To ask you for the thing that finally motivated you to stop smoking ...and did it work ?

Started at 13 progressed onto 40a day at one point met DW 20yrs ago .
I've been stopped 19yrs as DW hated the smell also used zyban to help quit.

6 weeks after having a multiple bone breaking accident where I was too poorly to smoke (but certainly thought about when I could start again) I ended up having significant bilateral pulmonary embolisms. I was on a ward with 5 other ladies in various stages of lung cancer. They all made me 'pinky promise' I'd never smoke again. I never have (9 yrs). I often think about all of them.

I tried before lockdown, tried loads of different ways but I just couldnt manage it. Then lockdown hit, I was furloughed and (as I smoked in my flat - so gross I know) I quickly went from 25 a day to around 40-50. My savings were gone by September 2020 as furlough was 75% wages.

I decided enough was enough and using champix I finally managed it. It was still so hard, and at first when drinking I used a 0% nicotine vape, it didnt give you the “hit” in the back of the throat, but it got me through, I havent even used a vape since I got pregnant and couldn’t drink, my little one is 4 now and I can drink without a vape, though it isnt very often!

I grew up in a smoking house, my parents still smoke and still smoke indoors, I visit once-twice a month as they moved to Sussex, and everything absolutely stinks when we get home, I cannot believe I used to smell like that, and my flat used to smell like that! Disgusting! Cant see myself ever going back, I worked so hard to quit.

I was diagnosed with lung cancer. That in itself you'd think would have done it for me. maybe, maybe not.

what really did it for me was having to tell my elderly frail mother that I might have been handed a death sentence because of my addiction. The look of fear on her face did it for me.

That, and the work of the thoracic and spinal surgeons who worked so hard to remove the tumour did the trick.

Every day (and it's been 16 years now)since then, I've felt that I've had life thanks to the three of them.

I got genital warts 😂 gave up 15 years ago and they never came back

I just….got bored of it? I smoked for decades then one day decided….i don’t like it. Haven’t smoked since. No idea why and no way I could have stopped before that!

I don’t know if this is motivation as such but I got flu one Christmas and was so sick for so long I hadn’t smoked for two weeks. I had been feeling guilty about squandering my health and money on it and I thought I’d be a fool to disregard such a gift so I stopped.

I did have to navigate the emotional struggle of living without it through good times and bad, but the penny dropped that if I started again I’d be back to square one. I had already had a few false starts and I was tired of failing! This was 21 years ago and I’m so glad to be free of it.

I have been smoking for 32 years…and I didn’t think I could honestly stop. Was 30-40 per day and was very addicted. My best friend, my moment of quiet etc.
i have tried every which way over the years. Patches, Alan Carr x2, nicotine replacement, hypnotherapy, cold turkey…you name it.

but ultimately it came down to cost. I just could not afford it anymore! Broke my heart.

i used the NHS stop smoking service, and have taken up vaping…I know it isn’t better, but it is as I breathe easier now (COPD), blood pressure is lower and I can afford it.

honestly, give it a go…I never thought I would be able to quit. It’s been 7 months now.

Same!

I started smoking at 18 when it was “cool”. I always struggled with life and relationships (was diagnosed with autism as an adult which I imagine is why) and I did find smoking “helped” me. I tried to quit loads in my 20s but couldn’t manage. I started vaping which I became even more addicted to. So I tried to stop that by mixing it up with smoking and quite honestly it became that I pretty much constantly had either a vape or cigarette in my mouth. I met my now husband in my 30s and when we decided we were serious and would like a family I decided to stop in preparation. I just…. Stopped. Went cold turkey for both cigarettes and vapes. It was bloody hard but I did it! Turns out we were never able to have children in the end but I’m staying stopped now anyway. Saying that, if, God forbid, I was to lose my husband, I think I’d take it up again.

Oh gosh, I didn't know it gave you heart murmurs!

I hated when I had to go out at 10pm to the petrol station because I needed them for the morning. Hated that feeling of muzzy head after the first one of the day. Didn't want to be pg and still smoke. So I cut down until one a day, then none ( the hardest bit). It took me six years! It's an addiction after all. Finally stopped just a few months before getting pg, 30 years ago!

But a few years later, I worked in a newsagents. I could often tell who was going to buy fags from their grey skin. Then one day a sales rep left me a sample of menthol cigs. They were just sitting there - what a temptation! I had to break them up and throw them away.

I am SO pleased I gave up. It's easier now, but I could maybe fall off the wagon if I'd been drinking, I think. Luckily there are never cigs around in pubs, and none of my friends smoke.

