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How did you quit smoking?
Vimalajāti
Whitby, Ontario Veteran
Ugh. I just bought another cursed pack of cigarettes. I despise them as much as I enjoyed my first of the pack.
What finally got you to quit smoking? What was your first step away them cigarettes?
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I use to be friends with Nic Otine , however every time he paid me a visit I found all my money would go up on smoke... But I saw the light when I started to train for a charity fun run... When it came to jogging, Nic Otine and I didn't see eye to eye, we gradually drifted apart..It's been almost 40 years since Nic Otine and I last saw each other ...I don't miss his company...In fact it's a case of good riddance to bad rubbish ...
I not longer jog, nor have I had the urge for Nic Otine's company ...
My mother heard she had COPD, which is a lung condition, which forced her to take the step to stop smoking when she was in her 60’s, after having smoked for 40 years. Personally I never took up the habit, I heard so many stories when I was young that I said no thanks when the opportunity arose in my teens.
It’s pretty disgraceful what the tobacco companies do in order to sell more. They do research into how to make tobacco more addictive, treating it with various chemical washes and stuff. Something to be wary of.
Trying to quit smoking is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Once I stopped trying to quit and just quit it was so much easier. My last cigarette was on July 31 2017. Just over a year ago now.
It did help that I wasn't doing it for just me. I am trying to be a living donor so smoking is a no go.
I got one of those nicotine vapes and only used it when the nic fits hit. The very first major nic fit that hit me in the morning was the hardest. It almost brought me to my knees the impulse was so strong. For this one I didn't use the vape but rode out the feeling and really dug deep into the nic fit. I lived in that nic fit like it was my last bit of life just to really get a sense of what it is.
I never had the urge that strong again and the vape hasn't been touched in over 10 months.
I breathe better, can run faster and don't stink.
The price of cigarettes keeps going up but around here we can easily get cheap smokes from the native reserves and so that isn't much of a deterrent.
From what I've learned you really have to want to quit. You have to be sick of it and you have to see the cons outweighing the pros.
The main thing is to take a lesson from Yoda on this one. There is no "try". There is only do.
By trying to quit we set ourselves up for failure. Just stop it.
Hi I only had a habit smoking pipe tobacco in a pipe but I was addicted as I smoked many times a day. I started because I had trouble dealing with side effects of medication and hearing voices. So it was kind of helping me to get through the day waiting for the next smoke.
I eventually wanted to quit and I got a bad flu and didn't smoke for a week. Then since I wanted to quit I just didn't start up again when I was better from the flu. I guess one of the few times when the flu is good fortune.
Visualise what it's doing to your body. Really 'see' how the toxins are settling in your lungs and travelling round your circulatory system. and they never leave.
Every puff you take, you are poisoning yourself, and anyone close to you, because secondary smoking is also a killer.
Calculate how much money you spend A YEAR on things you literally burn. That's money.
Burning money is actually an offence and punishable quite severely in Law, but it seems ok to burn it by way of a purchase that has nothing good about it, at all.
Everything about smoking is negative. It smells, it lingers it's anti-social, it's a pollutant and it perpetuates ill health and disease.
And it's the added sugar in cigarettes that keeps you addicted.
It's disgusting, foul murderous and totally unnecessary.
As @federica said about visualization, this video is a good example of visualization.
How Smoking 30 PACKS of Cigarettes Wrecks Your Lungs ● You Must See This !
A Mi Tuo Fo
I never smoked but a friend told me there is no easy way to stop because of the additiveness. It requires will power and persistence. Everyday you get a little stronger and more able to be without smoking. Keep looking at your goal to stop and your reason to stop. What problems is it causing to you, why should you stop. You may not succeed the first time but keep trying. If you can even throw away the packet even if it is like throwing away money.. Get support from others to help you and that. You have to really want to quit and put that effort in.
Hope this helps
... we can burn nicotine as incense offering for the Buddha. Holy smoke ...
OM MANI PEME HUM
Download Alan Carrs book . Thats what did it finally for me . pdf is available free .
The discipline that makes us meditate. Will power to do.
The powers of visualisation.
You are a practitioner ... take refuge ..
I take refuge in tobacco
My love for bees is what made me finally quit smoking.
Bees are vital to the whole ecosystem of the planet. Bees are oft forgotten about but their influence and effectiveness in our world is unchallenged. We rely on the bees for life, and without them all life would eventually die off (except for maybe algae and marine life perhaps)
So what do cigs have to do with bees?
