a friend of mine is a heavy smoker (20 cigarettes a day), i was always annoyed by his constant complaining about the difficulty to quit (he had been trying for years) and so i started a challenge:
i started smoking, after a week i was smoking the same amount as him, after a month, i quit and proved to him that it's achievable, he was so embarrassed that he was able to quit a couple days after, morale of the story, today, day 1, even though i feel like i could use some nicotine, i don't actually want to, and it's all because i never identified myself as a smoker, it was more of a chore, a challenge, for everyone here, if you want to have a cigarette now, know that you are inferior to me hehe. hope this motivates someone. competition is the best way to quit, the human ego is stronger than any nicotine craving.
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Darklurker welcome and very good luck to your quit. I am very competitive but in regards to quit I don't compete, I suck at quitting although I've had enough practice. I chose to walk slowly step by step holding the hands of all my buddy's here, I choose to celebrate each of success stories with all my heart and help the ones that are falling, grab their hands and keep walking. You're free to join the gang
A very interesting and unusual post DarkLurker but I guess everyone has their own reasons for taking up smoking. There is never a sensible excuse for taking up the habit but I've never come across one like yours. Glad that it made your friend quit though.
If you're really serious about quitting yourself then I welcome you to the forum and wish you every success. With your confidence it should be easier for you than for most of us on here.
Darklurker welcome and very good luck to your quit. I am very competitive but in regards to quit I don't compete, I suck at quitting although I've had enough practice. I chose to walk slowly step by step holding the hands of all my buddy's here, I choose to celebrate each of success stories with all my heart and help the ones that are falling, grab their hands and keep walking. You're free to join the gang
thank you, that's great if it's working for you, i on the other hand wouldn't be have been able to do so had i not been under pressure.
Well, it's like me joining the AA's and come up laughing at them for not being able to stop the drink....really, Im not an alcoholic, am I? Therefore shouldn't be there unless my intention was to help the people in there because I certainly don't need help to stop drinking myself, I don't even drink. You are describing arrogance and lack of respect for your friend and any person that is genuinely trying to better themselves. My first answer to you was nice and polite, you should have read the points between the lines instead of answering me back with even more arrogance.
A very interesting and unusual post DarkLurker but I guess everyone has their own reasons for taking up smoking. There is never a sensible excuse for taking up the habit but I've never come across one like yours. Glad that it made your friend quit though.
If you're really serious about quitting yourself then I welcome you to the forum and wish you every success. With your confidence it should be easier for you than for most of us on here.
thank you! i wouldn't quite call it confidence, i just know how and why i feel about things, i guess tracing back your habit to its root and understand the mindset that drove you to it is a great way to start
Dark Lurker....Taking up smoking to show someone it is possible to quit is playing with fire.. but to smoke for a month or two and quit might not be as difficult as to smoke 40 per day for 38 years and then quit....Cigarettes is a chemical and messes wit your brain and takes over the normal function of all the happy chemicals and that is why it is easier to kick a heroin addiction than Nicotine.
The moment you understand this you will have sincere sympathy with your friends addiction as a light smoker @ 20 a day.
Some of us start smoking as 18 year old boys forced into a war and see our friends blown to pieces by a a landmine and therefore it is no joke at all and if you want to proof how confident and great you are do it by helping your friend to quit in a supportive way...!
Well DarkLurker your introductory post to the forum has certainly got the reaction I suspected it would - hence the closing of ranks.
To be honest I too was very skeptical when I read it but in order to give you the benefit of the doubt I tried to word my reply in a restrained way.
If you really are genuine about quitting cigarettes then you are welcome here and maybe approaching your quit head on with what to me seems 'inflated bravado' will work for you.
Quitting for some of us more seasoned smokers does prove to be quite a challenge to come to terms with though.
I agree that success only comes if we are determined and confident but it can be a sensitive subject, if quitting was easy for everyone then this forum wouldn't need to exist. We do tell it like it is on here and we all have our own strategies where quitting is concerned but we do support one another as best we can. Sometimes we have differences of opinion but at the end of the day the forum is somewhere we can talk and share our experiences - it's a kind of lifeline and safety net in the madness that we call quitting.
I just hope that you are serious about giving up smoking and that it really will be as easy as you think.
The forum is here to support you and you are welcome to join us.
the whole point of my post was showing that the most effective way to quit smoking for someone was competition, i'm just trying to give some motivation.
I'm all in favour of motivation and I do agree that when push comes to shove quitting is all about inner strength and determination and of course accepting that we really want to quit.
"it's obvious i'm not trying to come off as arrogant."
"so you think i posted here to brag? read my post again."
"the whole point of my post was showing that the most effective way to quit smoking for someone was competition, i'm just trying to give some motivation".
Dark Lurker...Not one of the posters suggested or accused you to be arrogant or bragging.
I have read your post more than once to ensure myself that what I read is what I read : You started smoking to show your friend who are smoking 20 a day that it is easy to stop and you challenge him to follow you if you can stop.You smoked for a month then stopped and challenge everyone here that if they crave a cigarette they are inferior to you.
This challenge according to you is the most effective way to quit...... For your friend maybe yes !
I am sure you are a very intelligent person and should know that there are Billions of dollars spent on research yearly to find the most effective way to quit smoking and up to now there are no most effective way found and only due to one reason: every person experience the journey different and smoked for years and maybe started smoking before you were born.
Please continue motivating your friend and thank you for going to extreme measures to help him and please have more empathy for the rest of us really struggling to overcome this addiction.
I think this post should be closed, moderator any chance this post could just go? Myself personally rely on this forum to find peace, not to get annoyed and having palpitations. Giving the poster the benefit of the doubt once again you've got the point. Can we just get ride of this post?
Listen Dark Lurker, You had better grab yourself a seat as you may learn a few things. your friend has more than likely been smoking more than one year, correct? You smoked for a month? correct?
A MONTH IS NOT LONG ENOUGH TO CREATE A TRUE CHEMICAL DEPENDANCY! that would be the same for heroin, benzodiazepines, Cocaine etc etc. Yes you may feel a niggle from the nicotine leaving your body, BUT you have not smoked long enough for your body to stop producing its own dopamine and instead rely on cigarette signalled dopamine release (which is what addiction is on a biochemical level), by the sounds of your own account and going by general population stats, your brain sounds like it is still producing dopamine by itself, hence no mention of quitting symptoms. did you know 10% of people do not have the gene for nicotine to hijack the dopamine pathways in the brain anyways? even if you smoke for 20 years?
So good, stop smoking as you don't need to smoke yet anyways. but please, sit down. when it comes to intelligence I am far more arrogant than you trust me, because number 1, I know biochemistry of this, and 2 I have smoked for 13 years and lived the experience.
Dark Lurker - People come here for support. We laugh together. We cry together. We offer support when we can and are glad of it when others are able to help us through a tricky time. No competition. Not needed.
Well at the risk of being shouted down I think maybe we should give DarkLurker a chance to prove that he really can give up smoking.
His post was badly worded and possibly just meant as a wind up for us - if that was the case then it's certainly worked.
But, that said, I personally think the forum is for everyone and we're all different. There's room for all of us and maybe we're just taking this too seriously - it's early days.
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