From: Hermit (virus@hermit.net)
Date: Sat Sep 20 2003 - 21:26:14 MDT
3 days to eliminate the physical addiction. A lifetime to eliminate the psychological.
I once found that the patch helped - if only because you cannot combine the patch with smoking - i.e. a glitch is unlikely.
I largely cured myself from cigarettes (though I will still sometimes smoke them in company) by simply moving to pipe/cigars - which are much safer and far less addictive. The last time I gave up, I simply dropped the pipe and slowly cut down from cigars (which can be left to self extinguish after a puff or two) when I felt like it, to one cigar spread out over the course of a day (knowing that you are "allowed" a puff or two is much less stressful than "breaking" self-imposed rules) and finally went cold-turkey after a month. An important part of this approach is to keep your smoking gear somewhere inconvenient. That way I had to think about whether I really needed a smoke - which really cut down the frequency dramatically. An even stronger effect can be had by giving your smoking gear to your SO to look after. That way you are admitting failure each time you ask for a smoke (although the game rules should include the SO not commenting on the failure, but instead offering support as strongly and as often as
possible for long intervals). I found that taking up another toy (worry beads, exercise balls etc), exercising and completely changing schedules and activities really helped too.
Bear in mind that at one cigar/5 cigarettes a day you are getting most of the benefits of stopping completely. But holding the quantity down is much easier with cigars or pipe than with cigarettes.
I found that the occasional cigar (once a week) was not a problem a problem and did not affect my ability to abstain. However, on each occassion that I restarted smoking after having stopped, it was caused by a single cigarette - usually offered by a friend over a beer...
Hermit
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