How many times did you try to quit before you quit for good?

[WhispersQSMB]

 It has taken me over 10 attempts, i honestly stopped counting. Whats crazy is my first quit attempt 02/10/2010 wasn't as tough as the attempts after, i was told get past 30 days and you're in the clear by a good friend. I believed him. After i blew that on 9/24/2012 i made the mistake of putting off quitting. I didn't go right back to a pack a day but here and there and within a month i was back. I waited until early march 2015 to quit again, and relapse after relapse. Some quits were a few weeks, 1 was over 3 months until i decided on 11/25/2015 i was done beating myself up.

[avian3]

0  It took me a long time to to make the decision, but thanks to my determination and the education I received from a quit smoking forum, I never relapsed. The other thing that helped was when someone would say that you can't have just one. So many relapsers apparently have to find out for themselves and that just reinforced for me the fact that you can't have just one. I took their word for it.

[WhispersQSMB]

I had this F-it attitude, my mother was diagnosed terminal and it shook me. I wasn't prepared at all for it , smoking didn't help the situation at all but it was this nervous/anxious reaction i had on 9/24

[sweetplt]

Two other quits...this is my third and last...Three’s a charm...~ Colleen 246 DOF 

[TW517]

I had 6 what I call "serious" attempts at quitting before this one.  Those were quits that lasted more than a couple weeks.  The longest was 11 months, the shortest 4 1/2 weeks.  With all of them, I used NRTs heavily the entire time and didn't have terrible nicotine withdrawals.  This quit was cold turkey.  Pretty intense cravings for awhile, but glad I did it that way this time.  On my 813th day of freedom!

[Sootie]

That's a hard one to answer.......

I smoked for many years and I would "quit" for a day or two or sometimes maybe a week or two.....never really a long----so not sure if you can call allof that a quit.  Then, I quit for 13 years. Yes....sad to say I did quit for that long and went back to it. You simply cannot smoke one cigarette.............ever.

Now, I am quit for almost 10 years. I know I would never smoke a cigarette. I don't want to.....not in the least. As I have said before on this site, I almost cannot believe I ever smoked.....cannot believe I was that person. But I was.

[Thomas3.20.2010]

I quit dozens of times literally. The difference with this quit is that I was diagnosed with COPD. How stupid is that? It took a chronic, progressive, incurable smoking-related illness for me to really mean it! Don't make that mistake!

[YoungAtHeart]

I hadconvinced myself of two things:  1) if I ate a healthy diet (ZERO crap - lots of veggies, no red meat, etc.) and exercised EVERY day (either swimming or walking a minimum of 30 minutes weekdays and an hour on weekends)  I could negate the bad effects of smoking and 2) I did not have enough willpower to quit;I was gonna' die a smoker.  I never even tried to quit......

A vascular surgeon apprised me of the fallacy of #1!  When he told me that he could make my clogged arteries 50 years old again, that I would need the surgery again if I continued to smoke, and that I was probably not going to be healthy enough for him to do it - it got my attention.  Left unsaid was that I might actually lose a foot - or a leg - from bad circulation...............

I found a doctor to support me, took Chantix, quit seven days later and found this website and its GREAT information about four days later ---- and that was 7+ years ago.

First and only attempt.  Not easy - but doable.  I think the information and support provided here made the difference.  I am so grateful that I continue to hang around to pay it forward.

If I had known how truly wonderful freedom from addiction was, I would have quit well BEFORE it so impacted my health.

Don't wait!

[WhispersQSMB]

My mother also waited until she had emphysema, she told me to quit look what it did to her. She lived miserably for years not being able to breathe, tanks, machines. I saw this and didn't try to quit until years after. Foolish of me

[elvan]

I can't count that high.  I smoked for 47 years and I tried repeatedly to quit smoking, I HATED smoking.  I have now been quit for over 5 1/2 years...I did a LOT of damage by continuing to smoke.  My only regret about quitting is that I did not do it sooner, this site made all of the difference in the world.  I still come here most days, I came every morning and every evening at the beginning.  '

Ellen