Quit on my third try with Chantix been a non smoker for 5 years. Was a 2 to 3 pack a day smoker for 35 years.
Money, health, social acceptance...all worth the effort...every now and then still get the urge to smoke...just one...then common sense kicks in.

First time I quit with chantix it worked like a charmq. My second time with chantix almost killed me. The insanely realistic dreams almost made me lose complete touch with reality,and I ended up with the most severe depression and urge to die that I've ever experienced! I definitely didn't want to smoke though. It was so bad my family made me start smoking again. Luckily, I was able to quit cold turkey a few years later.

It kinda had the opposite effect with me. The first time the dreams were so vivid I rate the sexual dream as one of the best sexual experiences of my life...thank God I did not have any nightmares. The second and third time the dreams were more vivid than usual but nothing like the first.

But I can see how they could disorientate you it was so real. I was hoping for a rerun of that 1st time. Maybe because I am an old LSD baby it wasn't as surreal for me.

Maybe acid experience will be helpful to us when dementia kicks in.

Well it can't be any stranger than that 12 way hit of Chocolate chip I took before I hitchhiked to the state fair in 68

I smoked for 32 years. Two things made me quit—a girlfriend who was a militant non-smoker and a brutal hill-walk where as a smoker, I had to stop frequently but after not smoking for a week, I was able to go bottom to top without stopping (I was ready to barf up a lung but I made it). I've been done for 19 years. I'll still have one (if they're Turkish tobacco) every few months with a whisky but I don't inhale because my throat clamps shut now.

I'll say this though...I definitely feel stupider and my concentration is nothing compared to before I quit.

"I definitely feel stupider and my concentration is nothing compared to before I quit."
My experience exactly.

I hear this one a lot, but my experience was in the other direction. I wouldn't smoke inside, so my 30 a day thing made for a lot of disruption to my workflow. Once I stopped I found I could sit still and focus for longer once the cravings had settled. That said, I still drink insane amounts of coffee (the next one on the list) so that might be masking it to some extent.

Given that my old brand just went up to around $37 per packet of 30 I'm pretty glad I quit.

The great English theatre critic and writer, Kenneth Tynan died, at the age of 53, from the combined effects of emphysema and smoking. He said of the habit, 'If I can’t smoke, I can’t write; and if I can’t write, what’s the point of living?’

I'll say this though...I definitely feel stupider and my concentration is nothing compared to before I quit.

Wait, that's from not smoking?

Nicotine is a stimulant that increases your heart rate, thus increasing oxygen to your brain. For those of you who feel slower i would recommend finding an alternate stimulant. potassium is a neural transmitter and you can find oral supplements that contain various forms of potassium-something-ide, which works to ease digestion of it. Bananas obviously, but the downside to that is laxative effects. Potassium is also a salt (with chloride), so you may see increase in blood pressure as well, but can mix it with a reasonably good anti-oxidant to help clean out your system.

Guarana, Ginsing, Yerba mate, are all good alternatives for the mental stimulation, without the caffeine buzz from coffee. of course, i consume coffee as well, but certain days it is required to switch up or add to my coffee consumption. horses for courses, YMMV.

I wonder how many people self-medicate for ADD with nicotine?

I only smoke when I'm on fire, I'm doing something wrong.

Smoked as much as 2-3 packs a day for 10 years. Haven't had one drag in 3 years, but I want one just as much now as the day I quit!

Quit cold turkey after 23 years of smoking. Never thought it’d be that easy, even if it was quite difficult. I do have my occasional moments where I’d love a smoke but I know it doesn’t do shit, so that helps. A few minutes later the yearning is gone.

About the only time I wish for a cigarette is when I'm building something and stop to assess progress. That little contemplative break from the task at hand was just right for a smoke.

The worst part of the year I went without smoking (aside from the overwhelming sense of loss and despair that began the day I quit and never got even slightly better until the day I started up again) was never coming up with a satisfactory answer to "what the fuck do I do with my hands while I'm trying to think?"

I pretty much spent the whole year just going to work, doing chores around the house, and watching TV until bedtime because I couldn't muster up the mental focus I needed to do anything interesting.

Make a cup of tea? That seems to be the British way.

Yeah, a cup of tea and a cigarette, that would work.

Smoke and a pancake?

Yes. I bought my first packet of 10 Marlboro reds aged 16 and smoked till i was 36 years old. Spent a fair few number of those years on a pack a day and most of the last few years on 3-4 a day. I quit a few times, serious attempts around the birth of both my kids, but was always a social smoker. Then about 9 years ago I stopped for good and about 3 years ago i realised I no longer missed them.

1-2 packs a day from 12 to middle age. Quit cold turkey and stopped smoking for a couple of years once, and a year and some months before that and started up again and again.

Weird part is, just one day I was smoking and realized my body just hated the taste and smell, and just about everything else about tobacco, and threw the pack away never to pick them up or miss them after.

Never needed to do gum or patches and decades of "smobriety" later, I figure I just got lucky, considering how tough a time I had before trying to quit.

I've been smoking regularly since 1994, except for that one year where I quit smoking and got fat instead. At least now I'm down to "only" a pack a day since I stopped smoking in the house.

I don't miss the part where I'm rooting around in a car ashtray at 3:00 am looking for snipes to get through the night.

my father was a pipe smoker, as well as cigarellos. i started smoking around 14-15, intermittent through high school and University, had a cigar box, etc. quit in 2006, cold turkey (i was not a crazy level before that, like 1-2 cigarettes a day).

now i can smell someone in a car two or three spots ahead of me smoking, and i get disgusted by it. bunch of people out here do vaping as well, and while that doesn't have the scent, you see these clouds poring out of people's car windows like they were hotboxing with Snoop.

Started smoking regularly at 17. At age 20, I decided to go stone cold turkey on everything (at the time I was regularly smoking cannabis, drinking alcohol, and taking LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, or synthetic mescaline a few times a month) and it lasted about half a year. Have since taken breaks periodically, lasting for on average a couple months. Sometimes they are lighter where I'll quit boozing and smoking but still take the occasional psychedelic, sometimes they are overzealous and I cut out caffeine, OTC medicines like ibuprofen, and limit my sugar and salt intake. My most recent and longest break lasted from July 2015 to January 2017, in that time I took LSD twice and mushrooms once, and aside from some prescribed antibiotics put nothing else into my body.

I am currently not smoking tobacco regularly. I've had five cigarettes since I returned from Japan in mid-July. I don't feel the need for one unless I'm in a really bad place with my anxiety.