Smoking Hot

[Joanna Dark]

Haha Got you to look but I just wanted to talk about smoking. I know for a fact that smoking reduces the effects of the anti-anxiety meds I take by 50 percent. If not more, sometimes I feel like it just cancels it out. But I also heard that smoking has the same effect on HRT. Is this true?

I obviously need to stop completely and have done a good job of cutting down but still smoke about five to seven cigs a day. I haven't smoked yet today so I'm trying to will my way forward. So what tricks/methods have any of your girls used to stop smoking? Pure will power. Patches. (eek, no, I heard they give you nightmares and I dream about my ex-fiancee/girlfriend enough as it is). What about gum?

Right now I'm running on willpower but my brother goes out to smoke all the time and on one hand it looks good then on the other his skin is horrible and he coughs all the time. So thoughts? Sorry for the trickery I'm a real b*tch. 

[StellaB]

Have you ever thought about buying an e-cig or electronic cigarette?

With an electronic cigarette you get pure nicotine in the form of a vapour. The nicotine is much cheaper than tobacco.

You get the nicotine without all the harmful chemicals and bad odours you get from smoking regular tobacco.

Also it works out much cheaper than buying normal tobacco and cigarettes.

Also if you're trying to quit, I've found that munching raw carrots seems to help.

[Joanna Dark]

Thanks for both your responses kkut and stella. BTW, you're not weird kkut; you're awesome. Who wants to be normal anyway?

[Heather]

I used nicotine patches to help me quit but it will still take a lot of will power to do it but it can be done with enough determination. But the biggest thing that helped me quit was when they jacked up price to like five dollars a pack around here. I found out my addiction to money was far greater than my addiction to cigarettes. It's though to quit but it's very rewarding to do so. And your not smoking that much a day. So it should be easier to quit for you.

[Joanna Dark]

I only speaks the truth kkut :-) and thanks Heather. I'm using the ween method of slowly smoking less and less until it becomes a non-issue but I totally get the price thing. They're so expensive! I mean a couple packs a week is the cost of a month of E. A year's worth of smoking is LHR right there. BTW, I heard you get really weird dreams from patches. Did you find this to be true? On the one hand that sounds cool. On the other hand I can have really lucid dreams as it is so I am a bit scared of it.

[Heather]

I only speaks the truth kkut :-) and thanks Heather. I'm using the ween method of slowly smoking less and less until it becomes a non-issue but I totally get the price thing. They're so expensive! I mean a couple packs a week is the cost of a month of E. A year's worth of smoking is LHR right there. BTW, I heard you get really weird dreams from patches. Did you find this to be true? On the one hand that sounds cool. On the other hand I can have really lucid dreams as it is so I am a bit scared of it.

I don't remember any strange dreams but I don't remember most of my dreams anyways.  What do remember is the weekend I stopped the patches if you think I'm moody on hormones you should have seen me then. In fact one of my friends said before I had quit smoking that I was worse than a girl on her period when I didn't have a cigarette. Buy anyways good luck with quitting you won't regret it besides transitioning and losing weight quitting smoking was the best thing I ever did for myself. 

[Joanna Dark]

Thanks! I know what you mean about the moodiness. That is one thing I def don't need anymore of but it's for my health ;-)

[sam79]

I'm in the process of quitting again now... Having taken it up and quit ( for months or years ) so many times over the years, I know just how difficult it is.

Nicotine replacement such as patches or gum etc does work, but doesn't get your body off nicotine which is the aim. Other more serious prescribed drugs ( like Champix ) work well if you want to quit, although since they muck about with receptors, I've no idea what they'll do with HRT.

I personally opt for the cold-turkey & willpower approach. It's the hardest, quickest and most direct method. But it's hard as hell if you're around other smokers... .

Good luck

[Shantel]

Joanna Dark you got me this time, now you're asking for it girl! 

     I was addicted to Pall Malls, Camels, Lucky Strikes Chesterfields and anything that didn't have a sissy filter on it to ruin the taste. I routinely smoked two packs a day, until I could hardly smell anything good or taste anything as well as I once did. My breath smelled like ->-bleeped-<- and the index and middle finger on my right hand were stained brown and my hair was always kind of greasy no matter how much I washed it. I came to the place when I was coughing up green gubbers that it occurred to me that smoking was a dead end and I quit cold turkey in 1976. For the next four years off and on i had dreams that I was smoking. When people were standing around smoking I'd catch myself patting my breast pocket. I had one relapse, I was feeling pretty good about quitting when the boss's Goldie Hawn look alike secretary stepped outside on the deck above me with her cute summer dress blowing so that I could see her panties. She said, "Shan, come on up and take a smoke break and talk with me will you?" Not wanting to be a total dork I thought "Oh hell, one won't hurt me!" I bought a carton on my way home and it took another week to purge, most went in the garbage.

      I find that now that I'm older and have some age related macular degeneration that I can't take Ocuvite or any of the vitamins that supposedly retard the degenerative effects because they all have vitamin A and if you have been a smoker and take vitamin A it is a trigger for lung cancer. They don't tell you that stuff do they? Next is that if you are smoking or using nicotine now and taking female hormones, you are setting yourself up for a nasty blood clot. If you're using tobacco products you are telling everyone around you that you are self destructive and don't care what happens to your life. I hope that helps everyone make a decision to quit. Wisdom comes with age and having made a lot of stupid mistakes.

