We all have our reasons for stopping, but oftentimes reasons alone aren't enough to help us quit. For example, health and wealth may be great reasons, but many people continue to smoke despite the health risks and the expense even when they know deep down inside that they should really give it up. Many others continue to smoke with other good reasons going on in the back of their minds until one day they get that "ok, this is it!" moment (or not).
I guess what I'm saying is that there has to be more than just reasons to quit. There also has to be motivation, whether this builds up over time or if it is a sudden decision.
So, what got you started on your quit?
For me, it was a health scare and hospitalization. I had wanted to quit for a long time, but it was only the reality of what happened to me that jolted me into quitting. Had it not been for the hospitalization, I would probably still be smoking today.
Hopefully for others, the circumstances were less dramatic.
Alex.
Written by
nsd_user663_26699
To view profiles and participate in discussions please or .
back in november me and my OH were out walking huffing and puffing out of breath due to the slight uphill footpath as the kids ran ahead without a care in the world and there we made a pact together that we would quit on new years day and make 2011 a happy healthy new year and we did exactly that and the benefits have been emmence we walk all the time now and dont get out of breath ever we have taken up quite extreme walking in the country through allsorts of terrain
also which is more important to me is i have done it for my kids i was a secret smoker and never smoked in front of them but always felt guilty that i did smoke especially as i still smoked wen i was pregnant [might as well confess all] so i feel i owe it to my kids to quit and be there for them for longer in there life
Mine was because i just did not want to do it anymore. I smoked outside and i would sit there, in all weathers and wonder WTF i was doing. I never inhaled, i would only smoke half of a cig then destroy the rest and i hated it.
So my reason I stopped was because I WANTED TO TAKE CONTROL OF MY LIFE AGAIN and not the other way around.
On the 22nd December when I was coming down with what turned out to be a serious case of flu and feeling really rough and very wheezy, I was stood out in the freezing garden trying desperately to inhale puffs of a rollie, coughing like a hag, eyes watering, and I just looked at it and thought 'what the &"&!*&~# am I doing?'.
The flu came on and brought with it the worst asthma I'd ever had. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, my skin was grey and my lips were blue, I had to sleep sitting bolt upright... it was terrifying. And that killed any desire to restart when I felt better. The thought of being permanently in that condition due to a smoking related illness just scared me straight.
Five months on, I'm still here. I won't say it's been easy. My addiction was very powerful and still grips me every now and then. But it gets better all the time, and I take a few lovely deep breaths (which I could never do before) and think back to how bad I felt, and I get past it.
Shame it took me a quarter of a century to make that leap of faith, huh?
I always wanted to quit before I 'got too old' (I think most people plan to do that when they start in their teens!)... I don't think I ever would have if it wasn't for having seen my grandmother after a very long time.
Considering the amount she smokes she's actually an extremely well funcioning 70 year old! But it was a shock to hear her voice, see the wrinkles on her face and hear her cough and wheeze. I mentioned this to my mum (who also smokes) and she hadn't noticed aparently!
Having seen my future as a smoker as well as how easy it is to turn a blind eye to what smoking does to us really helped me stay with my quit.
Hels - my reason was similar though I can't say my flu was as bad as yours (is that a first I hear you say ? a man downplaying his flu ? ? ?), seriously, I've always had mild bronchial asthma but needing a half a dozen puffs on my inhaler to get through the night wasn't right, so the decision was pretty much made there and then, 22 days later still going.
It's important we have reasons, I do believe that if you don't have a reason or have been pressured into it by others then your risk of failure will increase, it's something you have to want to do whatever your reasons are.
Good luck Hels, though from reading your posts I don't believe you need it, you seem very well set to me....
Like you I have had "asthma" all my life, however now I realise I probably grew out of it some time ago.
I used my inhaler 10/12 times a day, sometimes prior to a cigarette to make it easier to smoke
Since I quit I dont wheeze, cough, have any form of phelgm and I use my inhalier maybe once or twice a week. I am using the same one that I started in January (quit 2/2). An inhaler would normally last 6/7 weeks at best.
Believe or not that wasnt the main reason for quitting. I do receive the odd compliment on how nice my gnashers are but in January my dentist told me that my teeth would part company with me because I have bone loss - terrifed me into a quit and here I am 15 weeks later plodding on !
That's good to know Tracey and glad you now feel much healthier.
I got fed up last week and went to the docs (because like the impatient idiot I am I expected to be fully healthy 2 weeks into my quit !), he prescribed a preventative inhaler which I'd never been given/used before.
