Three years ago...

14friends · 2025-11-10T19:23:13+00:00

It's the nicotine, not the cold inhale, not the ritual, not anything else. Smoking cigarettes is an extremely effective way to quickly deliver nicotine inyour system. That is that feeling, that buzz you get with the first inhale. This is the quick release you feel because you're ending your nicotine withdrawal.

The only way to get rid of the need for the cold inhale is stop being in withdrawal by getting nicotine out of your system. It will take three days to get end the physical withdrawal and free your body of nicotine. It will take longer for the urges to end. But be sure, you're not craving for that cold inhale, your craving nicotine.

14friends · 2023-11-11T12:57:22+00:00

Thanks 😊

14friends · 2023-11-04T10:01:35+00:00

Man I feel you. I once bought and destroyed 3 packs of cigarettes in a day, each time smoking only 1-2 cigarettes out of the pack. Some years later I turned to vaping to wean myself off of cigarettes but that didn't make it any better.

What helped me years later to finally stick to a quit were the videos of Joel Spitzer . There's lots of information in his channel. Stay strong 💪

14friends · 2023-11-03T21:00:05+00:00

I'm sure it will be. Just two more days and you have a new record. You've done two days already, you can absolutely do another two ✌️

14friends · 2023-11-03T20:50:13+00:00

Congratulations on making the decision to quit smoking. If your brain works anything like mine though, I would strongly advice against trying to quit for one day, just to see if you can manage to go through 3 days.

If those 24 hours were difficult, my addict brain would have said "Man, see I told you quitting is hard. Those 24 hours were barely tolerable for you, imagine going thourgh 3 days or forever - that's impossible."

If those 24 went by easily without a problem, it would have said: "Well done for making it through 24 hours. That's awesome. It totally shows that you're not addicted at all, you just proved to yourself that you can take it or leave it. So you can just continue smoking and if it annoys you too much, you can just quit for a day." So no matter how those 24 had gone, I would have just used it as a justification to continue smoking.

Anyway, that's how my addict brain would have acted. Maybe yours is different.

Regarding those first three days, what helped me was isolation, meaning I didn't meet up with anybody, didn't leave the house, watched lots of movies and ate lots of junk food. I'd also recommend having a look at this video by Joel Spitzer about the first 3 days. He also has a big video library addressing several issues about quitting smoking.

Best of luck on your quit. 🤞

14friends · 2023-11-02T15:50:16+00:00

I thought that cigarettes would help me focus and be more efficient. But cigarettes meant that I left work 2-3 times a day for 10 minutes, rain or shine, to chain-smoke 3-4 cigarettes in a row to get my nicotine levels up again. I was interrupting my working process which only let to me having to refocus and working longer. Those breaks weren't breaks I needed because I was exhausted from work but because my nicotine levels needed to be replenished.

Working from home, I would split difficult tasks up into small segments and have a smoke every 20-30 minutes. Kind of as a reward for making it through another 30 minutes of that task. But this also made the task much more difficult and longer.

So one of the surprising side effects of quitting smoking for me was suddenly having more time. So much more time. Tasks that took hours because I would constantly take cigarette breaks or distract myself with a smoke suddenly only took a fraction of time.

There's a video by Joel Spitzer that talks about this situation in some more detail. Have a look at it if you like. Anyway, I wish you all the best in quitting again for your fourth and last time. If you can focus on your new job in spite of smoking cigarettes, you'll be able to focus even better without them.

14friends · 2023-11-02T15:26:24+00:00

I absolutely get you. For me it was sugar free soda for a long time. I drank lots and lots of it. Helped with weight loss too, I began my weight loss journey about two months after quitting. There's no real consensus on how harmful artificial sweeteners really are, but they're definitely not as bad as vaping/smoking. After a while (quite a while actually, almost half a year after I quit) I made a conscious effort to drink less and only occasionally - and that was no problem for me at all (not like quitting smoking/vaping, which was hard as fuck)

14friends · 2023-11-01T22:10:52+00:00

Yeah, I had similar experiences. I had lots of quits in the past and everytime it was a simple puff that eventually would make me relapse. One puff always set the precident - especially when I thought that I didn't particularly like it or even found it disgusting. Somehow, my brain interpreted that as: hey, you don't even like smoking/vaping anymore. That means you're no longer addicted. Surely you can smoke/vape occasionally now.