There Joanna Dark, you asked for it girlfriend!

[big kim]

Spend the money on something else!I bought a 69 Plymouth Barracuda and needed the cigarette money for gas!Think of the laser or electrolysis or something else you could use it for

[Heather]

For the next four years off and on i had dreams that I was smoking.

I had dreams about smoking too. I haven't had one in a while but I just remember waking up thinking omg what have I done then realizing it was just a dream! I guess I should have mentioned this yesterday in Joanna Dark question about  nicotine patches and dreams but I guess since I had these dreams long after I was quit smoking I actually didn't think about mentioning them

[big kim]

I've dreamed of smoking again and been disgusted that I've started again!

[TerriT]

I smoked 2 packs a day for about 10 years. I got really sick for about a week and it was just physically impossible to smoke during that time. When I tried to smoke again it grossed me out so I just decided it was a good opportunity to quit and I've never smoked since then. I don't think it is helpful advice though, but that's how I quit.

It's been 9 years. I still have the desire to smoke. I have nightmares that I am smoking and all my hard work to not smoke has been ruined. I am also now grossed out with the smell of it, which helps me not start again. But I can't help but miss it.

[A]

To stop smoking, what you should do is to throw away everything you have related to smoking. Cigarettes, lighters, ash trays, everything. As soon as you decide to stop smoking. That way, if you want to smoke again, you need to buy everything over again. And when you realize you've made a mistake, you throw everything away again. Sometimes just this is enough help for people to stop. It requires effort to smoke, and it costs even more than smoking, which is already a huge fortune (if I could afford to smoke, I would be close to having enough for FFS, I suspect). Double dissuasive effect.

Also, a note about electronic cigarettes. Be careful of what you get. What we call "electronic cigarettes" here are cheap and they are everything but pure nicotine. They have bad chemicals in them as well, and aren't really meant as an aid to stop smoking. Make sure you get a proper inhaler that truly gives pure nicotine. We call those inhalers, whilst electronic cigarettes have an awful image and might get outlawed. Inhalers and their cartridges are much more expensive, I hear.

Something like this: http://www.nicorette.ca/products/inhaler

Also, who told you patches gave nightmares? That sounds like utter nonsense to me. If anything, I bet it's trying to stop smoking when very addicted that caused them. Both my mother and my sister have stopped smoking with patches before. My sister's had allergic reactions to the adhesive, and she also started to smoke again soon afterwards. Not a huge success, but no nightmares.

[Allison]

Sorry for necro but I am still an active smoker because I actually enjoy the taste of the tobacco particularly Camel Turkish Golds; besides the point. I own an eCigarette and they work wonders if I just want some nicotine. It's still addictive but is considerably better than me whipping out a cigarette when I just smoke to relieve stress. Plus you dont smell like cigarettes.

[musicofthenight]

Allison, yours is exactly the kind of post that triggers a relapse.

The problem with nicotine is it has a very tight addiction cycle.  One smoke makes you want another, especially if you have a history of addiction.  This is why low-nicotine e-cigs, inhalers, or quit aids are never safe for someone who has quit, either cold turkey or by tapering down.

And, quite frankly, I don't trust the tobacco industry to produce a truly nicotine-free product.  This sucks - I want to learn to blow smoke rings, but I know I'm vulnerable to addiction so tobacco is out of the question.

I do get the sense that quit aids are expensive for no other reason than exploiting smokers.  This is certainly true of tobacco products in general.  Between Big Tobacco and Big Government you are doubly screwed.

[A]

Well, if you want my opinion, smoking a fake cigarette with only nicotine, even if you never stop, is already heaps better than just smoking cigarettes. My mother is like that. She smokes her fake cigarette all the time and she doesn't have the slightest willpower in stopping. But I still much prefer that to actual smoking. For one she isn't killing her lungs in the process, and most importantly (to me, selfishly), it doesn't make her smell disgusting. Seriously, I think I might even prefer someone who reeks of vomit to someone who stinks of tobacco. x.x

And honestly, with a nicotine dispenser and a lot of willpower, it should be very doable for you to stop smoking, if the taste of tobacco is your only other problem. I mean, I love the taste of fries, but I haven't had any in, uhm. A few years. Either you need to work harder, either there are other factors. Surely you can think of foods whose taste you love but you can live without, yes?

Also, there apparently exist pills whose purpose, if they work, is to render cigarettes absolutely disgusting for the user. Apparently my cousin tried those, and even though she had a strong psychological/taste-related addiction to cigarettes, as soon as she felt like smoking and lit one, it was just "yuck" and she threw it away immediately. Dunno what those pills are, but if it worked on my cousin whose parents are two compulsive smokers who are seldom seen without their cigarette, then I have a feeling it's pretty effective.

[Sarah Louise]

The "theory" is that E-cigs are better for you, but it will take time before we really know.

[A]

Uhm, it's pretty obvious to anyone. Electronic cigarettes (the good kind with the approbation and nicotine) are basically steam and nicotine, aren't they? You need to have a serious issue to believe that it can possibly not be better than steam + nicotine + CO + CO2 + tons of poisons and other nocive products.

[big kim]

The "theory" is that E-cigs are better for you, but it will take time before we really know.

In the same way cocaine isn't quite as bad for you as heroin?