Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I started smoking when I was 16. I am now 68. I have gone long periods without smoking. I quit, then start up again, then quit. Usually, when I quit, I quit for years. My longest stretch was ten years while I was married to (now ex-)wife #3, who was a non-smoker.

I know that I am an addict. I know what I am addicted to, and I know why.

When I was an Instructor for the IBEW (electricians' union) Apprenticeship Program, one of the classes that I was required to teach was a drug & alcohol awareness class. The Apprenticeship Program has all of the training material needed, from workbooks to videotapes.

One of the videos for this class was done by a former Medical Examiner in Texas (Houston or Austin). He said that addictions cannot be cured; they can only be managed. They cannot be cured because they have a genetic component and are hereditary. There is also an environmental component, such as how often you are exposed to a substance.

Both of my parents were smokers, as were their parents. I do not doubt that I inherited the cigarette addiction gene. Genes are like switches in your DNA, on or off. If the switch is on, you have the potential to become addicted if you are exposed to that substance. If the switch is off (like ex-wife #3), you can be exposed repeatedly and not become addicted. For pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, my genes are switched off. But for cigarettes, it is switched on.

Over the years, I have learned many tips and tricks on how to quit smoking. I have studied many aspects of this because I wanted to know why cigarettes and not any other form of tobacco or nicotine. In my attempts to quit, I have tried patches, gums, sprays, lozenges, and vapes. None of them quenched my craving for cigarettes. Only a cigarette will do. My research revealed that cigarette manufacturers add ammonia to the tobacco during curing. They do this because, when burning, it changes the chemical structure of the nicotine to make it more addictive.

The patches, sprays, gums, and lozenges do not have that. I have tried other methods: cold turkey, a rubber band on your wrist, lollipops, acupuncture, and, as a hypnotherapist, hypnosis. The funny part is that I had clients who came to my hypnotherapy practice to quit smoking, and most of them did. I was invited to speak at local businesses about quitting, and the companies offered to pay for employee sessions. But these techniques did not seem to work for me.

Before getting married to #3, we lived together for about five years. A friend of mine knew about my struggle to quit, and she gave me the remainder of her prescription Wellbutrin tablets. Those things gave me some very strange dreams! But I managed to quit. When we were getting divorced, my stress levels were through the roof, and I started lighting up again. That is my drug of choice. I don't want to be drunk or high. I don't want to be out of control. I just want to relax, and it helps me do that.

When I was going to start my transition, I knew I needed to quit (again). My doctor offered everything, but I have done all that. Then she offered Chantix (Varenicline). I stayed on it for three months and was able to quit. Transition made me feel alive again, and my stress levels dropped. I had some serious bouts with anxiety and depression, but I refused to light up. We found that the depression was due to low vitamin levels, and the anxiety was due to PTSD from when I was attacked in the military. We got those problems addressed, and things were going well again.

And then Executive Orders began flying out of the White House. The VA cancelled some of my transition services, removed the LGBTQ Care Coordinators, and forbade VA employees from discussing "gender ideology". My stress levels climbed. South Dakota began passing anti-transgender laws. My stress levels soared, and I started smoking again after four years clean.

The first thing is to break the habit part.

I smoke with my right hand. No more. I must now use my left. It feels awkward, and that is the point. Make smoking as inconvenient as possible. I cannot keep my cigarettes in my house. I leave them in the car, so I have to go outside to get them. In the winter, that is a deterrent.

Notice triggers. I know I smoke when I get stressed, so when it happens, I will do Resonant Breathing instead until I calm down.

I smoke when I am hungry. This took a bit of research, but I discovered something.

Long ago, Vitamin B3 was called nicotinic acid and was derived from tobacco plants. Nicotine and nicotinic acid are totally different substances, so to avoid confusing a nutrient with a poison, they changed the name to niacin.

Most Americans are low on vitamin Bs. This is due to poor food quality, which is due to processed foods and depleted soils in farming. Vitamin Bs are the "feel-good" vitamins that help us deal with stress. When we are stressed, our body loses vitamin B. Maybe, just maybe, when I am craving nicotine, in reality, my body is saying it needs vitamins. Another possible angle on this is that when smoking to quash that craving, if the body thinks it is getting vitamin B but is getting nicotine instead, then any vitamin B from food will be seen as excess and eliminated. This could further deplete your vitamin levels. This is just a theory, but my doctors say it is possibly true.

