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Quitting Smoking (was Looking forward to it)
Weather should be fine.
Hey Kath, I read that you quit smoking. I did that 7 months ago. The riding is awesome for it. Flushing all that water through while exercising and learning bike technique all at the same time, it's great.
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Thankyou so much for responding.... I feel a lot like a little fish outa water.
The smoking thing is so rediculous - are you free now?
One day at a time hey???
Are you coming on Sunday?
jeez gazza you havent lived mate.Ive been smoked many atime during sex!
as to Smoking during,well i guess i just have to slow down abit ,eh? :-0
great words gazza
i really admire noel for giving it up & it gives me inspiration to kick the habit myself
i guess you really have to have the mind power to kick it above anything else
Even though i know its bad for your health, i still haven't got my mind around it.........yet.
i dont wanna give up but i know i should, the irony of it all.
but i'm getting there, i feel like if my minds' not fully committed, i cannot genuinely try to stop so therefore i dont try.
i go through stages where i fully cut down in attempt to prepare myself to give up, then something triggers me & i'm back into it full swing.
my missus gave up using ziaban years ago, before it was well known, & she's been cured ever since.
In fact she only took half the course, she woke up one day & that was it.
She didn't have any bad reactions to it, i guess it has different side effects on different people.
Anyway thanks for your inspiring words
matt
i stopped smoking cold turkey about a 18 months ago and it was the easiest time ive ever stopped. it just felt right and i felt so strong and hardly got any major pangs even though i was a pack a day smoker. i tried everything before and spent about 17 out of the 18 years i smoked trying to stop at least every couple of months with miserable results leading to guilt and massive feelings of being a failure. i tried that ziaban about seven years ago when it first came out and although within a week of taking it i felt completely cured i was having funny feelings throughout my body and one day i had a massive panic attack with huge heart palpatations to the point where i seriously thought i was about to have a heart attack and die. obviously i quit the ziaban and within a few days the cravings came back and i started smoking again. ive got some old mates in this uk that are heroin addicts and they say its easier to stop heroin than to stop smoking so the moral of this non mountain biking story is.... any smokers on this site who are trying to quit( i know there isn't many as you're a dying breed!!!,dying? ha ha!) be proud of any effort you make because trying to stop is bloody hard and non smokers have no idea of the torture you go through. keep trying and one time it'll be the right time. there IS freedom on the other side and although i felt for a while id never be able to enjoy a meal/drink/sex knowing i couldnt have a ciggie with or after it(you havnt lived unless youve had a smoke during sex!
) i now feel completely free and am modratley fit and can get drunk without the slightest craving.
sorry to waffle but if this inspires one person to stop smoking then ive done my job!
gazza
I'm coming along Sunday morning. Yeah I'm free of the smoking kinda, but it haunts me. I have dreams about it sometimes. I don't really want to ever smoke again though. I used hypnotism and then wen ton Ziaban for about 2 months. Its affects your brain, I had a car accident after stopping the Ziaban, ran into a car Beecroft road. Pushed it into the car in front of me. Never had an at fault accident in my life before that. That stuff messes with our head. Took 3 months to get the Ziaban out of my system. It worked tho. Without it I was potentially dangerous. The smoking withdrawals sent me right over the edge. I was like that guy in "Train Spotting" who locks himself in his room to quit heroin. Nicotine is terrible stuff. 25+ years of smoking... it's all history now.
T Hills is a great ride, nice fire trail, I'll cya all there.
Smokers v's Nonsmokers lung (nah thats not my lung):
According to Alan Carr's book, one "Quits" or "Stops" smoking, you do not "Give up", Giving up implies a sacrifice. Alan Carr is Anti-Nicotine replacement therapy. I have come to agree with him, and I've met many others who do to. He believes (and I agree) that nicotine replacement companies don't want you to quit either. You see the latest Nicabate add talks about "Giving up". I plan to make a complaint about it. As pedantic as it may sound, I bet I wouldn't be the 1st.
I highly recommend reading it. Matt, you can borrow it if you like. It's a decent read. Don't worry, he wants you to remain smoking through most of it... and no I did not get to the end of of the book. I read it before starting the Ziaban.
Ziaban is a better mix now. They used to have serious problems when it was a new product. By serious we are talking suicide, liver problems etc. I had itchy palms on it one day and dropped straight back to 1 per day. I'm 66kg, when i was on 2 per day.. wow, what a f'n mess I was. You know you are a zombie, everything is clowdy and you just can;t think like you know you can. The thing that gets you is once you have been like that for 2 months still after stopping the Ziaban, you wonder if your head will ever return to normal. I swear I am still 15% affected, and my brain is still returning to normal.
I gave up on the patches, and they worked a treat for me, after 25 a day for at least 10 years and having gone gaga cold turkey a couple of times. Whatever works is great, and drawing a distinction between "giving up" and quitting is just pedantic semantics.
