Easy! Turns out smoking not only is a slow kilñer but it raises your stomachs acidic level so that if you have other stressers (high stress job, no regular meals, no breaks, drink to excess, etc) it’s easier for your body to turn on itself and pop a hole in your stomach (aka a bleeding ulcer).

which then can lead to a moderate (week+) hospital stay, plus special diet for a month, couple weeks rehab, and medication for a time.

Oh, as a bonus your body will then be subjected to all the fun withdrawals: nicotine, caffeine, alcohol. All cool things when you’re young and indestructible.

Needless to say I haven’t had a cigarette in over 26yrs.

Once I decided I didn’t want to smoke cigarettes anymore medication made the path easy. My biggest problem was getting out of the mindset. I enjoy the act of smoking and I convinced myself that things would be even worse if I quit cigarettes, that I’d get fat again and be unable to control my anxiety. I trapped myself hard and I couldn’t see it because the addiction spoke for me.

I had “tried” to quit several times before, but they were half assed attempts because I didn’t really want to quit. I even convinced myself that the Champex would give me nightmares and make my mental illness worse ( it did not).

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone who needs to quit, but can’t, go on the Champex ( Chantix in the US). It worked so well I didn’t even go through the whole recommended cycle of pills and have not gone back to smoking after almost 5 years. It made me nauseous while I was on them and that really changed how my brain sees cigarettes. I thought at first I might relapse, but the smell of cigarettes is disgusting to me now.

Now, I can’t speak to how well it dealt with the physical habit side of it, because I do still smoke pot, but by god I will never willingly put tobacco in my body again. I think it was the start of my self improvement, though I didn’t know it back then.

Not directed at OP, but to anyone trying to quit, here’s my story:

essentially quit both last march. I had been a cig smoker for over 30 years then switched to vaping. Don’t let anyone tell you vaping is a way to quit. It’s not. Or, at least- it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking to quit- quit. Don’t crutch yourself into continuing to smoke by lying to your self that vaping isn’t smoking.

It is.

Having said that. My experience is this:

I got on Wellbutrin and it didn’t take the first time. This would have been around January. Though while on it- I could see how it would work. I just didn’t stick with it.

2nd try was successful. And the reason how I know it’s successful, is that since I quit- I lost my best friend in July, and my 15 year old dog on Halloween night. Not once through the grief of either, did I turn to smokes or even think about them once.

If you’re looking to quit- you can quit. Whatever method works best is the correct method. But there will be no guarantee that at of them work work for you.

I was 2 packs a day for 12 years. I made a bet with a roommate that we’d both quit smoking on the same day, loser lost $250. If we both hadn’t smoked again in a month, we’d put $500 towards a vacation.

Neither of us smoked again. I used the early versions of vapes. Was doing great on those until I got really drunk one night and lost them. And that was the last nicotine I inhaled.

I used to vape in college but afterwards decided to quit. Part of what made quoting easier was moving away and breaking from routine because for me it became a part of my day-to-day. The other thing that helped me was doing cardio. Running would suck so hard because my lungs had a hard time keeping up. That shitty feeling also helped push through cravings.

I quit smoking 6 years ago. It’s tough honestly, it helps that there are no smokers in my social group. When I’m out with smokers I usually bum a cig, particularly when drinking.

I was hospitalised for a couple months, I couldn’t physically take myself out for a smoke and the nurses weren’t going to wheel my bed down, so they gave me patches. I figured I’d quit smoking when I got out to continue the work already done.

I still want to smoke, I like that it gives me something to do and haven’t really found a replacement for it, doom scrolling maybe. It also gave me something easy to manage, if that makes sense, low stakes and easy problem to solve every day. I smoked for 10 years and my habit was just less than a pack a day, sometimes more not often less. Hopefully, it gets easier in 4 years when I’ve been a non-smoker for as long as I was a smoker.

Transitioning to vaping was easier, I was at or near the vanguard of that movement, when we were building our own coils and shoving batteries into tupawares and blowing ourselves up. Whenever I craved a real cig, I’d buy 10, smoke them and go back to vaping. I’d buy a pack every week, then every month, then every 2 months… I hoped quitting would be the same, it was not.

One of my friends just woke up a non-smoker the same time that I quit, and our experiences are night and day. I get cravings all the time, this guy: “why would I get cravings? I don’t smoke.” His brain just decided it was done smoking one day.

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I started smoking at 14, discovered vaping when I was 19, the first few months I was coughing up black goo, then once cleared my lungs have felt perfectly fine since. I’m 27 now and have no intention of quitting vaping, not for any reason, I just enjoy it. I don’t like clouds though, so I’ve found my self using a vaperesso xros 3 mini and I guess amazing flavour but most important to me I get a nice lovely nicotine hit.

I know I’m addicted to nicotine, but because of vaping I don’t find it necessary to quit my addiction, nicotine it’s self isn’t very harmful in small quantities, so here I am and probably will be until a doctor tells me otherwise.

Switching from smokes to vapes was pretty easy. Then over time I lowered the nicotine level 1mg at a time until I was at zero. One day I realised I hadn’t touched it for 2 weeks and I’d accidentally quit so I got rid of everything and here I am - smoke and vape free.