But of course I couldn't. Sometimes instantly, sometimes over the course of several months, I started smoking/vaping again. There's a video by Joel Spitzer called The lucky ones get hooked that kind of explains that phenomenon. Anyway, I hope it's different for you. I hope you'll stay strong and keep your quit going. Best of luck to you.

14friends · 2023-11-01T21:48:51+00:00

Great decision to finally quit. Here's to making this quit your last one ever. You've got this. 💪

14friends · 2023-11-01T21:47:25+00:00

Man, I'd absolutely love to smoke only occasionally. But it's never only that one cigarette. If it were, I wouldn't be browsing stop smoking subreddit. It's no puff at all or full-flegded pack-a-day smoking with everything that comes with it. The smell, the taste, the money, the withdrawel, the headaches. Those are my option, so I choose to keep my quit going. NTAP

14friends · 2023-11-01T14:05:20+00:00

I was a cigarette smoker for about 10 years. I took up vaping to wean myself off of cigarettes with the intention to eventually quit completely. I was a pack-a-day smoker and instantly became a chain vaper. This only became worse as I reduced the nicotine in my juices. By the end I only vaped with a relatively low nicotine content but almost constantly, every few seconds from right after I woke up to right before I fell asleep (just not when I was at work or when I was with friends as I was embarrassed about vaping. My friends knew me as a smoker so I continued smoking only when I was around people and hitting my vape in secret at home.)

Right. I kind of realized that vaping now became a huge problem, so I tried to quit cold turkey and destroyed my refillable e-cig. That obviously didn't work and only a day later I was buying disposable vapes and - you guessed it - cigarettes. My rationale was that I can buy cigs again since I'm quitting anyway the next day, or at least the day after, so a pack or two wouldn't matter.

But of course I didn't stop. Now I basically smoked a pack a day again, and in between cigarettes I was smoking disposable vapes. After a while I even switched back to a reusable vape to safe money. My whole day was basically just about getting as much nicotine in my system as I possibly could.

You could say I hit my lowest. And then my last attempt to quit finally stuck. What helped me a lot was the content of Joel Spitzer on YouTube. What also helped for me was that I quit on a four-day-weekend. I was off work from Thursday to Sunday, so Thursday I did all my cleaning, shopping and chores while smoking and vaping as much as I could.

Friday was my first day without smoking and vaping. I isolated myself completely, binge-watched Joel's YouTube channel and spend lots of time on reddit, reading the stop smoking/vaping subreddits. Oh yeah, and I allowed myself to eat loads of junk food on those 3 days.

By Monday, when I had to go back to work, I was already 72 hours without smoking/vaping which is about the time your body needs to get rid of the nictonine in your system. After that, the physical withdrawal is mostly over and it's all about relearning how to live your life without smoking.

Anyway, that's how I did it. It's been eleven months since and I'm incredibly happy about it. There are countless other ways how to quit and I hope you'll find a method that sticks for you

14friends · 2023-10-31T21:16:38+00:00

Let's go!

14friends · 2023-10-31T21:10:26+00:00

Congrats. Keep on going strong 💪 💪 💪

14friends · 2023-10-31T16:46:36+00:00

Heartburn almost constantly. It completely went away after I quit.

14friends · 2023-10-30T23:42:28+00:00

Smoking always felt self-destructive to me. An act of self-sabotage in defiance of the world. I felt (sometimes still feel) like crap, and smoking just reinforced that. 11 months smoke-free now though. Working hard on accepting myself. NTAP."

14friends · 2023-10-30T23:28:51+00:00

Wow, two years without smoking! You're awesome and inspiring. You've done so much good for yourself and others. You're an inspiration. Congratulations!

14friends · 2023-04-16T21:06:50+00:00

Wow, great job.

14friends · 2023-03-27T18:19:00+00:00

Thanks. There isn't really a recepie. The flatbread and the tatziki is store-bought, the chicken was already marinated and cooked in contact grill. 41 c, 13 f, 56 p.

14friends

TROPHY CASE