohol at all, you're still addicted

Still sounds good to you?

[Kraai]

Question to Ezzaral:

What motivated you to stop cold turkey?

I need that type of motivation!!

[Ezzaral]

Jon, I was referring to a regular smoker, who actually is physically addicted to nicotine. The physical addiction itself remains until the body has had a sufficient period of time completely free of nicotine in which to mend itself of that dependence. It is a chemical process. My point is that until you face that period of time, the physiological addiction is still there.

I didn't make any claim about people getting addicted from one hit of nicotine, so I'm not sure why you're trying to use my statement to make your point. I don't think there's really any medical disagreement that a physiological addiction will not heal itself until the addicting substance is removed.

My statements weren't made to preach to anyone that they need to quit anything nor to engage in fear mongering to prevent them from trying something. That's their own choice and potentially their own problem. I was merely addressing the fact the nicotine replacement therapy isn't some magical, easy way to give up smoking. Giving up nicotine is the way to give up smoking. NRT just delays that process.

[BitBlt]

I smoked for 20 years, pack-a-day. I quit 3 years ago. I was sort of forced to quit smoking because the price of cigarettes went up so dramatically. My brother-in-law gave me a book by a fellow named Allen Carr called "The Easy Way to Quit Smoking". Google it (I'm not going to put up a link so I'm not accused of spamming). After reading his book I just didn't feel like smoking anymore. No patch, no gum no "cold turkey". Not "self-hypnosis", not "aversion therapy", not scary statistics or graphic pictures of shoe-leather lungs, or any pseudo-psychology babble. By the time I finished the book I had stopped smoking completely. It took about a month (I didn't read it straight through) to finish. Will it work for you? Maybe. My brother-in-law stopped smoking for a year, then started again. I haven't had a cigarette since I quit. It worked for me.
</evangelizing>

<evangelizing again>
Oh, and I haven't gained any weight...still 6'2" 205.
</evangelizing again>

[Ezzaral]

(Edit: Wow, quite a coincidental cross-post. I was writing this when BitBlt posted... yeah, I was busy trying to do other stuff as well, so I'm slow...)

@kraai: I smoked for 23 years. Started around 15 and quit at 38. I tried quitting a few times, tried the gum, tried the patch, but never really committed to it enough. So I just kept smoking and occasionally would think, "Yeah, I really need to give this up some day".

It was during one of those times that I ran across some recommendations of a book by Alan Carr, "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking". There were a lot of positive reviews about it by people who said it really helped them quit. It was a pretty inexpensive book, so I figured it couldn't hurt to drop by the book store and check it out.

I ended up buying it and can honestly give that book the credit for my finally quitting. He does a really good job of showing you just how little you're getting out of it and how much you already know that. As a former smoker, he'd been though it all before and knew the mindset. He actually recommends that you keep smoking while you read the book, which makes it a much less daunting attempt at quitting.

I'll admit that I had to read it three times before I did finally bite the bullet and just quit, but that book did eventually get me to that point. It got me to the mind set that I needed. The withdrawal period isn't physically painful - it's mentally painful, as you already know if you've tried to quit or cut back before.

I don't really ever tell people that they should quit and I can understand exactly why some never try, but if you do think about quitting, I'd recommend giving that book a quick read. It helped me a lot.

[Ancient Dragon]

For anyone who may be interested this is a good article about tobaco and its ill effects. As noted in the article its not just the nicotine but hundreds of other deadly chemicals which poison every organ in the body.

[sergent]

Quote ...

Now I don't miss them at all, and have saved over $65,500 figuring today's prices ($6.00 per pack), or enough to buy me two new cars or a new house.

Where are you living that a house goes for $65K? There's a two-bedroom condo down the street from me, $289K is the asking price...

You probably live in California lol. 289k is too expensive. But 65k is too little.

[jon.kiparsky]

You probably live in California lol. 289k is too expensive. But 65k is too little.

Massachusetts. Sorry, I was mistaken: it's a one bedroom

[sergent]

I used to smoke in Russia but then I moved to US and here I cannot find
cigarette anywhere so I just quit. When there was something to smoke it was tempting so I just kept smoking. But now I just can't so I got un-addicted pretty fast.

[jon.kiparsky]

I didn't make any claim about people getting addicted from one hit of nicotine, so I'm not sure why you're trying to use my statement to make your point.

You might not have intended it, but the statement I quoted implies that nicotine usage simply is addiction. I'm sorry if I mistook your meaning. In any case, it does read an awful lot like the temperance society's view of alcohol, doesn't it?

And that view was always wrong. It's simply not true that the choice is between total abstience and addiction, and as long as you promulgate that view, you give addicts an easy choice: stay addicted, because you'll never make it cold turkey.