To combat this aspect, I would take Super B-Complex vitamin supplements. The B vitamins work best together, so taking only one is not as effective. Take the B-Complex type instead. I take 1,000 I.U.s in the morning with breakfast and 1,000 I.U.s in the evening with dinner. You cannot overdose on vitamin Bs because they are water-soluble, so you will pee out any that your body does not need. And your pee turns a bright yellow, so you know you are getting plenty. What happened was that my cravings for a smoke diminished big time. Another vitamin B in the complex is Biotin, which helps grow hair and nails, so win-win.

I have found that it is not one technique that works, but a combination of them. Attack the problem from all sides as it were.

The next strategy has worked every time for me and most of the time for my clients. The ones that it did not work for was because they did not follow the rules. I call it the Count-Down. Instead of setting a specific date to quit (that causes stress with the added pressure of quitting on that day), you gradually quit. No cold turkey. First, you look at how many cigarettes you smoke in a day. If you smoke a pack a day, that is 20 cigarettes.

Think of it like a game. Games have rules.
1. You must never carry a lighter.
2. You must never carry more cigarettes than that day's allotment, and you can only smoke your own. No bumming a smoke from others.
3. Each day, you will carry one less cigarette than the day before.

So if you smoke a pack a day, you carry one pack or 20 cigarettes, and smoke as you normally would. The next day, you take one cigarette away and destroy it. You can have 19 and smoke them as you wish — the next day 18, and so on.

There is a subtle psychology behind this method. There is no pressure to stop now, or on any particular day. Each day is only one less, so it is no big deal. But when you get down to six cigarettes allowed, you start to plan out when you are going to smoke them. The next day, you only get five, so is that one in the morning, then after each meal, and one before bed? Easy. The next day, you only get four. How will you plan for those? Then three.

What I found, and my clients agreed, is that when you are planning when to have your next cigarette, sometimes you tell yourself that you will wait. I'll have that one later, I'm okay now. But the next day, it is one less. Between the Chantix and the Vitamin B, the cravings are easier to resist, so it feels ok to say, "Not right now".

On my last day, my allocation was one cigarette. I kept putting it off, then decided I would wait and have it in the morning. But then I waited again. I carried that last cigarette with me for five days. Then I suddenly realized that I had quit smoking almost a week before, and I threw it away.

So, I talked to my doctor, and she sent me some Chantix. I started taking it yesterday. My Quit Day is November 2, but with the Count-Down Method, it may not be exact. It will be close. I am confident that I will get this under control.

And now, I have published this on the internet, so I have to quit or lose all integrity.
No pressure! 😁

Former smoker here. I smoked occasionally  at school  then took it up full time  from 20 to  37. Why? I smoked  cannabis regularly from 16 either weed or resin mixed with tobacco. Both my parents smoked, dad was also an alcoholic, mum was a serious drinker at weekends only. I think I inherited the addictive genes.
I smoked my last cigarette on December 3rd 1994 the day of my op and my sisters 35th birthday. Went cold turkey,  it was hard but doable.Smoking, along with dusty  chemical factory work and a diesel fume filled warehouse no doubt contributed to my COPD.
I still have a good quality  of  life though.

Congratulations, Kim, on kicking the habit.

It is good to know that you can manage addiction. My father quit back in the 70s. He was taken to the Emergency Room because he couldn't breathe. Months later, it happened again, and the same ER doctor treated him. The doctor warned him, "That is Strike Two. Three strikes and you are out." He quit right then.

I have managed my habit by restricting how much I can smoke. Now that I have moved to a more supportive state, got settled in, and have friends in the area, my stress levels have dropped considerably. I have limited myself to 8 per day. I usually only have 6, but when stress goes up, I do have 8. Now, with the Count-Down Method, I have set my limits to hard limits with the steady decrease.

So far, so good. Thank you for sharing your experience.

  @Lori Dee
Dear Lori:
I carefully read your interesting treatise regarding habits... and your smoking journey.