Terrible at first because I tried it without any medication and I simply could not afford to not be working for the 3-5 days for the worst physical signs to pass.

Afterwards I tried again with medication and it went smoothly, no physical addiction signs, but the mental ones were interesting. I haven’t even realized how rooted in my routine smoking was - every time I knew I’d be waiting for ~5 minutes, I went for a smoke.

Has been over a year now and the strangest thing is I really want a cigarette from time to time, not very often, but it feels weird.

Ex-smoker/vaper here.

First put down the cigarette after 10+ years of smoking in favor of vaping. This was probably the easiest transition as I like gadgets and the whole vaping culture back then (UK) was huge. Everyone was getting the latest vapes with fancy features, the best juices and flavors. Regular vape maintenance, refilling and coil changes become a great substitute for cigarette rituals.

There was a huge downside of overdoing it. I mean in the beginning a lot. There is no control, no recommendation, and mainly no bad smell. You just whip out the vape indoors, while waiting for the bus, literally anytime.

There is the other issue (at least back then 5-6 years ago it was not really regulated) you could buy juices with any nicotine concentrate, even mix your own. Some of my coworkers even got headaches from overdosing nicotine.

Luckily after a year or so I got kind of bored of the whole vape culture as more vapers developed this self centered asshole personalities, where they think they could start blowing flavoured clouds into the face of others anywhere because “it’s safe, it’s not smoke” and other stupid reasons.

In the last few months I slowly reduced the nicotine content and reached zero nicotine juice state. Also, I made strict “outdoors vaping only” policy for myself. Without the nicotine I felt less and less will to go outside, just to inhale flavoured vape so I stopped altogether.

For 5 years now I am now nicotine-free and about 7 years without cigarettes, never looked back.

In summary: Vaping is a great tool to quit smoking, but needs careful planning and self control.

i found it easier to quit smoking, frankly, than quit sugary soft drinks.

the journey was simple: i just refused to smoke the next cigarette. i kept the last half-open pack and the lighter within easy reach (i could have started again in 5 seconds, if i wanted) and did not throw any of my many backup stash packs away.

the first week was tough, and the smoking dreams persisted for about 15 months, but i no longer crave nicotine in any form.

as someone who’d smoked 8-12 cigs a day for over 20 years, it definitely wasn’t as hard to quit as people make it out to be (even though this was my fifth attempt to do so in a decade). seriously, quitting cola drinks has been the far tougher challenge for me.

If you’ve got a big change coming up (moving house, changing jobs, etc) it’s a great time.

These changes can break all your mental associations and habits, making it easier to quit.

Wife and I bought a house with the agreement that we would not smoke inside. Then we stopped going out so much, argued a lot because quitting sucks and we did it at the same time. Eventually started going back out and have both been smoke free for a couple of decades.

It really took a lifestyle change to quit since the worst triggers were environmental, physical addiction was secondary.We also had tapered down a bit while house shopping and finalizing the sale so we had whittled down the number of cigarettes per day over time before stopping completely. The house was a nice reminder that we quit at first, and then a reinforcement during later temptations.

I smoked a pack a day for about a decade.

I used a method that was, at the time, recent research. Idk if you remember the quit smoking ad that features a woman going out for a a smoke break at work. She goes to light up, but looks stressed and panicked. She then fucking carjacks someone, looks relieved, and then lights up. It ended with a voiceover “You smoke every time you drive, but you don’t drive every time you smoke…? Think of a new way to quit.” And then had their URL on screen.

I was a psych student at the time, in a research class. Perfect. I dig in, find out what this ad is all about. As mentioned, it’s based on recent peer reviewed research. Awesome. I’m the test subject. Let’s recreate.

The tldr: quit specific cigarettes. Don’t quit cigarettes.

Do you smoke every time you drink your morning coffee? And then your next one after breakfast?

Okay, well, now the first cigarette of your day is the one after breakfast. Well quit that one a little later.

If you’re a smoker, you know certain cigarettes will be harder to quit than others. Space these out. Don’t quit your morning cig and then your after dinner cig. Jesus, man.

One by one, get them outta your life. The discomfort is brief, you know you’ll smoke again soon.

That’s pretty much it. Get it down to the last, most difficult to quit cigarette, and work hard at it, knowing g it’ll be a little harder than all the rest. If you fail, you don’t go back to smoking you go back to that cigarette.

If you drink alcohol, this will be the hard one. The drunk cigarette is tricky because drunk you doesn’t care about progress and will justify chain smoking ‘socially’ while out drinking or something. My recommendation for the drunk cigarette is to do it last. First quit the “drink alone” cigs, then the “social” drunk cigs. Then limit social drunk cigs to like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 a night.

The magic part is that you’ll still have them… But you’ll start hating them. You’ll realize how much non-smokers smell smokers and how little you noticed. The taste will be overwhelming, you’ll remember how strong it was when you started. I recommend getting hammered and smoking a couple. You’ll puke like Bobby Hill and be more or less done with it.