May I join this forum?
 

I'm planning to quit on June 1st. I will start taking Chantix (varenicline) tablets this coming Sunday, and Friday (June 1st) will be my Quit Day! :yay: :yay: :)

Hi Kisal!! I'm so happy for you and support your choice to quit! I know you can do it! Have you checked out http://www.quitnet.com/qn_main.jtml
I found them to have lots of free information and great support in their forums, too.

Oh, Kisal - I wish you the best of success with quitting. I've heard that the Chantix works way better than anything else out there. Unfortunately, I HAD to quit smoking because I was going to have a tummy tuck. It was extremely emotional for me, but I got thru with Wellbutrin and patches. I'm here for you if you need ANYTHING! I've been smoke free for 5 weeks. Good luck.

Barb

Thanks, everyone! I have to admit that I'm really scared. :eek: I feel like I'm about to lose my best friend, although I'm fully aware that cigs are no friend to me!

Hi i quit smoking 204 days ago...i had never heard of chantix at the time and used the patches....if i had to do it all over again i would use that chantix that everyone talks about...
best of luck to you...
im here if you need support
cj
i also used this website for support www.quitnet.com

Congratulations on 204 smoke-free days! :thup:

I joined Quitnet a week ago, and finally made a post there today. I made an error, though. I thought you took Chantix for 5 days before you quit smoking, but it's 7 days, so I'll start taking it tomorrow.

I tried the patches, the gum, and the nasal spray many, many times. None of them helped me at all. I really hope I can quit using the Chantix.

The important thing is to keep trying. I wish you the best of success. :)

Well, I made it through Day One! Whew! It was rough! I had the shakes, cold sweats, the whole bit! At least I didn't get delerious! :lol:

Now to get through the rest of Day Two! I feel like my head is wrapped in cotton batting or something, and I'm having a difficult time focusing my eyes. Oh, well. On with the show! :lol:

Kisal,

How is it going?

Not good. Not good at all. :( I smoked 3 cigarettes today. I don't understand how I used to be able to smoke an entire pack of the nasty things. The taste in my mouth was so foul that I felt as though I had licked a dirty ashtray. YUCK! :p :p :p Really and truly gross. I had to brush my teeth 3 times after each cigarette to get rid of the awful taste.

Anyway, I'm very disappointed in myself. I don't know what to do, except get back on the wagon and fight the cravings. I wish quitting smoking was like quitting high carbs, i.e. you lose your cravings. Life would be so much easier then.

Kisal. May I suggest some things? Throw away that pack of ciggys right now!! Poor water over them, rip them up, anything it takes to make them not smokeable. Don't beat yourself up because that just sets you up for failure (oh look I can't do this, etc). Make up your mind that it was just a slip and don't allow yourself to wallow in the self defeating thoughts!!! It's important to know that you CAN do this! Many people have a slip during their quit, this is common. The danger is thinking that it's okay to keep doing that and the next thing you know you're in a relapse. Make a new promise (or a contract) to yourself and begin fresh right now. There's really no such thing as one cigarette to a nicotine addict.

Also, think about what your triggers were that got you to the place where you slipped. These are your trouble areas and you need to find ways to keep yourself from smoking when you encounter them again. You can PM me if you want help finding some ways to break those triggers (paired associations). I had a lot of them and did quite a bit of research finding alternatives. Also there's that free hotline where you can speak with a person who's trained to help you to quit (1- 800 quit now). They added to my list of alternatives.

Try writing down how awful they tasted and how they were NOT satisfying. Funny how the mind will forget those things during the middle of bad cravings. Did you write down all of the benefits of quitting yet? If not start making a list of all the reasons why you're quitting. These are more important than trying to satisfy the cravings, which can never be satisfied as long as you're on Chantrix, so smoking is a no-win situation right now. Since the benefits are hard to remember during a crave, it helps to have it all written down.

What helped me the most was remembering that the crave could only last for a few minutes. You can survive it if you keep it in terms of right now. Don't worry about the next crave, just focus on the present and get through them one at a time. If you smoke those cravings will never go away. If you slip the longer you'll suffer with the cravings. The longer you don't smoke the closer you get to getting rid of them for good.

The intensity will fade away. Honest, they will get further and further apart. They will be less and less intense. But please, please, throw those ciggys away! Don't let your slip turn into a relapse. You're worth the hard work of staying smokefree.

Oh, the cigs weren't mine! There are no cigs in my house anymore. I threw them all away on May 31st.

A friend was visiting me, and while she was here, I received a phone call that upset me quite badly. I began to cry, and she was only trying to help by offering me a cig. I actually had the sense to say that smoking wouldn't solve the problem, but then the ol' Nicodemon whispered in my ear, reminding me of how cigs used to calm me down when I was upset. I fell for it, even though I knew it wasn't going to help for long or in any real way. Deep breathing would have been a better choice, but I wasn't thinking that clearly.

As my friend was leaving, I asked her please never to offer me a cig again, even if I asked for one.

As it is, though, what's done is done. All I can do now is go back to avoiding the "sickarettes."

Kisal, it does get better. Honest. The longer you go without smoking, the less you crave or even think about them.
I'm coming up on 20 months nicotine free and at this point, I often go several days at a time without even thinking about smoking and when I do, it's more in the sense of 'I used to....' than it is 'I want to'.
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue on. :)

I agree with what everyone here has said. I quit 25 years ago and the first year was the hardest. I craved them after meals especially. I had a dream about 5 months into it where a giant cigarette was chasing me saying "SMOKE ME...SMOKE ME!" I didn't cave.

My will power to quit cold turkey was because my son then five had chronic bronchitis and the attack that almost landed him in the hospital made me realize that DH and I smoking around him wasn't good. I tossed the cigs never to pick them up again and DH smokes outside and has been all that time.

Oh and on the Chantix....I have a friend that used that and it worked okay for smoking cessation but it made her really psychologically weird and she even slept so deep that she wet the bed a couple of times....she is 39. She couldn't handle the way she was feeling so she quit the Chantix and tried the Wellbutrin again. No luck!!! She was an emotional wreck anyway.....and the smoking cessation and the meds made her weird.

Good luck to you!!! I am confident you will do it. Maybe not cold turkey but you may be able to wean yourself down to only a few before quitting totally.

HN

Tryin to kick it
 

Hey, new here n trying 2 loose the butts n lose the gut. Hope im doin this right.