By limiting your "intake"  of cigarettes you are also improving your prospects for better
long term health, but look at all the money you have saved 
              (eventually enough perhaps to get a Pink paint job on your new Jeep}

I know from my experience in the Air Force that smoking, especially being around new recruits, can
be a challenge to avoid.  For whatever reason I have never had the urge to smoke but in
my military service I probably was subject to more cigarette smoke because a lot of
people around me smoked.
The good news is that in the offices that I worked at, the Colonel didn't smoke and did
not allow smoking while on duty in his areas. 

I am certain that you had many of the same experiences while you were serving in the Army.

HUG, Danielle [Northern Star Girl]

Quote from: Northern Star Girl on Yesterday at 03:03:25 PMI am certain that you had many of the same experiences while you were serving in the Army.

Indeed. Back then, it wasn't illegal to smoke in a government building. When the policy changed, we had to have "Designated Smoking Areas" in various locations to accommodate the troops. Our commander did not smoke, but our First Sergeant and I did. We shared the same office space. The Orderly Room was a huge room outside the commander's and XO's offices. That space had three cubicles of sorts: The First Sergeant's office, the Master Gunner/Operations office (my office), and the Training NCO's office (who worked for me).

The commander came out of his office one day and posted a sign at the entrance to the Orderly Room designating it as a smoking area, by order of the Commander. He also told us that we were free to smoke in his office when we had closed-door meetings with him. It didn't bother him, and he wanted his troops to have a place to relax and take a break.

With working up to 14 hours a day for months at a time, it was a stressful environment. I was up to two packs a day. I think it was not just the stress, but the fact that it was okay to smoke in mine and the surrounding offices. If we had been forced to go outside, it might have been different. I loved my job - like they say in the movie "Fury", the best job I ever had.

When I got out of the service, moved from California to Illinois, I started cutting down. I went to work at a Collection Agency, and was quickly promoted to head their Legal Department. We couldn't smoke in the office, but as head of my own department, I could take a break and go outside whenever I wanted. That helped me cut down. I hated that job, and working in the Chicago area. The money was great, but the traffic, commuting an hour to work, and stress were too much.

I found a job at a local alarm company, four blocks from my house. I could walk to work in the summer. It was work that I truly enjoyed, and my stress levels dropped even more. I managed to quit for a very short time. I had injured my neck and had surgery. Shortly after that, my wife got sick and passed away. I was still fighting Social Security for my disability pay, and I ended up losing everything: family, house, car. I started smoking again, but my situation turned around fairly quickly thanks to a family friend who rescued me. She eventually became wife #3, a non-smoker, and I was smoke-free for the next ten years.

The reason I am confident that I will succeed is that when my neighbor and I went out to metal detect his property, I did not smoke the whole time. He is a non-smoker, and we rode in his car. While out walking the property, I thought about smoking, but decided to wait. I didn't smoke all day until I got home. I had a good time and was not in any distress. So I know I can do it. I just need to want to do it. That is my problem. I enjoy it too much, so I don't want to give it up. But I also know that I can't have surgeries if I don't. That is my motivation.

Hi Everyone

I must start this off with an obligatory joke.  I don't drink, smoke or swear.  Bloody hell I left my cigs down the *&^&$@$ pub.

Seriously, I only drink among friends that I trust explicitly and only a couple of times have I ever been drunk tipsy in their presence.  I also do not smoke.  That is not to say that I have not tried it in the past.

When I was young, around the ages of 11 or 12, my brother and I were walking along a path that paralleled a train track in a city called Frankston, Melbourne.  I suppose a thought crossed our minds or something similar maybe we wanted to smoke because our father smoked.

Anyway, we were looking for cigarette butts and luckily there were none suitable.  So an initial encounter with the smoking crave passed especially for me.

Many years later after I came home from boarding school.  I tried a puff or two on a cigarette, but the coughing more than likely stopped me from pursuing the habit.  There was only one time where I did smoke a whole cigarette, it did nothing for me.  Fortunately I have never smoked again.

There are I guess several reasons for this, maybe a couple of speculative ones: I do not have the so called 'gene' that needs a drug to solve any problems I have.  I saw the disgusting pubs where men stood around drinking and smoking at the local filthy pub.  I know what they looked like because my mum worked in them supporting her children.  My dad had died at that stage.  I knew instinctively that was not my scene at all. I enjoyed sitting down in a restaurant and having one drink or two among friends but never more.  This was the scene I preferred.  I guess maybe that was a part of me who would surface many years later.

