Giving Up Smoking

Who would have thought it? Me, not only giving up smoking but 2 years on still not puffing on horrible smelly cigarettes. I’m giving myself a pat on the back here because I blooming well deserve one.

Why? because I smoked for most of 40 years and thought that I would never kick the habit no matter how many times I tried. Yes I did try, with willpower which obviously I didn’t have enough of. With nicotine gum which I didn’t like because I don’t chew gum. Nicotine patches worked for as long as 6 months a couple of times but I lapsed. Holidays, bereavement and others giving me cigarettes were my excuses for foolishly starting up again.

What Finally Worked?

I think that was a mixture of things that came together to make it the right time. I had been having problems with poor circulation and Reynards disease for years. The winter of 2008/2009 was frightening because of the excrutiating pain in my fingers when they got the slightest bit cold and my circulation cut off. I still have minor problems with circulation but since I stopped smoking they have scaled down so much that they are barely noticeable.

I was getting out of breathe more easily and was woken up at night by the scary rattling noises that were coming from my chest.  Now I don’t get out of breathe so easily and the only noises that wake me up at night come from my cat playing enthusiastically with her toys downstairs.

I had problems with gum disease which was being masked by the smoking. That led to loosing bone, or the bones receding in my mouth and my teeth getting looser. More toothache and the only treatment was to pull them because they were getting too loose to work on. Now I’ve called a halt to the gum disease and bone loss with a stricter dental care regime and it does help that I’ve stopped smoking.

Finding Electronic Cigarettes

According to UK law I am not allowed to claim that they are a stop smoking aid so I won’t. I first heard about ecigs when somebody submitted an article about them to one of my websites. I got curious and wanted to learn more about electronic cigarettes and after a few weeks ordered some online. I initially bought them because they don’t have the 4000+ cancer giving chemicals that tobacco cigarettes have and thought that my health problems might lessen if I switched to them.

I also thought that it would be good being able to smoke them in public where tobacco cigarettes are banned. That my clothes and hair wouldn’t smell like a dirty ashtray and most important that my friends and family or anybody around me wouldn’t be in harms way breathing in second hand smoke. There was no real intention of quitting smoking.

I found that they were a great substitute and after a few days when I tried a tobacco cig it was disgusting. I didn’t consciously attempt to cut back, that happened naturally, so on top of the savings that you get anyway with ecigs I was saving even more. One day, a few months down the line I just stopped smoking e-cigarettes too and have been totally smoke free since then and no more nicotine addiction.

Money never really figured much in my stop smoking attempts and I think that’s true of most people - execept for when they get a jolt when tobacco tax goes up. But I can appreciate the £100+ a month that I don’t spend on cigs now, saving me over £2400 in 2 years.

I built this blog to help me to stop smoking and blimey it’s made a profit from the stop smoking aids advertised on here. I’ve treated myself to a really good laptop, new cooker, microwave, television and am now saving for a holiday – all from the money saved and the money earned.

Will I Start Smoking Again?

I don’t think that you can rule anything out in this life, but I believe that I am extremely unlikely to start smoking again. I’ve had times when I’ve been tempted, when things have been tough at work or in my private life and it would be easy to reach for a cig to help relieve the stress. I haven’t done that because I’ve known that I’ve got something in a drawer at home that just needs charging up for a while and then I can puff away more safely. That’s all I need, just knowing my ecig is there.

So now perhaps you can understand why I think that I deserve a pat on the back and I hope that my story offers encouragement for those of you who are trying hard to stop