I need your help to stop smoking. Tell me the horror stories!

[Rhony]

I've stopped smoking. As of right now. I know it will be hard, but I have to do this for my son, and for myself.

I am hoping to have a bank of aversions to help me when I have a craving. Can you help me? What are your horror stories?

My mum smoked. She had a cough every morning for about 5 years. Collapsed was taken into hospital and diagnosed with lung cancer. She lost her fight less than a month later. It was secondary cancer. It had spread from her liver to her lungs and they could only offer palliative care as the cancer had progressed too far.

My grandparents feet started to die because their arteries were clogging, they both had to have both legs amputated at the thigh and spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs and in care homes.

I don’t have a Crystal ball ! It’s takes 10 years for the lungs to recover allegedly

But I have seen immediate effects and I do not have that giving up now is a definite investment into your future health

Your teeth OP your teeth! Yes there are many awful effects of smoking and dying by cancer (mouth or lungs or any of the types it causes) or heart disease is awful. But so is waking up with a mouth full of blood where your gums are bleeding and they recede so far you can see the tooth root.

Stay strong OP - you got this

She was 65 she left behind 2 daughters and a grandchild who will never remember his nanny and never got to even meet either of his granddads both due to cancer too

do you mean that even if I stop now, you think the health problems will still occur in later life?

Depends how much you smoked and for how long, but yes.

I gave up 6 years ago and I have a mild COPD, which will only get worse.

As I said up the thread, DH is o the heart transplant list.

Smoking killed both my parents, both DHs parents, and my DB has chronic COPD.

My FIL has copd from smoking, it's a horrendous disease. He's gasping for breath all the time, day in, day out, with no prospect of improvement. He has to have portable oxygen tanks to take out with him, he can't play with his grandchildren. It's horrendous.

Almost all of the chronic obstructive lung disease we see is caused by smoking. On a daily basis I see people literally drowning in their own bodies. Can’t eat or sleep because every moment they are fighting to draw breath, exhausted. These people are also not old, 50s, 60s and maybe 70s, but few live that long.

Mu grandma got gangrene from smoking. If you'd seen that blackened toe, or helped her try to wedge a shoe on a four toed foot whilst she panicked it would come back, you would run screaming from every cigarette.

Lots of luck - you can do it!

Oh and a very good friend lost her beloved mother to lung cancer. She'd never smoked in her life - but she'd worked for 30 years in an office where lots of her colleagues did (not in the uk)

Try this website, OP (warning, very graphic). It should do the trick.
whyquit.com

Sandy - my friend's mum did that too. She swapped 20 a day for a huge jar of chupa chups. Having smoked heavily for 30 years, she stopped cold and hasn't touched one now for about 15. So it worked for her too!

I’m a nurse, I have worked in end of life care.
Breathlessness can be incredibly traumatic for the patient and there is very little which can be done to allievate it. Symptoms in the final hours can be managed but there is usually a protracted period of feelings of suffocation. It is no way to die. No way.
I’m sorry to those who have lost loved ones with lung diseases. OP if you have the chance to minimise your risk from this type of death, take every feasible step to do so.

Watch Chris Notap 'dangers of smoking' on YouTube. I horrified a class of 9 year olds with it last week!

I quit cold turkey 5.5 years ago, brought on by a horrific throat/gum infection. Seeing as I couldn’t smoke for a couple of days, I decided to test myself and see how long I could go. I downloaded an app (think it was an NHS one) which tracked how many days I’d been smoke free and also gave me info on the benefits it was having to my body in that time. The thought of having a fag and having to reset it from day 1 was a pretty good driver for me.

I also read the Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allan Carr - unfortunately he did end up passing away from lung cancer but the book was truly eye opening! I remember he made me feel so foolish for ever smoking but I can’t for the life of me remember how! I do now think anyone smoking looks rather ridiculous now, that definitely helps.

I second the Allan Carr Easyway book. I am 15 years a very happy non smoker thanks to him. I'm forever grateful to be free from the stink, the repeated chest infections, coughing, expense, and general misery I felt at failing whenever I tried to stop. Iay (like him) still have future health problems due to heavy smoking. But I've had many happy healthy smoke free years too.
Good luck OP.

My grandparents died in their mid 50 due to smoking related illness, I was a teenager at the time. That's such a short life.

My mum died at 47 from lung cancer. I had just turned 18 and my brother was 15

My mum smoked from young. During pg with both dc. We both have asthma/allergies i have hayfever and both had eczema.
She had a heart attack in her late 50s. But had already had severe lung problems by then. We were only 20s at the time. She would never have met GC.
Somewhere i read of possible link to asd/adhd with smoking.

Buy and read the Allen Carr book.

My dad died from a smoking related cancer almost 3 weeks ago, aged 55. It has devastated his family and destroyed my mum. He never got to meet his first grandchild - I’m 27 weeks pregnant. He was so excited to be a grandad.

He lived for 11 weeks after his diagnosis. His decline and death was painful and traumatic, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s been torture for all of us. He was and is still so loved, he was so special, such a lovely man. Fucking cancer, fucking smoking.

I smoked occasionally, mostly after a few drinks, obviously stopped when I got pregnant but you couldn’t pay me to pick up a cigarette again. Please, please give up now and spare your family this hell.

My friend's mum was diagnosed with lung cancer in her mid 40's, died a few months later, leaving a 19 year old daughter and 7 year old son, pretty much without a penny to their name.

I don't mean this to sound heartless, but either way my advice would be look into getting life insurance if you don't already have it for your son's sake if anything (god forbid) happens to you.

I know a woman who died at 50 from lung cancer months before her first grandchild was born. Now another woman is step grandma and gets to have the relationship with her grandchildren and watch them grow up.

Think of your little boy,
Don’t let him see his mum destroy her health and spend stupid amounts of money on poison.
Your son needs you and he deserves the money you would spend on cigarettes.
Save the money up for a nice holiday.

Smoking is foul. It truly is. My mum has smoked my whole life and I detest it.

Also my Grandad died of emphysema in his early fifties. We never met him. my mum has told me how desperately she tried to stop him smoking. I often wish I'd met him as he sounds like he was such a lovely man.

He had the excuse that when he started it was the norm and they didn't know the harm it would cause. Not true now. Keep going for your kids but also for yourself. You've done well to get this far. You can do it!!