Bees are deathly allergic to nicotinoids and pesticides that have neonicotinoids ( = nicotine)
If you want to be a bee keeper some day like me, you must avoid touching cigarettes and especially avoid spreading nicotine around in the world.
My own lungs are very valuable, I don't want to end up like so many grand-dad's lungs that cough and sound horrible to carry.
But really what took me to the other side was the bees. I don't actually value my own body as much, I am fine with destroying my lungs slowly and surely for momentary respite from stress and mingling with other smokers. But you know what? I still mingle, and I still accept stray cigarettes, and I just don't smoke them. I still keep the ritual in my life and the exposure to people and the connection elements, and I stay polite, but actually I do not smoke any longer, because of the bees.
I went for a 4-day drive with a friend who didn't smoke ... drove through the Rocky mountains, stopping only for necessary reasons. Took oranges (smoking depletes Vitamin C) and a pop-top water bottle. Whenever I wanted to suck on a cigarette, I sucked some water out of the bottle instead (body-cleansing AND the oral activity).
I had been a heavy smoker for over 30 years. I had tried to quit, but the withdrawal symptoms had previously been so awful, that I had felt compelled to go out and buy cigarettes. But then I ran across someone who had been a friend 25 years before ... I'd stopped being his friend when he became a heroin addict.
He had since kicked the habit. Just like with my cigarettes, every time he had tried to quit, he found the withdrawal symptoms so bad that he had to go out and score some heroin.
Finally, he got together 3 months worth of survival equipment and had a friend drop him off up in the far north (we live in Canada), telling him to come back in 3 months for him or for his body.
Odd thing .. he did not have a SINGLE withdrawal symptom.
So when I decided to take my cold-turkey drive, I remembered this friend's experience. I decided that my withdrawal symptoms were my brain having a temper-tantrum, not wanting to change it's habits/addition, and blackmailing me to keep on smoking.
And guess what ... on this 4-day drive I felt mildly fuzzy-headed the first day but that was all. No cravings. No irritability. It was SO easy.
When I got back to the city, I went back to my job and had no trouble staying off the cigarettes. This was in 2006, and I have been smoke-free since then.
In the end, when we truly want to quit (rather than thinking we "should") ... we quit.
yeah im a smoker too. dont have any advise to give.
There are free giving up smoking/stinking/wasting health/self suicide/etc hypnosis vids on youtube. Do everything you can. Look after your health - duh!
I smoked for social reasons. When not around smokers - no smoking. Just say you are giving them up if offered.
There is no try.
Master Yoda
I have heard that it is even better to say "No thank you, I don't smoke" if offered. This reinforces your own determination to stop, and removes the opportunity for them to cajole you into taking "just one; go on, what's one more?" If you state that you don't smoke, the sense of achievement is greater than admitting you are struggling to quit.
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Not what, but who. You and this post, thank you very much. I wanted to offer some advice but was unable to because I smoked. So I quit so I could. Apparently, trying to help someone else was helpful. Not picking up the first cigarette - also very helpful. Watching the mind run around in little circles screaming was instructive and I found myself wondering who this I was that smoked...
Anyway, again, thank you very much for your help.
Bravo @yagr
Que?
Nobody needs the company of smokers. Smelly people. Pollution. Ill ?
Be like @yagr and give up the craziness ...
still smoking.but yeah willing to acept the karma of lung disease.
That's some heavy karma. I'd prefer to avoid it if possible. Part of my clinging to sensual delights.
One day at a time, hopefully.
Despite meditation discipline and mindfullness I could not quit smoking cigs on my own. I switched to vaping 12mg, then after a while, 9mg, 6mg, 3mg, 0mg. Took me a year.
Ok, well of course I found it the easiest thing ever, to quit.
Easy peasy.
I just never started in the first place.
I wonder if thinking back, to the first time you ever smoked, and asking yourself why exactly, you took that cigarette, would help the quitting now. ?
yeah pleasure can be dukkha if not moderated.my delights is smokes,coffee with sugar and cream.
TBH, I only find contemplation so useful. I can contemplate the disgustingness of cigarettes all day, but sadly enjoy them all the same, like how a dungbeetle loves his ball of crap.
When I started smoking, I had just graduated university. I had no job prospects, and I had moved back in with my parents, and was very depressed.
