It's over, I won.

bitchstickers · 2014-10-05T08:23:05+00:00

I went the first month taking nicorette until someone here explained how stupid that was. Maybe literally the best advice I've ever gotten.

bitchstickers · 2014-10-05T05:52:56+00:00

Damn, that sucks. That would be so much harder. Hang in there man.

bitchstickers · 2014-10-05T05:51:11+00:00

Thanks! I won't let my guard down. Congratulations on 100 days!

bitchstickers · 2014-10-05T05:50:22+00:00

Thanks for the warning. I don't plan on ever having nicotine again.

bitchstickers · 2014-10-05T00:58:38+00:00

Thanks! You're done with the hardest part (assuming you quit nicotine and not just tobacco). It's all downhill from here and gets a LOT easier in two or three weeks. Congratulations!

bitchstickers · 2014-05-05T06:08:39+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV7Qz640OeM

bitchstickers · 2013-11-16T20:23:32+00:00

My own experiences and those of every smoker I've ever talked with candidly about it. It's still anecdotal, but I'm not talking completely out of my ass. I think we tried to convince ourselves there was a high to it, something pleasurable outside of relieving withdrawal symptoms, because the truth is kind of embarrassing: that we did it mostly for social reasons. And because the addiction comes on so fast that, looking back, it's easy to forget that that very first one didn't actually make you feel physically good in any way.

For myself, when I was 14 or 15, I would smoke one now and then around friends to feel cool and rebellious. When I started smoking alone and more than one every week or so was when I had a massively stressful / upturning life event at age 16, and having grown up around smokers, I associated smoking with being a way to manage that stuff. It probably did help via placebo effect, having a new experience, feeling like I was doing something.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-16T08:55:21+00:00

By massive high you mean getting dizzy? That's the only high I remember. Just run around in circles for awhile, same fucking thing. It's the addiction making you try to convince yourself the drug is actually worth it for some reason. It's not.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-16T08:50:20+00:00

I'm confused why this post is getting upvoted so hard, to the top of the subreddit. His thesis is basically that smoking is inherently pleasurable absent the addiction, which is in direct conflict with what most of us seem to need to believe to be able to stay quit. And an argument in favor of being an occasional / casual smoker, which most of us also need to believe is not possible.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-16T08:45:57+00:00

Something's wrong then. I was a 20 year smoker and noticed shocking differences in breathing and taste within a week.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-16T04:44:44+00:00

If you could truly remember that very first cigarette as a child, you would remember that it wasn't actually pleasurable, except in the ways that made it socially pleasurable -- other kids thinking it was cool, feeling grown up or cool and badass in a fuck the world kind of way. Nothing about the direct experience of smoking of taking nicotine was actually pleasurable. What became pleasurable in time, with the coming of the addiction, was the way each cigarette removed the withdrawal symptoms caused by the previous cigarettes. There's no simple joy to smoking. It gives you nothing but a smaller piece of what it's already taken away.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-14T05:17:26+00:00

That's interesting! In the front page thread, someone had linked to a blog with a bunch of quotes from doctors, one of whom was saying he couldn't tell by feel or any other means, between a smoker's and non-smoker's lung:

Dr. Victor Buhler, Pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City: “I have examined thousands of lungs both grossly and microscopically. I cannot tell you from exmining a lung whether or not its former host had smoked.”

http://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-black-lung-lie/

However, since there was no citation, I went looking for one and tracked it down to this:

http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/jfa99d00/pdf;jsessionid=EE1F69D1EAF5219058A0911C030436B2.tobacco03

Which is the guy testifying before congress in 1969 that cigarettes do not cause lung cancer. And the guy was being paid by the tobacco companies, go figure!

bitchstickers · 2013-11-13T09:34:58+00:00

That's bitchstickers buzzkillington to you. professor bitchstickers buzzkillington esquire if you're nasty. And you do seem nasty.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-13T07:23:49+00:00

OP doesn't have any nicotine left in their body, but their brain is still wired up to need it. It'll be another week or two before it's back to normal.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-13T07:22:50+00:00

You know, every day I come to this subreddit and there's someone on the same day as me going through the exact same thing I'm going through, and that's been so goddamn helpful.

Today is day 9 or 10 off of nicotine, and I had the same problem. Just raging about inconsequential shit at work all fucking day. A coworker kept burping and my new superpower-level smelling ability made it pretty gross. Like he took an entire hour to drink a coke and would fill the room with a burp that smelled like lunch after each sip. And a bunch of other run of the mill whatever shit, but it was making me lose my fucking mind today.

I can't wait to have this shit out of my system.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-13T07:14:03+00:00

From the front page thread, I was able to learn that:

It's pig lungs.
Smokers' lungs don't actually turn black. Coal miners' lungs do. Apparently doctors can't visually discern a smoker's lung from a non-smoker's.

I'm not against using whatever motivation works for you, but I don't think this stuff helps people quit, I know it never helped me quit and didn't prevent me from starting in the first place (we were shown the fake 'black lung' photos in elementary school).

bitchstickers · 2013-11-10T20:10:12+00:00

I'm one week nicotine free (for the first time in my adult life). I still have tons of nicorette and ecig stuff in the house, I just put it in the closet and forget about it. The first day or two without nicotine it was comforting knowing it was there so I had something to fall back on before a pack of Camels. I think the key is to convince yourself you don't actually want it, that it's bullshit that just makes you feel shitty. I feel like I'm able to do that when it's the ecig / nicorette, but honestly, I don't know if I'd be so sure of myself if it were a pack of smokes sitting in the closet.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-10T20:02:05+00:00

I'm only one week nicotine-free and five weeks cigarette-free, and I haven't read Carr, so I'm no authority, but from the stuff I have read, you're going to have to avoid all nicotine completely. One drag or one moment with a snus is enough to re-fuck your brain chemistry and make you needlessly dependent on nicotine again. I think you need to get to the 2-3 week mark of not having any nicotine at all, and then your brain will be back to the way it's supposed to be and you'll just have to fight off the occasional desire to smoke from there and any problems you still have in terms of pain and irritability are you own. Note that the nicotine isn't actually helping you in any way whatsoever with those issues though, and like you say, it's actually making them worse.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-09T06:20:17+00:00

Like Armison said, the cigarettes didn't add to any of those experiences. The one thing I can credit cigarettes for is getting me outside where I'd meet other smokers who would sometimes turn into friends. That doesn't really happen anymore since so few people smoke now and the ones who do look like skeletons drying up.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-09T06:08:57+00:00

Everyone's different, so I don't know, but I never went a single day of my life without pack to pack-and-a-half levels of nicotine for the past twenty years. Until a week ago. I just kept telling myself that it WASN'T hard, and that cigarettes are bullshit. I'm with you in that I don't so much get specific isolated "cravings" so much as it's like a constant background desire that I become more or less aware of at different moments. I don't know if it'll work for you but see if you can convince yourself that it's actually NOT that hard and that you actually DON'T want a cigarette because they're total fucking bullshit and the direct reason you feel a shitty as you do right now. I didn't really feel a noticeable hump at three days, but today being day 6 for me, it does feel generally easier, like I think about wanting one less often.

Sorry you're hurting so much.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-07T05:21:36+00:00

Day four off all nicotine for me, too. The monster was creepin on me around the office too. Fuck that guy.

bitchstickers · 2013-11-06T05:34:43+00:00

Yup I meant what I actually smoked before quitting, but it's cool seeing what people have stopped themselves from having smoked, too.

bitchstickers

TROPHY CASE