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?

I haven't smoked for 10 years now and I'm so glad to have that monkey off my back. I attended an Allan Carr Seminar, not cheap but worth every penny I believe it's like a low level hypnotism, from the moment it finished I never put a cigarette to my mouth again!
www.allencarr.com/easyway-stop-smoking/find-a-seminar/

Smoking doubles your risk of developing age related macular degeneration. This will cause you to lose your central vision and is the leading cause of sight loss in the UK.
AMD makes reading, facial recognition and day to day tasks extremely difficult.
If you’re lucky you get wetAMD which requires an injection into your eye every few weeks.
If you’re unlucky you get dryAMD for which there is no treatment
Another (less well known reason) to not smoke
Good luck xx

My mum is getting her teeth implants in tomorrow after over a year of no teeth. She had mouth cancer and always said why bother stopping smoking when I could get hit by a car tomorrow? A year ago she had had major surgery (looked like had been in a car crash) which has restructured her jaw and has been living with no false teeth...she can't speak properly. She has been constantly drooling. She can't eat properly living on soup and mash potatoes and baby like purses. People mistake her for mentally handicaps because of the way she now speaks. She is really really depressed. But alive. She regrets not giving up years ago.

Do you need the horror stories or the carrot?

Your skin will look better and you won't look 60 and when you are 40.
You won't have stinky breath.
Your teeth won't be blown.

AND (this was the defining issue for a friend of my mum's who stopped just like that years ago when she realised quite how much she was spending) you will save lots of £££.

brown not blown! But maybe blown is not so wrong!

lost dad and best friend both to lung cancer. i still vape because the habit crept back in. stopping while pregnant and keeping it as away as possible from the kids i managed, before either loved ones' diagnoses. stopping vaping is on the list...

it happens, it happens to people you love and has an impact that ripples outwards. to a large extent it's avoidable, damage can be mitigated, there's help to give up if you ask. good luck x

No horror stories but I gave up in Jan 2017. Since then my anxiety (which I had for 15 years) has gone, my chronic indigestion has gone, my skin is clear, my teeth and gum condition has improved greatly (gone from fairly bad gum disease to nothing and gum recession has stopped), I've managed to cut way down on my drinking (one went hand in hand with the other) and have lost weight, I'm no longer a bad example to my kids, I don't smell bad and I'm better off financially.

That good enough for you?

A man my dad knew had smoking related cancer and needed a tracheotomy, whilst recovering he would go outside and smoke through the hole in his throat. He's dead now.

One week without cigarettes. I am feeling more energetic already.

I haven't started vaping as some have suggested. I tried the nicorette 2mg chewing gum for the first couple of days, but have not used any form of NRT the past four days.

Well done OP, that's brilliant

Rhony, that is brilliant! Well done! If you can do a week, then you can do 2 weeks (and so on).

Glad it's still going well, Rhony. Before you know it you won't even think about cigarettes.

Well done OP!

You probably don't need any more horror stories but my FIL after about 50 years of smoking now needs oxygen to help him manage COPD. You can see how much pain he is in and how much he misses out on but the damage is done.

One day at a time, before you know it it will be weeks, months and years without a cigarette

My mother in law died
3 months after being diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. Caused by smoking.

My DGF had both his legs amputated at the thigh in his 60s due to poor circulation and then died aged 72.

My DGM became incontinent and had to stay at home all the time due to breathlessness and incontinence. Died at 75 too early of heart problems.

So I lost both my DFs parents before I was 10. Never saw me grow up. I miss DGF all the time.

My BIL had his bladder removed due to bladder cancer, one of the major causes is smoking. His mother died slowly and in agony from lung cancer. A friend of mine had toes amputated, then his feet and finally part of his leg. He died of gangrene, and it all started because smoking is terrible for the circulation.
Well done OP. You are doing brilliantly.

Well done on your progress so far OP.
I watched my dad die of COPD after years of smoking and 11 months later watched my mum have a heart attack in my lounge. It was horrendous. She never had another cigarette after that day. I'm glad to say she was fine and is still with us.

Well done, OP! I don't like remembering what smoking did to my lovely Dad, much less writing about it, but if it's helping you and other contributors to this thread to stop before it's too late and prevent you from suffering the same way, then it's well worth it. And it makes me feel that in a tiny way his distress and that of us, his family, has done some good.

Don't you go slipping back, now - we're all behind you!

Well done op!

I needed this thread I think. I've quit smoking twice before now, but started up again both times (the longest I went without was about a year and a half).

Thanks to this thread I've set my new quit day for Saturday (I still have this weeks packs to get through).

I only spend about £30 a week on cigarettes but I'm already thinking about what that could go towards instead.

I'm another one whose mother died - horribly, in massive pain - after suffering from lung cancer for FIVE years.

During that time she had part of one lung removed (awful pain for months afterwards); had radiotherapy (awful pain for weeks afterwards); had chemotherapy (we all know what those symptoms can be like and they were); spent 2 years unable to breathe properly and found this terrifying.

Her last 9 months were spent bed-ridden, because she could no longer walk (cancer had spread to brain), but she still had all her mental faculties, though the morphine fug descended in her last few weeks. The loss of dignity of having to have carers come in and attend to her most personal care needs - and she could only have 1 shower a week, whereas before she'd had a shower every day - was pitiful. to witness.

My mother was a smoker and it gave her the worst possible last 5 years of life - and death.

I'm going to add that my OH is currently visiting a former colleague who has been in hospital since January. He was found to have a brain tumour, which was removed, but his lungs are in such a shocking state that he's been in their high dependency unit ever since. He's got a tracheotomy, so cannot speak or eat/drink and is too ill to do anything except lie in bed. He's recently had to have a shunt put into his head because of fluid on the brain.

He was a heavy smoker. He's 67.

I stopped smoking because of this thread too. Most of these stories are truely frightening as well as pretty grim. Stopped last Monday. I've had about 20 2g lozenges since then and have felt pretty ill the past couple of days from nicotine withdrawal, but I know it's only short term and it seems to be subsiding now. I'm so happy I've stopped.

The app smoke free that a previous poster suggested has helped too.

Thank you so much for this thread @Rhony (and everyone be who has contributed.) Well done!

Well done to all those that have also quit, and thank you to all those that are offering their stories. I continue to be humbled that people are being so open and honest.