It was something of a sad self-pitying "well I might as well start smoking, too" moment. However contemplation of the fact that it was a bad idea to start I find doesn't help me a lot in the present. I've moved out of my parents house and live with my boyfriend in town now, but still can't shake the bad habit.
My biggest hurdle right now, IMO, is to stop buying tiny singles and mini-packs and justifying it to myself by saying "well its really only one...." or "at least I'm not smoking a whole pack".
It is a habit. Not a robe.
Not going to offer cigs to Buddha?
How about Tonglen or mindful self poisoning? Are you a Bodhisattva? I find it very easy to break habitual ritualistic behaviour.
I just stop and deal compassionately with whatever arises, without blaming or dwelling on the behaviour ...
The last time I smoked, may tell that story sometime ... was to help a Buddhist novitiate ... When finished, I just stopped. I am not smoked or stoked or defined by cigarettes ... a habit ... are you?
I am mostly habits, unfortunately. Like the habit of posting here.
The habit of practicing. The habit of not practicing.
I'm reviving this post - as I haven't been active over here in a long time - with a question of my own and my experience with smoking.
I've been a smoker for years. I managed to quit for a couple of years, didn't touch a single cigarette, and then I started again. I always found reasons to smoke. I told myself that I would smoke only if I drank something. I managed to do that for some time and then I got back to smoking.
I've switched to an e-cigarette since last year and the good part is that I no longer smoke cigarettes. The bad part is that I still smoke, although the tobacco is no longer burnt but heated.
And now I keep trying to quit. I manage to do it for a few days then I relapse, mostly due to work-related stress. Right now I haven't smoked in two days and while I write this I feel the urge to smoke a cigarette. The sensation is somewhat similar to thirst, but amplified ten times. And I have mood swings.
How do you manage to cope with these feelings? Most of the time they were the reason I relapsed.
These aren't feelings, they're an addiction. Seek professional help. Most Doctor's clinics have programs to help people kick the habit. They'll study what you do, and what triggers a desire and when, and help you tackle coming off your addiction in a way that suits you.
@tibellus have you tried a mindful examination of the roots of the problem? Often addictions are a mask for other problems, there is a mental habit aspect, as well as a physical nicotine addiction. By sorting out what plays a role for you a way to make progress may show itself.
E cigarettes can be helpful but only to kill the nic fit. If they are used to replace the cigarette then what happens when you're out and the thing breaks or runs out of juice? It's easier to run into a store and buy smokes rather than buy a whole new device if it's just been forgotten at home.
I will say it again. Trying to quit will not work. When we try to quit we are giving more power to the addiction and taking it away from ourselves. The addiction isn't going to feel sorry for us and leave us alone just because we are trying.
If you really want to quit you'll have to give up trying to quit and simply stop smoking. You will have to be strong and resist the temptation until it goes away.
No regimen will let you avoid doing the work in your mind.
I've been nicotine free since July30th 2017 and I tried to quit for over 20 years before figuring out it's a fools game.
Plus, once you quit tobacco, you will find the strength to overcome other impulses you though you were too weak to beat.
As for how to deal with the pain of impulse, my advice is stand your ground and really dig into the feelings. They don't hurt so much when we dissociate through investigation and they don't last that long. Seeing the pain of impulse or nic fit is not self makes it easier to see the act of smoking is not self. We don't need to smoke and we don't need nicotine.
We can completely unidentify with smoking while looking the nic fit right in the face.
About 15 years ago my non smoking mother ended up with a pacemaker for a possibly inherited heart condition. Scared me into quitting cold turkey
My brother coerced me into trying a cigarette, when we were much younger... I coughed, spluttered, my eyes wouldn't stop watering, I felt sick and had a dreadful, rasping, burning sensation in my throat for the rest of the day. bleahct....
I really couldn't understand how people could force themselves through all of that and continue, in spite of the really bloody awful way smoking made them feel.
My brother now acknowledges that my refusal to persist was entirely wise, and he too is stopping smoking....
Not smoking them. Not buying them. Cold turkey.
It took me a long time after I wanted to quit but had strong craving. I was smoking pipe tobacco in a pipe without inhaling but I smoked like 10 x per day. I think I was gradually reducing but it was a struggle. Then I got the flu and I was so sick I didn't smoke for 3 days. But when I got better I thought it was my big chance and I managed to not smoke again. It has been over 4 years now.
As far as spiritual teaching both for smoking and drinking I think Gangaji has some talks she did about overcoming addictions.