My grandfather smoked I guess all his life and when he got diagnosed.  I don't know the details.  He had COPD or emphysema.  I know of one instance where I noticed the effects of what it did to him.  We were bathing in a local bush creek next to a dirt road and I noticed he was having trouble breathing.  Although the water was only chest high, it was evident that the water pressure was exacerbating his condition and also he was a wiry man.

My mother smoked for approximately 20 odd years after my dad died then basically gave it up only to learn later on that she had COPD and of course emphysema.  At that stage of her life she swam, walked and biked around a peninsula called Redcliffe.  It certainly put a dent in her activities.  Finally I have had asthma all my life.

In reflection given those incidents there is no way that I will ever take up the habit of smoking or even try it again.  As Danielle has mentioned being in a smoke filled room is also a turn off.  I just do not want to suffer what my mum and granddad suffered from all those years of smoking and I want to look after my lungs.

However I must have one vice.  Sometimes I go cold turkey then the old habit resurfaces and that is *&^&$@$ swearing.

Best Wishes Always
Sarah B
Global Moderator
PS I missed a passage that should have been in it in the first place.  It occurs after "My dad died".  I have inserted the missing passage accordingly.
@Norther Star Girl @Lori Dee

Lori Dee,

I wanted to share my own experience because I think it might help.

When I quit, I had a full unopened carton of cigarettes sitting on top of the fridge. I kept it there deliberately - I needed to know I was quitting because I wanted to, not simply because I'd run out. I smoked my last cigarette, put on a NicoDerm CQ patch, and went to bed. I kept that carton up there for a couple of months as a constant reminder that I was choosing not to smoke, then gave it away. That was 25 years ago.

I had a mantra that saved me through every craving: "I will never smoke again!" I'd repeat it over and over until the craving settled down. No negotiating, no "just one," no exceptions. That absolute declaration became my anchor.

Fair warning about the vivid dreams - I had these wild 8-hour long-shifting dreams that were absolutely surreal. And here's something: I still have smoking dreams sometimes where I'm puffing like a smokestack. Even 25 years later, my brain occasionally goes there. But I wake up, and I haven't actually smoked. The dreams don't mean anything except that our brains remember.

Your Count-Down method is brilliant, and your understanding of the genetic and environmental components shows real wisdom. The fact that you're attacking this from multiple angles - the Chantix, the B-complex, the behavioral changes - tells me you're taking this seriously and intelligently.

Twenty-five years from now, you'll look back on November 2025 as the time you took your life back for good.

You've done this before. You know yourself. And now you've put it out there publicly. You've got this.
— Susan

Quote from: Sarah B on Yesterday at 06:39:08 PMHowever I must have one vice.  Sometimes I go cold turkey then the old habit resurfaces and that is *&^&$@$ swearing.

Get a grip on that, Sis! Thanks for sharing.

😆

Quote from: Susan on Yesterday at 07:18:24 PMFair warning about the vivid dreams - I had these wild 8-hour long-shifting dreams that were absolutely surreal. And here's something: I still have smoking dreams sometimes where I'm puffing like a smokestack. Even 25 years later, my brain occasionally goes there. But I wake up, and I haven't actually smoked. The dreams don't mean anything except that our brains remember.

The Wellbutrin did that to me. Some people have that with Chantix, but I do not. Which is why I asked the doctor for it instead.

I have had smoking dreams, too. I don't find them unnerving. As you said, the brain remembers.

I know that this is an addiction because of how I reacted during the ten years clean. I was out mowing my backyard and found a pack of cigarettes. Someone must have thrown them out of their car window as they drove down the alley. I picked it up, and it only had one cigarette missing from the pack. I remember staring at it for a long time. Then I took it into my garage and put it in a cabinet. About a month later, I threw it away. I never took one out.

What stuck with me was how I was mesmerized by this free and nearly full pack of smokes. I felt that I could not get rid of them. I needed to have them, but I refused to light one. It takes willpower to stand strong against it.

Thanks for sharing!