This was a comment submitted by Benny to one of our articles entitled Quit Smoking Side-Effects and we published it as a post to help give motivation to those soon to be non-smokers. Thank you very much Benny for your story.
This is day 2 for me of quitting. I got to be honest, after reading some of these comments I couldn’t believe how crazy some people sounded. “I have terrible joint pains everywhere!!” “I can’t breathe right I’m constipated” ever stop and think that those things might be happening for a reason other than the fact that you quit smoking? I know that not everyone will have the same withdrawals to quitting but the more you blame quitting for these “side effects” that you’re experiencing the less of a chance you’re giving yourself to quit.
You’re subconsciously telling yourself that these are withdrawals from cigarettes and if you were to smoke again it would make you feel normal again. And I believe it was Ric that said it, and you said it right, no cheating, no drags, no smoking at all. If you’re not going to break your smoking habit, chances are you won’t be successful at quitting.
These e-ciggs are just a way of lying to yourself that you’ve gotten over your bad habit but in reality that’s just increasing your chances that one day you’re going to light up a real cigarette cause you either won’t have an e-ciggs with you when you need it, or because you just won’t care anymore. Your lifestyle hasn’t changed any if your still puffin on electric ciggs or taking small drags or just smoking “one” cigarette while you’re out drinking with your friends.
I wish the best for everyone here in their efforts to quit smoking, believe me I do, and I know I have a long road ahead of me as well, but trust me this “oh I haven’t smoked for 12 days now besides this one time, or this other incident a couple days ago”. Just drop it cold turkey, it’s the best way. And as for these patches and gums they’re just plain stupid, 90% of them have small doses of nicotine in them to give your body what its craving without actually smoking a cigarette, so it seems like the quitting process is so much easier but as soon as you stop chewing that gum or using those patches for a few days your no better off than if you quit cold turkey anyway.
Just don’t do it [stop smoking], that’s it, no cheating, and no substitutes. Breaking a bad habit takes 28 days of not doing it. It [smoking] is the bad habit and smoking e-cigs isn’t [going to help] break the habit. And it only takes 10-14 days for your body to lose its craving for nicotine, and any patch that’s actually going to help with your withdrawals is still feeding your body with nicotine, and if it doesn’t contain any nicotine, then it’s simply a placebo (which is not bad, it’s just a way to give you hope, but in order to really conquer the problem you should do it yourself if possible). Lose the nicotine, break the habit, and in 1 month time your free.
Again Benny, congratulations and thank you for your story.
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