Dave Winer writes about his experience quitting smoking, and it reminds me of my experience quitting. Many years ago I was a smoker, and it took a couple of tries before I quit successfully.
My first attempt at quitting was doomed to failure. See, I noticed that my cravings were stronger when my friends and I went bar-hopping, so I told myself I’d only smoke when I was drinking. The result? I drank more often. Duh.
So I quit cold turkey, and that was well over a decade ago. I’ve smoked one time since then, about three years ago – not a perfect record, but not bad. The thing that made it easier to quit was that I stopped smoking right after the end of a relationship gone sour. I figured as long as I was giving up one bad habit, I might as well give up smoking at the same time.
Dude, I did the same thing. I quit cold turkey, and continue to drink mad quantities. Aussie’s aside, even the Americans laugh at what I consider large quantities, still, it’s enought to force 2 weeks of hard cardio now and again.
…now if I only I could quit drinking coffee… yeah right…
Me too, except the failed relationship time I managed to quit for a year then I got to Australia and started smoking again (well ok, I started in Thailand…ok ok, Heathrow airport!) So then it took me over a year for another “real” attempt which was the start of April and I’m still going strong. I started running to train for the City 2 Surf and Sydney Bridge run to give me something to work toward which seems to have helped a lot. Good luck quitters!
I’ve always believe it’s not that quitting is difficult – it’s starting again is too easy.
I was kind of in the same position as you Nick. I smoked for a number of years and then quit about 3 years ago. I started only smoking when I was drinking, but as you said you just end up drinking more often so that you have an excuse to smoke.
Well, I’m proud to say that it’s now over a year and a half since I had a cigarette, but I still find it hard at times. The worst times I find are (as many Canadian smokers will probably identify) when I head to Tim Horton’s and grab my large double/double coffee. I can almost taste the cigarette when I have one of those.
But, overall, I feel a lot better, sleep better, and I’m much more productive than I once was. Congrats to all of us that have quit! And good luck to those that are contemplating quitting, it’s definitely worth it!
My story is almost an exact opposite of yours, Nick.
I had given up smoking for about five years when I met a girl; she smoked, as did most of her friends she introduced me to. We often went out for a few drinks together and I decided that to be sociable I’d have the occasional cigarette with them. Alas, I found that the occasional cigarette while drinking was not enough and I started smoking regularly again. ;-)
The girl? We split after about a year…
Hi,
I used http://www.quitnet.com to help me quit.
Its a great support group. I went cold turkey.
I just checked my stats below:
Your Quit Date is: 10/13/2000
Time Smoke-Free: 1378 days, 13 hours, 55 minutes and 24 seconds
Cigarettes NOT smoked: 6893
Lifetime Saved: 1 month, 22 days, 15 hours
Money Saved: $1,550.25
I have also taken up running and weight lifting and really don’t miss smoking anymore; at all !
redstar
Yea, me too, I quited smoking for some weeks, and decided to only smoke when I was having a drink(beer mostly), oh my I was drinking then. Now I am smoking again, but I can get up and get decent work done ;)