Since I've started using it I have one puff on the ventolin every 2 or 3 days days (similar to you) and the doc is sure that when this preventative inhaler runs out I won't need another one and I'll rarely use the ventolin.
It really is amazing how much smoking affected my brething.
Of course there are cravings and some moments I feel very weak and could cave in, but I think back to the 3am ventolin and the 5am ventolin and the ventolin I needed as soon as I got out of bed, don't want to go through that again....
i've wanted to quit since i started age ten or there abouts. was told it was hard to do so of course i never tried .at age 15 a workmate said i ought to stop , hve said it was easy. the first day was the hardest after that it got much easier. i tried to stop for a day . couldnt do it. so decided somewhere that i was the one who could probably never stop. my friends all stopped and i carried on. they[cigarettes] became my strongest ally and fri end. Better than a friend i could just take them out of my pocket they never let me down.me and that little red glow.Through my 20s 30s 40s i was always getting chest infections and knew it was smoking related.all i needed do was quit. I'd remember what my work mate had said.''the first day is the hardest then it gets easy'', i'd try it but could never get past half a day but felt fantastic for that half day, then reward myself with smoking and the first tasted great then the rest uuurrgh,the great feelings id gained slowly evaporated but i remembered them and told myself one day i'll do that again .But as many smokers know we get into it, beleive we enjoy it and want to smoke . i smoked with everything except in the bath it always spoilt the bathtime and would disintegrate in my fingers and taste weird, didnt stop me trying tho and i couldnt wait to get out and have one. Years rolled by and i'd often think about stopping .read Alan carr loved it tried it failed after a day . tried a few times and gave up giving up. 3 yrs ago gave it another shot using patches did three months told the world how fantastic i felt then started again when i went for a drink became a full time smoker again. 2 yrs ago amonth before xmas tried to stop using patches but was always ripping them off smoking 2 stamping on the rest buying more patches ripping them off on and on like this until xmas eve 2009 caught the flu couldnt breathe went to bed swore to stop flushed em down the loo too make sure i couldnt dig them out of the bin. stuck on a patch and said thank god i dont have to smoke anymore. that was the beginning of a 6mth quit It was fantastic i would go cycling to prevent boredom through the cheshire countryside and keep going all day and arrive home late eve very happy... i developed a numbness in my left hand which would come and go gp sent me for tests i also got numb feelings in the left side of my face indicating a stroke . blood pressure was fine so they said i was ok. more investigations for my hand testd for ms trapped nerve.etc. then one day my left eye went blind for half a day. went to hosp and a brillint doctor put two and two together and diagnosed both the hand and the eye as indications of minor strokes a later head scan showed my right carotid artery to be 90% blocked and needed urgent surgery to get the blood flowing again.... Of course i started smoking again. i was bricking it the op was quite risky and the chances of having a big stroke or death whilst having it were significant. anyway i quit again had the op survived, stayed stopped 4mths had a drink and started again until mar 9 this yr which is how i came to be on here. i quit for 6 wks and was doing great. unfortunately i started to smoke again which leads me to here right now.... iv tried to stop again i just keep stopping and starting running back to it to give it another go.....I do want to quit and my workmate from 1975 was right the first day is the hardest. but its also hard to choose that first day.... im not giving up giving up... mashx I want to quit cos im sick of it
and i dont want to reblock my arteries, seems disrespectful. ps scans also show a small aneurism in left hemisphere of brain which could burst if my blood pressure gets high and smoking definately causes high blood pressure. right i dont need any more reasons to quit.....
Really interesting interesting to see how many of us finally decide to quit once we have physical symptoms and come to realize that those symptoms may be sinister.
It's somewhat as I suspected, at least from this small sample: We can want to quit, and we can find plenty of good reasons to quit, but oftentimes the real motivation is triggered once something negative happens.
Perhaps I'm just projecting... It would be interesting to see if there is a study that shows the correlation between the length of time having smoked and the "physical effects" motivation for quitting.
yes Horse releasing all that does make me want to stop and it does help seeing it historically down on paper instead o floating about disconnected inside my head where its unremembered. thanks for pointing that out to me.
my reason, i just couldn't get over the fact i was paying money, the money i work hard for to kill myself, still can't get over it. Might aswell pay a hit man to take me out and go on the run from him, see how long it takes him to finally catch up to me.
my reason, i just couldn't get over the fact i was paying money, the money i work hard for to kill myself, still can't get over it. Might aswell pay a hit man to take me out and go on the run from him, see how long it takes him to finally catch up to me.