GP found a heart murmur a couple of years ago and I quit that day. It was the emotional scare that I needed and I’m creeping up to the age of my mum when she died during heart surgery, so …

That’s what stopped me, reading and re-reading his book.
I’d smoked for 25+ years, tried the patches, hypnotherapy etc but it was this book that did it.
I haven’t smoked or even considered it for nearly 20 years now.

Doing the couch 2 5k app. I run better now my lungs aren't full of crap 😂

Late 20s I noticed my lungs were being affected, colds would turn to coughs and last ages, I had a weird feeling like my lungs weren't filling up properly. Went cold turkey and never looked back..never missed it, within a year or two it was like I'd never been a smoker.

It was easy because I wanted to give up..that's what makes the difference.

I was in my late 20s and my parents invited me (at the last minute) to go to Bermuda on holiday. The thought of a long flight craving nicotine, combined with the thought of a glorious hot vacation free from cravings, made me stop. I went cold turkey - making sure I stayed away from places I could smoke. And that’s it - was free from the addiction after those tricky days.

20+ years of 20 rollies a day. My younger brother was in the throes of dying of cancer and one of the last things he said to me was that I needed to give up the smokes. About 8 months later I had a cold and the worst cough I’d ever had. Having a smoke was the only thing that gave immediate relief from the coughing fits but made the next one so much worse. It was in the middle of lockdowns and no one would help me…doctors, pharmacists, no one. I started with the vapes and haven’t smoked since. Ironically, I haven’t had a cold since either!

That was a little over 5 years ago. Trouble is, I’m more addicted to the vapes than I ever was the cigs. That will have to go at some point but I’m not ready for that yet. I do still get the odd passing craving for a cig but it doesn’t last for long.

I had patches once when I was trying to quit and they gave me a tight chest. I also tried little tab things and they did the same. I've tried to see if there's any way of microdosing because the Americans are doing research into therapeutic effects of nicotine for a few things, but I haven't found a product yet. Perhaps I could cut a low dose patch into four or something.

I stopped almost four years ago to the day - it was my Valentine’s present to myself! I was turning 50 the following year and decided that before I did I wanted to quit smoking and take up running. Smoked my last cigarette on 13 February, started C25K in April, could run 5K by July. (I no longer run as I developed plantar fasciitis which needed masses of expensive physio to sort out, I’m a - reformer -Pilates princess now.)

I’m a lecturer and have quite a few students who smoke which surprises me as it got to the point where it felt so “uncool” and embarrassing to be a smoker. I don’t know how they afford it tbh.

I had been a smoker since I was 16, tried to give up a few times and even once did for 6 years but then started again after a break up and a wild girls holiday!
I finally gave up when trying for a baby. We’d been trying for almost a year and I was about ready to give up (trying). I had my last cigarette on the 23rd December 2010 and found out I was pregnant 2 weeks later. That was 15 years ago and haven’t touched one since.
I love your story though @Yoyokitten 😆

I come from family of smokers. When I was a teenager it was popular to smoke so I started early. It was peer pressure more than anything. One day I was sitting thinking about life a stuff and decided to add up how much cigarettes cost per year. Then 10 yrs, etc.
at the prices of housing and cigarettes then where I lived based on simple math I realized every 15 yrs I’d be smoking the equivalent of a 1 bedroom flat. I was horrified and stopped there and then.

I was a 20 a day girl for 20 years until a surgeon told me that the reason my broken wrist wasn’t healing was because I smoked. Switched to vaping for 10 years and gave that up when I developed a vapers cough AND then caught whooping cough. Couldn’t cope with wetting myself several times a day so got patches and stopped everything. Have been off everything for 2.5 years.

I tried several things including being hypnotised which stopped the cravings but I still managed to restart 6 months later. I ended up stopping after I met dh who didn’t smoke. I was almost thirty and decided I would stop at new year and I just stopped. No patches or anything just went cold turkey.

I quit smoking about 20 years ago but continued as an occasional social smoker for at least another ten.

The thing that really stopped me was the thought that people are literally paying to increase their risk of dying from any one of a multitude of horrible diseases. When I saw people shelling out £20 a throw for a pack of things that quite literally give you cancer it dawned on me that this behaviour is worse than injecting heroin several times a day.

My ex was (still is) a heavy smoker and I find it repellent when people are so in thrall to an addiction that they are paying to hurt themselves.

Being on a ship, where smoking was prohibited practically everywhere

I bought a vape, fully intending to go back to the cigs on my return, but never smoked again