I have been a regular pack-a-day smoker since I was fourteen. This is now thirty years. This makes me what medical professionals would call a thirty pack-year smoker. If I had been two packs a day for that time, I'd be considered a sixty pack-year smoker. This is how medical professionals describe how long, and how much a smoker has been smoking.
Over the years, I have tried, numerous times, to quit - and been unsuccessful every time...the longest I had ever gone without smoking was just over two weeks. Even when I got my Gender Reassignment Surgery, and was warned to quit smoking for six weeks after the surgery, I found myself unable to comply with this directive, and resumed smoking a week after the surgery - even with the knowledge that any complications of my surgery would be blamed on my smoking. This takes on additional significance when you understand I had my surgery halfway around the world, in Bangkok, Thailand, where there is no recourse for medical malpractice.
Follow below the squiggly thing for a brief history of my attempts to quit smoking...the methods I have tried, the amount of success I had, and my own feelings about the reasons why each of these previous attempts failed.
Forgive my indulgence there, but, god...the satisfaction of inhaling and exhaling....is just UNDESCRIBABLE!! For those of you who never smoked, I certainly don't mean to encourage smoking. But you also have NO IDEA...the amount of sheer pleasure and satisfaction a smoker gets from the feel of holding a cigarette, from taking that drag....the flavor, and the exhale!
You simply have no idea the level of satisfaction a smoker gets from this. And it is precisely for this reason - that all conventional methods of quitting smoking failed to provide this satisfaction - why all those attempts also failed, and failed miserably...within two weeks.
I tried quitting cold turkey. This was the absolute worst, and the least successful method I ever tried. This attempt was made in 2002, when I was in Bangkok, Thailand. I lasted a week.
I had been, as I mentioned, advised to quit smoking for at least six weeks after the surgery. I was advised that not quitting would complicate my recovery, and could lead to serious problems. I still failed. Threats from medical professionals - just don't help. They are not a sufficient motivator for me. And they certainly do not replace the satisfaction of smoking.
I tried the patch, I tried the gum. None of them worked for more than a week to two weeks. The gum generally didn't taste very good...and you weren't even supposed to actually CHEW it...just bite into it and then hold it in your mouth. The patches always wanted to come off with the first sweat. And neither provided the things I found enjoyable about smoking.
I tried regular gum. Wrigley's Spearmint, to be exact. This was the most-successful method of quitting I had tried prior to my most recent ongoing attempt, which I will get into in a few moments. I lasted almost two and a half weeks on the Wrigley's Spearmint. It at least provided a pleasant taste, a taste similar to the Menthol cigarettes I had been smoking. But in the end, it wasn't enough.
I even tried not smoking indoors, even at home....failed. I tried putting hard candy into all my ashtrays. No biggie, just got me an empty Coke can, and used that as an ashtray! The only thing I never tried was drugs. Things like CHANTIX would not be a good option for me, given my history of depression. There is also a potential side effect to CHANTIX, which makes it an option I would never consider: Vivid and/or unusual dreams.
I had taken meds for my depression before, and the exact med I was taking produced this specific side effect. I would wake up in the middle of the night, too terified to move...to even turn on the light over my bed - with my heart racing, and bathed in cold sweat. I took myself off that medication and called my doctor, demanding something else, telling him I was not going to go through what I was going through anymore...it was worse than the original condition for which the medication had been prescribed.
I also tried early versions of E-cigarettes...the kind with a "cartomizer" that you changed out every day or two. They didn't work for me, because you could never get a decent drag on them...and they tasted filthy. The kind I am talking about here are the kind that really look like a cigarette...and the tip even glows when you drag on it.
Did not work for me. Utterly failed to deliver the kind of satisfaction I needed.
Recently, I moved to North Carolina. I was happy about one aspect of the move right off....CHEAP CIGARETTES!! Cigarettes are twenty bucks cheaper a carton here than in Pennsylvania, where I had moved from. Prices in Massachusetts are just insane...over nine bucks a pack. Yet I broke down and bought some, even in Massachusetts, when on a trip up there recently, I had not brought along enough cigarettes to last my trip. So higher and higher prices were no motivation for me to quit, either.
I still remember buying cigarettes for my dad, when I was a kid. They were 55 cents a pack then, and a kid could buy them from stores, with a signed note from the adult parent. One could also get them from vending machines. I remember when they first went over a buck a pack...and how folks all around me would say that they would quit if smokes went over two bucks a pack. They did. And those same people did not quit.