I have an abnormal fear of death and suffer from anxiety. ( I sound a right catch huh! lol!) I was getting aches and pains in places I should not be getting such pains. In my heart area. So there I was, petrified of dying and leaving my kids yet spending a fortune as someone else pointed out to kill myself :eek:
I always thought I was a "good smoker" I never smoked inside, never in the car if the kids were in there, I always made a joke and a "sorry" for being stinky around non smoking friends. I even cut down to silk cut for the last year of smoking...silk cut are acceptable right? Pretty packet, hardened smokers always comment its like smoking "fresh air", I was now not only a "good smoker" but I was a sociably acceptable smoker with my silk cut! Everyone knows that those who smoke silk cut are not real smokers.... Yeah I kidded myself for a year.
I just smoked more and had it down to a tee holding the cig in such a way so I got a good puff on it...!
I am only on day 2, yet the stabbing pains (am getting them checked out) over my heart area have just about gone. I guess silk cut were not as smoker friendly as I thought!
I love my children more then anything else on earth as I am sure we all do, their begging, nagging and worry was never enough to spur me on to quitting It was my fear of death and the pains I was getting that did it.
It's like a child playing with matches...sooner or later they get burnt.
I was tempting fate and winning; I was young, youngish... Not so youngish now - figure that I tempted fate enough.
I do not want to be her, in the hospital, standing 50 feet away from the doors, haggard, wrinkled, in fuzzy slippers and a dressing gown, pushing the IV tube, let alone the oxygen tanks, sleet coming down, SMOKING, seeing others glance at the pathetic old bag and then looking quickly away with disgust.
I guess there were a few reasons that pushed me into it, the main one being that I want to be free of smoking by the time I'm 30. That's 18 months away (:eek:), so I figured that if I start now, I have time to try again a couple of times if I don't quite make it (not that I intend to, but statistically I know that it could happen).
The second main one was finding an NRT that made I was satisfied with - I've been experiement with different things for a couple of years now. I have noticed that when I started, there was always a 'don't mix different NRTs' attitude, whereas now it seems to be a free-for-all! I guess anything is better than the toxsticks
Someone I knew died suddenly. Not through smoking (She'd actually just quit) but in an accident. It eventually made me realise that I should be making the most of my life, and not only will smoking cut that short, but it doesn't really add anything significant to it. I could be using the time and money I spend to do something worthwhile before I kick the bucket.
just found this and after reading all that has posted before me makes me really really realise how f**ked up smoking makes you :eek:
i have said on afew occasions about the mind set of smokers especially swapping brands or rolling your own that was always mine i rolled my own so didnt enhale as many awful things that a smoker of a proper ciggy did
i still had to scrub my fingers to get the nicorette stains of but i just ignored that fact and i believed i really believed that i smoked because i enjoyed it
last late summer i saw one of the consultants i see (i have a number of ongoing health issues) who told me that the chances of me having a stroke or heart attack in the next 9 years was very high i just poo pooed that fact and said that smoking was my only pleasure :eek: HELLO WTF
it took till october when my daughter said she was worried about my grandson kurt who was 6 at the time and we spend alot of time together he was the feel good factor in my life and even though i didnt smoke in front of him he was always fascinated when i said i was having a ciggy and used to watch me from the door
anyway she kept finding him walking around with a crayon in his hand or mouth and told her he wanted to smoke when he grew up just like his nanny :mad:
i was speechless and sat and thought long and hard about that fact and decided that i couldnt ignore this like i have with everything else also the fact my daughter was pregnant with my second grandson and i didnt want him knowing me as a smoker so with them as my main reason i did it obviously afterwards once the smoke so to speak cleared i then done a mental why did i do that to myself and just cant understand that mindset of excuses there must be something in the baccy regardless of rollies or ready mades that give us the stupid reasons to carry on smoking
that nicorette demon has alot to answer for
and every day since no matter how bad the craving was i just used to think of kurt when mummy told him i didnt smoke anymore he gave me such a big hug and said bless you dont smell anymore nanny and is so proud of me even now for not giving into that horrible demon
and one of the biggest pluses for me is finding this site and the wonderful people that make this site what it is
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
but in January my dentist told me that my teeth would part company with me because I have bone loss - terrifed me into a quit and here I am 15 weeks later plodding on !
Yeah I kidded myself for a year.