Also on that book, you can't lend it to people, back when I was first trying to give up I knew someone who'd read it and asked them to borrow it, they refused to lend it to me on the basis that if you're actually committed to giving up you'll go and buy it. Sounds selfish and a bit stupid, it did to me at the time, but he was bloody well right, I needed a few more months to really properly persuade myself I wanted to give up. You have to be fully committed to giving up to do it if you're a long term smoker, and if you're not then whatever you do won't work.
.. dropping the "giving up" description is about the first thing he asks the reader to do in his book.
If nicotine replacement therapy works for you, great. I'd tried it enough times.
My dad tried everything,patches,gum, hypnotism... and had limited success but always fell back, especially when at the pub.
He was a chain smoker who had started when he was 10.
One day he woke up and grabbed his wallet to walk down the the shop to buy a pack. But then thought, "Buggar that, it's cold outside, I'll wait 'til later." He then decided later would be when he turned 94. Hasn't had a carving or anything in the 14 years since. He's 58
)
He thinks the "giving up" semantics played a big role
What ever it takes just do it and keep trying until you do.
It's going to be hard and your brain will try and convince you "just one more can't hurt", but the health rewards are more than worth it.
Reformed smoker - started at 14, a pack a day until 46. Hypnotism and a young family did it for me and I have never felt fitter or more healthy.
yeah i've heard that before, i think it was one of kostya tszu's fitness books.
Instead of just trying to "give up" you should replace the habit with something beneficial, whatever the habit you're trying to break.
I was doing this at one point & i had cut down heaps. For example when i felt like lighting up i would do 15-25 pushups on the hour instead, then continue what i was doing.
It made me realise i don't actually need that smoke now & would put it off & off.
Then i would have a bad day, get stressed out, or even bored & get back into the bad habit of just lighting up not even giving it a second thought.
I have to get back into the replacement method again & get my mind in a state that i'm fully committed to giving up to give me the will power to overcome the cravings & stop smoking.
i will borrow the book noel, thanks.
If you finish the book you keep it, but if you stop reading it, you hand it back. Deal?
Get ready in your head first. When your ready, then do it. I think this is important.
you've got a deal
I "gave up" / "quit" smoking 18 months ago. Totally agree with Paul and Gazza, if it feels right you will stop when you are ready and with what ever works for you. I used the patches, I was a pack a day smoker for 17years. I got into mountain biking to help me stop, nothing like riding up hills and running out of breath to urge you on. Feel so much better for it. I will admit that every now and again I have a craving but it only last for a second or two. Another thing that worked for me was, I made a deal with my wife, for every week I stopped smoking I would put aside the equivalent amount of cash that I would spend on smokes. This money then was use for whatever I liked, bike bits, pc games etc.
Anyway good luck
Cheers
Evan
thats a great incentive ev,i worked out that my mum spends over 6 THOUSAND f$%$%#^%# dollars a year on the cancer sticks!!
Imagine how much bike bling youd have with that sort of cash!!(mind you she wasnt fazed and will puff away merrily till its time to go.
We have recently bought Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking and we discovered a lot of useful information related to how to quit smoking. We (me and my wife) recommend this book to everyone out there. Please feel free to get it and read it and stick to it until you quit smoking.
CR
didn't let you guys know but i've had success....
I stopped smoking April 28 & still going strong
Surprisingly & luckily i haven't found it to hard at all.
I remember the 3rd week being the hardest, i really wanted to pull my hair out or kill someone, but i haven't looked back since.
Every now & then i have a feeling of "oh i feel like a cigarette" & i'll tell my wife or who ever's next to me at the time.
Within seconds, a minute the feeling has gone, i don't know if saying it helps or not i dunno but it might.
I haven't had any help , no patches, no gum, no drugs or therapy, nothing just cold turkey.
Noel had made an offer, earlier in this thread, for me to borrow Alan Carr's book & if i finished reading it,i keep it if not i give it back.
Hey Noel i didn't even start it so how does that work??
Anyway good luck to anyone stopping, it was definately an unnecessary burden, a habit which i have managed to kick.
Thankyou all for your advice & thoughts, they definately help to inspire/motivate me to stop!
Hey, bring the book back so i can lend it to somebody who might use it, even though you didn't need it.
I think you just THINK that you feel like a cigarette, but really you don't. I've recently realised that even if I had a cigarette, I would still feel like I need something. This feeling of wanting a cigarette or something for me only really comes about if I'm feeling hungry. It's very rare these days. A glass of water, a cup of tea, a sandwich or an apple and it goes away. I'm cured now. I don't really ever expect to smoke again. Those stop smoking adds on TV work well for me. They are good positive reinforcement.
I no longer have dreams about smoking.