I've seen this go on in a good friend of mine, who finally gave up the idea of quitting heroin cold turkey and went into a methadone program. A few years later, he was clean - it takes a while, but weaning by substitution can work, and apparently involves a lot less vomiting and suicidal ideation in the case of heroin, than the cold turkey method.

It's also misleading to say that "the physical addiction remains until you stop using" - that's true, but it weakens as you take less. This is why junkies who try to quit so often overdose.

I guess I'm just saying that instead of a dogmatic "the way that worked for me is the one true way" approach, it's probably better to get an addict to the point where they actually want to quit, and figure out what will get them quit, and then support them in that. And instead of saying "the only measure of success is total abstention", find a goal that the user actually cares about and get them to that point. If they're smoking two packs a day, and you help them get down to one, that makes it a lot easier for them to envision going down to, say three packs a week. Or, patches. Or, find someone who makes those stupid electric cigarettes and make a quitter's version, that dials back the dosage progressively. Whatever it is - let the user decide how they're going to stop using or reduce their usage, and you're going to get a lot better results.

[Ancient Dragon]

As for alcohol it is true, for some people at least, that moderate usage will not lead to addiction to alcohol. If it did then I would have been addicted to alcohol many many years ago. The same is not true of tobacco.

As for the $65,000 house -- depends of course on where you live. In Los Angeles, California you couldn't get a dog house for that little. Almost as bad in Seattle, Washington. Modest homes around where I live run about $100,000 or so.

[Ezzaral]

> You might not have intended it, but the statement I quoted implies that nicotine usage simply is addiction
In the vast majority of cases, it is. I'm not speaking of the people who have perhaps 3 cigarettes a year at a party or a cigar once a month on poker night. I'm talking about semi-regular use, such as at least weekly.

> you give addicts an easy choice: stay addicted, because you'll never make it cold turkey.
I am making the case that eventually you have to stop and face the withdrawal and I am speaking solely of nicotine - not heroin or alcohol, which have far greater medically significant physical effects from withdrawal. "Cold turkey" from nicotine is nowhere in the same ballpark of detox. I would never suggest you approach them the same way.

I do get what you're saying, but my point is that your body will remain addicted until you get off the nicotine entirely. It doesn't just dial back to a state of "a little bit addicted" as you cut your intake. You are still just as addicted and your body is craving a certain level of nicotine in your blood stream. How you respond to that craving may vary and some people obviously can tolerate longer periods of abstention more easily than others, but that doesn't change the existence of the craving. Most cutting back fails pretty quickly as your body pushes you back to that level that it has gotten used to functioning at. It's a matter of chemical balance at that point.

As I understand from all my reading prior to quitting, the recidivism rate for those who use nicotine replacements to quit is exceedingly high. Anecdotally, I can tell you that neither the gum nor the patch worked for me. I did stay off smokes for two weeks on the patch, but I picked them back up and didn't try to quit again for many years. That of course is just my own experience. I know many other people who failed with gum/patch/inhaler as well, but again that is also anecdotal. Those things do help some people quit, but I think a lot more fail with them because they pop on a patch and make themselves not smoke for a short time. Later they realize, "Damn, I still want to smoke. These just aren't working, so I may as well go back to smoking." Well, yeah, I'm sorry but getting past nicotine addiction is going to take a little more grit than that. Even if you avoid cigarettes successfully, once you start getting off the patch or gum you are going to have the withdrawal cravings. The ones that are successful at that point are the ones who most likely would have fared just as well going cold turkey.

I'm won't say it's the only way to go. I'm just sharing my opinion on how effective (or rather ineffective) the nicotine replacement products are in helping people quit. That opinion is based on personal experience with them, anecdotal experiences of others that I know, and a lot of reading in my smoking years.

At the end of the day, quitting is a personal battle that each person is going to face in their own head in their own way. I'm not going to condemn anyone's attempt and I know just how it feels to try and fail repeatedly. I'm only writing this all of this here because maybe the perspective will be helpful to someone else who decides to quit.

[Ezzaral]

This was another site that had a lot of info online: http://whyquit.com/

[jon.kiparsky]

At the end of the day, quitting is a personal battle that each person is going to face in their own head in their own way. I'm not going to condemn anyone's attempt and I know just how it feels to try and fail repeatedly.

I wonder if I could find you a good quote about that? :)

Fair enough. Carry on.

[MosaicFuneral]

I pay virtually nothing for smokes, the most expensive part is the rolling papers, and have gone without smoking for months at a time and at peak I don't usually smoke more than three in a week(which means I still get that knocked-off-your-arse nicotine buzz).

Similar relation with alcohol. Just got to be willing to harvest the fruits, yeast, and spices from your own yard.

Though coffee... had to quit that. A pot a morning was messing me up, took about two months to tapper it down and stay off.

[sneekula]

There are even people addicted to second hand smoke! Little kids in particular.