10 years!

[Steve71]

Today makes it exactly 10 years since I put down cigarettes for good and became a non smoker. By far one of the top three big choices I have ever made in my life for myself

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

Great job! I quit when I was 25 years old after smoking for about 8 years and it was the hardest thing I ever did!

[jwscab]

great job man!!!!!!!

[scr8p]

Keep it up!

I'm 11 months behind ya.

[Dadio]

It's over ten years for me , took a friend dieing of bone cancer to scare me enough for it to make it stick , bad way to go , her bones turned to egg shell , just horrific , never smoked again .
Well done to everyone , wish my wife could give up but she has to do it for herself .

[morrisey0]

Congrats!!

New Years 2009 was my last cigarette after about 20 years smoking.

[coxbros1]

me and David quit about 5 yrs ago...but replaced it with booze

[TRX-1-3]

Excellent work! I kinda trickled it off to intermittent then stopped about 18 months ago. But the thing is.....I still dip my face off though. But it's these tobacco derived non-tobacco nicotine pouches that I'm hooked on now.

[Dadio]

Excellent work! I kinda trickled it off to intermittent then stopped about 18 months ago. But the thing is.....I still dip my face off though. But it's these tobacco derived non-tobacco nicotine pouches that I'm hooked on now.

Smoking is kind of a ritual behaviour and half of it is the ritual not the addiction , plus switching to nicotine patches , chewing gum or other replacements are non carcinogenic , not sure about dip as I'm not familiar with it but it's got to be better than smoking !

[R6cowboy]

Good to hear from all who've quit. I've been a part-time smoker for a long time. I say part time because I typically smoke 0 to 3 cigs a day, sometimes have no problem going a day or two without. But smoke like a chimney when drinking, which isn't very often. Some day I'll put 'em down for good. But like Dadio said, its that ritual behavior.

[guitronics]

Fantastic!!! I quit about the same timeframe. I wanted to live. My wife has been trying to quit for many years....I hope she will quit, eventually. I hated being a slave to Tobacco.

[SoCalSnakeEyes]

Congrats. That is one of the hardest things to do. I know, I've been trying.

[Steve71]

Congrats. That is one of the hardest things to do. I know, I've been trying.

Just don't stop trying. I honestly bet I tried to quit probably 100+ times, I mean serious tries and not just little well I should stop types, but serious "I need to quit and this is it" type tries. I tried everything for probably 5+ years. The patch, those fake cigs that are just a filter but look like a cig which you put in your mouth and hold like a cig only don't light, nicorete gum, pretty much tried it all. Then just out of the blue on Good Friday 2011 I got up and went out on the porch to have my normal morning smoke, put it in my mouth and was about to light it and I stopped. I don't know why or what was different that day but it just hit me like never before and I though "this is stupid, I'm killing myself for no reason" and I went inside and tossed the half pack I had left in the trash and I never touched another one. And trust me, if I quit, anyone can. I use to smoke a pack to a pack & half of Menthols a day. So don't ever stop trying. One day just like with me, something inside you will just click and it will happen for you

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

My weird tip is to chew on a rubber grape. Like the kind that came in those plastic fruit bowls when we were kids. Gum is too soft, but I found chewing on the hard rubber grapes really helped me. I needed something I could take the aggression out on... Not real sure where you can find such a thing nowadays, but give it a try.

[morrisey0]

Quitting was easy for me once I came to a solid honest conclusion. "I have to quit smoking or I will die early of lung cancer." That simple. Once you actually accept that, and let it sink in, and KNOW it, it really isn't hard to do (I know many will think that is BS). I had tried quitting in the past for various other reasons, and maybe the cancer thing was on the list, and none of that stuck. It took that realization for it to work. I quit cold turkey and really wasn't that bad. I thought I would never be able to really break the habit because I did (and do) enjoy the tasty beverages, and those two things are like PB&J together, but again, once the mental thing kicks in, it isn't hard. Heck, I still took smoke breaks every hour with my smoking buddy at work, and just never lit one.

And the fact that smokes are over $5 a pack now! Seriously, I was a carton a week smoker, so we are talking about $200+/month!!!

I am 60 lbs down in a weight loss challenge right now, and at least for me, losing weight is WAY MORE difficult than quitting smoking!