When I began smoking, they were just under $2.50 a pack. Now, I could pay about five bucks a pack here in North Carolina...or nearly seven dollars a pack in Pennsylvania.
My move to North Carolina happened to introduce me to a method of quitting smoking that I have found which may actually work! At the very least, it provides me with everything I enjoy about smoking (and some side benefits outside of the health issues)
I attended a local "Harvest Festival" in my new town, Wendell, NC about a week after moving here. And there I happened upon a vendor selling a new kind of e-cigarette I had never seen before. This device did not have a "cartomizer" it had a tank you filled with liquid...and many flavors to choose from. I knew immediately I had found the sort of thing that JUST MIGHT be successful.
Yet, controversy swirls among health agencies and health professionals concerning the effectiveness of "vaping" as a method of quitting or reducing smoking. Certainly, "vaping" is probably not as healthy as not smoking or vaping at all...but, if the choice is between smoking conventional cigarettes versus "vaping" I cannot see how "vaping" is not the better choice. Certainly it cannot POSSIBLY be more harmful, and, in the time I have been vaping, I have noticed certain health benefits from quitting conventional cigarettes....even though I have replaced them with vaping.
That, right there, I think is the main reason why "vaping" has been looked upon by many health professionals, and health organizations as not beneficial to quitting smoking. They have a vested interest in continuing to sell us "stop smoking" products that do not satisfy, and therefore, do not work.
There are, also, those who believe that the variety of flavors might entice young people to take up vaping...which could then lead to them smoking conventional cigarettes. (Link)
I disagree. First of all, conventional cigarettes do NOT come in the flavors that would entice the young to take up vaping. Secondly, when I first began vaping...I was weaning myself off conventional cigarettes.
I had five packs of conventional cigarettes...and they lasted me three weeks (normally, in the same time period I would have smoked just over two cartons) - and towards the end of that "wean-off" period...I began to discover that, to me, the conventional cigarette tasted dirty and filthy compared to vaping. Thus I think it very unlikely anyone would choose to take up smoking as a replacement to vaping.
So...for those who do not really know what these e-cigarettes are (some call them hookah pipes, by the way, although, in reality, hookah pipes are different from e-cigarettes) This Wikipedia Article explains what e-cigarettes are and how they work.
Note that the e-cigarettes I had tried previously, and failed with...were so-called "first generation" devices. What I use now is best described as a "second generation" device. I'm not really handy and experienced enough to try some of the "third generation" devices now available.
I certainly do not mean to suggest that vaping is harmless, quite the contrary, there ARE potential harms and risks involved in vaping...many of those risks involve mishandling of the "e-liquid" that is used in second and third generation devices.
10 Little-Known Facts About E-Cigarettes
The controversy rages on, and one is given to wonder what interests each side has in the position they have taken on the subject of vaping. But if I am to be an example, I am currently 24 days completely quit smoking - and that is longer quit than any other method I have ever tried. So those who say there is not enough empirical evidence that they are beneficial to smokers who want to quit...they haven't talked to me...or to many of the people I have met in some of the local "vape lounges" who, like me, were long-term smokers who sought, for various reasons, a better alternative to smoking.
We Should Cheer E-Cigarettes, Not Condemn Them!!
I agree wholeheartedly with this!
Prior to my taking up vaping and quitting smoking...I used to have a half-hour-long coughing fit every morning on waking up...and again on first going to bed at night. Since I have totally quit smoking and only vape...no more coughing fits!
Additionally, vaping gives me the satisfaction of handling a cigarette...of tasting the cigarette, and of inhaling and exhaling. Not to mention, I have found that cinnamon-flavor vape is very nice! I rotate between four flavors currently....Extreme Ice, Candy Cane, Cinnamon, and Menthol.
I get the satisfaction and the pleasures of smoking, without the over 7,000 harmful chemicals delivered by conventional cigarettes. Also, I can adjust the level of nicotine I get in a number of ways...I can buy e-liquid in different strengths, I can adjust up or down the voltage - and these are things one cannot do with conventional cigarettes!
This gives me an opportunity to slowly wean myself off the nicotine entirely...which still enjoying the pleasures I associate with smoking. They even make e-liquid which contains no nicotine whatsoever. I cannot see myself giving up vaping, but, cutting down the nicotine level is something I will likely do.
Twenty-four days and counting. My longest success rate in attempting quitting thus far. Take that, Pennsylvania Medical Society! Take that, WHO!! Take that, UN Health Agency!
Now how can that be a bad thing?