Karaoke Forums

With the New Year coming, I sure hope a lot of people make their resolution to stop smoking once and for all. I've never smoked, so I can't possibly know how hard it must be, but I sure wish you all to be successful in this endeavor. Here's a web page with some answers. I don't know how helpful it will be, but it's as good as any that I've seen. I wish all my friends here(smoking and non-smoking) good luck, a great holiday season, and may God bless you, your family and friends....oh and...pets too.....

http://www.mytimetoquit.com/content/ind ... /index.jsp

That is a really sweet and helpful gesture of you, Johnny.  :hug: If this can help even one person who's been trying to quit, that would be awesome.

May you and your family also have a blessed holiday season!  :D  :hug:

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Gonna bump this back up......don't wanna see any of my friends holding a microphone in one hand, and an oxygen bottle in the other......why, how the heck you gonna hold your beer........or pink lady......

Thanks for the Link Johnny Echo....Think I go have a smoke now.....

I stopped smoking (close to 4 packs a day Camel & Lucky's) when I had Bronchitis- I faithfully had bronchial infections twice a year. I quit (for the final time in '86).  It took one thing for me to quit.  Realizing the negative aspects of smoking had long since started to outweigh the benefits from the habit.  To quit smoking you have to REALLY want to.  The craving lasts a long time too.  Not as short and acute as Opiates, Ethyl Alcohol, or Benzodiazepine addictions,  those are usually actually easier physically because medications are used during acute withdrawal phase. I am speaking from firsthand knowledge not text knowledge.  I (at one point) kicked all these nasty addictions at least once. One of the toughest is actually dieting. Moderating food intake for we compulsive over-eaters is tougher than many can imagine. You can't go cold turkey on the stuff..  Only thing that can sustain the "quitting process" for smokers IMO, is REALLY wanting to quit. You also MUST make behavioral changes.  Find a means of filling that void.  I did it by drinking straight quinine water (natural relaxant)..  Satiated the hand to mouth habit.  Also be prepared to put on AT LEAST 20 lbs. within the first few months.  

Finally, after about 20 years,  I can sit in a room with smokers, NOT preach, not feel a nasty temptation, and not cave or succumb to that nice odor of those things.  They DO smell good !!  Damn Ciggy companies DO know what they are doing.

If you aren't sure you are ready to give up the habit because of what it is doing for you, you aren't ready to quit.  You MUST want to very badly.  It's a real addiction,  a tough addiction, and people smoke because they get something out've smoking. A lot of people just say "It's just a bad habit".  Thing is,  if it was JUST a bad habit, MOST wouldn't have as tough a time quitting. It's a displacement mechanism. It's a form of self-medicating. Cons must outweigh the gains, Never knew anyone who just quit for duration on a whim, or because another person wanted them to when they themselves weren't ready.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

The increase, if any, in metabolism from smoking is insignificant, from everything I've read, but smoking does serve as an appetite suppressant. Many people I know, that quit smoking would remark how food tasted so much better now that they had quit smoking. Studies have shown that smoking definitely increases a persons concentration, which is another benefit of smoking. Just like Kappy said, you have to make up your mind, that this is what you want to do. My buddy had the laser treatment, hasn't smoked for a year and a half, and he owns a smokey bar. Besides making up his mind to quit, the treatment was just one of several things that helped him succeed, spending so much time in a smokey business.....good luck to all

Some people have been helped with various treatments.  Some with hypnosis.  I suppose I was lucky.  I was so sick (as they say in programs) of being sick and addicted, that I hated the sensation, hated the affect.  They really became disgusting to me.  But I was a nervous wreck without having them.  I was truly addicted.  Once I got over the psychological initial phase (which was acute for at least 6 months), when I thought back about inhaling the smoke I felt..YECH... Those things are disgusting. Now I think back and realize they SMELL alot nicer than they actually feel or taste.  

Hypnosis sort've works on the same principle.  Hypnotists have used forms of desensitization such as "Each time you inhale on a cigarette imagine the odor of burnt rubber"..  Try it yourselves,  Hypnosis is just relaxation. Try to associate ciggy smoke with something you find repugnant.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".