Quitting Smoking

[Captain Grace OMalley]

I have been having trouble finding ways to quit smoking. Even though I have been smoking for less than a year, it is already having a pretty decent impact on my health. I have been having heart palpitations and chest pains whenever I start smoking, developed a sports asthma, and I don't feel like I have energy anymore until I have smoked. I haven't even smoked heavily in the 8 months I have been smoking, but that doesn't seem to matter.

Everyone that I live with smokes as well, so there are always packs of cigerets lying around on counters and tables, making it very hard to stop smoking. I also haven't tried the patch yet, because there other chemicals in cigaretes that are addictive then just nicotine that the patch wont provide. I just feel like it wouldn't be effective.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can stop smoking?  

[bandaidd]

Wish I was as full of great advice on this one. I'm not. I count myself lucky or oddly wise in my youth. Not sure when, but I decided not to ever try anything that was addicting... and I didn't.*

I had a brother who successfully quit tobacco smoking after a bad trip smoking something else... he had hit rock bottom in his life and decided to go cold turkey. It's hard to recommend that to anyone because he went through a lot but he was determined/desperate and he's still smoke free 10+ years later.

I do have other friends who use the patch or e-cigs with varying success, which means none of them have quit really.

If it was those drugs that kill you faster than tobacco, I'd recommend doing what you can to get away from people who smoke all the time. Move into a "no smoking" apartment, etc. Not the kind of advice anyone wants to hear or is easy to implement, because hey. They are your friends. But it would greatly increase your chances of success in this particular goal.

One other thing. Start cutting down on your caffeine. It can add to the heart palpitations and chest pain. If you are a regular caffeine drinker, you may get headaches when you try to cut down quickly. You can minimize this by sleeping more and getting extra fluids. I'd keep tylenol or ibuprofen handy though for headache just in case.

*up until very recently. I'm 51 as of this month and I've tried both alcohol and mj for my headaches in the last 2 years. I had codeine for a cough- age 22, demerol for childbirth- age 23... and caffeine for headaches again-- around age 40. I hate them all. Still haven't tried tobacco. I'm so done smoking. Coughed my lungs out with the mj episode.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

MJ makes you cough more than tobacco {given that you're smoking it}, but tobacco is addictive while MJ isn't.... not physically anyway. Someone might develop a psychological addiction, but it doesn't have anything in it that causes a physical dependence like caffeine, nicotine, codeine, etc.

Personally, I just quit cold turkey, but then again, I didn't smoke cigarettes much to begin with, so it was easy for me even with all my friends smoking around me and living with my mum at the time, who also smoked.

One thing I heard helps some people is to occupy your hands or mouth with something else when you get a craving, such as chew gum {doesn't have to be nicotine gum} or sewing. This is basically a means of treating the psychological addiction. After enough time off them, the physical addiction will subside. The psychological part is really what makes most people keep going back to them.  

[killafrog]

My friend he just rolled up a grass cig to smoke; well after that he said "he just basicly dumped smoking."
I was like w/e works for you, i guess.
If he really did that Idk as I wasn't there.  

[Captain Grace OMalley]

Well, due to severe allergies this year, I haven't been able to smoke anything, not even my e-cig. in about 5 days now. I'm going through the nicotine withdraw like mad right now, but I might just be forced to quit. (Not sure if anyone else has ever tried smoking with hay fever before, but it's a very unpleasant experience.) Let's just hope I am able to avoid picking the habit back up once the allergies subside.

As far as mj goes, I can't touch the stuff. I have tried it a few times in the past, every time in the past have had a very bad reaction to it. I basically curled up into a ball on the floor screaming and crying, thinking I was going to die. I'd be like that for an hour before any of my friends were able to calm me down. So, no mj Gracie.

And also, who wouldn't want to quit after smoking grass? That's just gross.  

[bandaidd]

Oh! speaking of gross, i know something that works... you get someone who's sneaky and has lots of time and sewing skills and horse hair.

Then they go through the house every day and thread a horse hair through each cig and make it invisible and secretly mark the packs that are done. Then when people smoke them, they are totally nasty... because well burning horsehair is not flavorful. In a pinch you could use human hair, but you' need more because it's not as robust or nail clippings, harder to thread.

This is a super old trick from back when they didn't have patches or e-cigs. Like when my grandma was chasing dinosaurs. I just remembered it. You so lucky to know it now. 3nodding

And I'm a little confused. I thought smoking grass was the same as smoking mj. Lots of people do that more than once and don't think it tastes yucky. Maybe it's the color. Like you have to have purple or bubblegum or some other kind of special flavor. I don't know these thingies.  

[Captain Grace OMalley]

lol horse hair? Really? I'm good enough at sewing to do that, just gotta be able to get the horse-hair. Maybe if I could get the people around here to stop smoking, it would easier for me to.

I've never used the term grass for mj before. So, I thought he meant actual grass. Which would be horrible to smoke. Mj tastes bad to, but I hear different strands of it have different tastes. I only tried two or three different strands.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Captain Grace OMalley

I basically curled up into a ball on the floor screaming and crying, thinking I was going to die. I'd be like that for an hour before any of my friends were able to calm me down. So, no mj Gracie.

... that doesn't sound like MJ. I don't know what you were smoking, but that wasn't MJ, or it was laced with something else.

Might have a reaction like that from something like taking too many shrooms or a bad trip on ecstasy or even LSD possibly, but that's not what MJ does. Not saying you should try it again or anything, just stating that you probably weren't on MJ.

And yes, different strains taste different, and there's thousands of them.  

[killafrog]

Yes the stuff you feed horse, cows and goats "grass" I wasn't meaning MJ  

[Captain Grace OMalley]

Diamond_Wales

Ok, I figured I could throw my two cents in since I have quit smoking before for almost a year. Though the way that happened I wouldn't recommend unless you were wanting them to begin with. I got pregnant and quit cold turkey, and well pregnancy hormones and nicotine withdrawal suck when both are going at the same time. I did start back up again when I started freaking out about being a young mother, and I have thought from time to time to try quitting again, but it's a lot easier to quit when someone else around you doesn't smoke. My husband smokes, but he quit the same time I did. He started back up however before I did, so that didn't help.

Never tried MJ, but that's more for health reasons than anything else. I'm severely allergic, and the smell alone will cause me to have an asthmatic reaction. Makes me paranoid when I do smell it, since my kids could have the same allergy (it runs in the family, my father was also severely allergic).

Pregnancy wouldn't really work for me, though I have seen people actually quit smoking after becoming pregnant and manage not to fall back into it after the child is born.

Trust me if I could have a child, it wouldn't be as a way to force myself to stop though. It would be for a much better reason, like getting to have the baby that I've wanted for a few years now but couldn't have.

Tes, the stuff was mj I made completely sure of it, and it was my best friend giving it to me, so I know he didn't lace it with anything. He can't really figure out why I've had a severe mental reaction to it every time I smoke it though. He told me he's never seen anyone else react that badly to just weed before in his life.