Any Tips?

[kerry]

I need to quit smoking by the end of October. I need to do it by cutting back till I don't smoke any. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to make this a little less painful?

[hwc]

Good. Having cut back from 30 to 15 is probably a benefit for your ability to quit. It means that you've figured out how to not smoke in response to some of your smoking triggers. Good.

However, whether you cut back from 15 to 3 or from 15 to 0, you are going to put yourself into nicotine withdrawal just the same. One of those options has a rather significant payoff -- you will be kicking the active nicotine addiction. The other will cause the same unpleasantness (maybe even worse), but still leave you fully addicted to nicotine. Rather than do that, you'd be better off chewing nic gum. You still have the addiction to break down the road, but at least you are not smoking.

[kerry]

Is the gum expensive? Thanks for your support. How long ago did you quit?

[hwc]

I have no idea what the gum costs. I never used any pharmaceutical nicotine product.

I smoked at least a pack a day (2 packs for many years) for 38 years. I quit in February this year. Didn't decide to try to quit until I had lit my last cigarette. I took one puff, snuffed it out, and that was that.

Once I decided to quit and focused on the many positive benefits I would quickly gain rather than :"giving up" cigarettes (which weren't really that pleasant in the first place), quitting cold turkey wasn't that difficult. The first week kinda sucks. The first month is tiresome, but tolerable once you get past the first week. After the one month mark, things improve steadily.

People imagine the craves they feel now as nicotine addicts will be the craves they have for the rest of their lives. But, it's not like that. Once you break the nicotine addiction, all the little mind games you played to get a drug dose every 30 minutes or an hour start to lose their power and with them go the craves.

I've been quit now for eight months. I haven't averaged a thought a day about smoking since about the three or four month mark.

If you can get your mind right, you just quit, you ride out the intitial storm, and then you gradually learn to enjoy a better life as ex-smoker without the expense, the stink, the social outcast, and the health issues. "Giving up" cigarettes is like "giving up" cancer. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to "give it up"?