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Comment by bbarn | Hacker News Reader

This is obviously my own anecdata, but up until about 2 years ago I smoked for close to 20 years. I've never once heard that B12 did anything to prevent cancer. No smoker I ever interacted with - and I interacted with thousands over the years I'm sure - has ever said or implied they took vitamins to offset their tobacco use.

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I think the point that the op was trying to make was that smoking may cause a B12 deficiency. Having a deficiency may lead to taking a supplement.

I doubt anyone would be taking it to "prevent cancer", only to feel like they are doing something about the numerous health effects of smoking.

http://b12patch.com/blog/smoking-and-vitamin-b12-deficiency/

Off topic but, any tips on stopping? What method worked for you?

I was smoker for 9 years - I thought I enjoyed smoking, I can't live without it, etc. A friend recommended a book - Alan Carr's Easy Way. Tried quitting before and it never worked. After reading the book it didn't feel hard, it just made sense. Recommended the book to 2 friends who also quit. Give it a try.

Good book, but a little on the repetitive side. It didn't do it for me, but I think that's because a lot of the points he makes are things I already thought of constantly.

The repetition seemed like some form of deliberate hypnosis. I would read the repetitive parts and my mind would start to criticize how it could be so poorly written, and by the end of the book I had quit smoking after over 10 years and not even thinking I would ever even want to quit when I started the book. (and still quit after 10 more years)

I would also recommend this author's "Easy Way" book for quitting drinking, if that's something you're interested in. I read the book over the course of 2 days, and in that time experienced a complete paradigm shift wherein alcohol suddenly lost all appeal to me. Before then I knew drinking was causing me more harm than good, and I knew the deleterious effects of consuming it, yet I never felt compelled to do anything about it. After reading the book, drinking alcohol just didn't make sense to me anymore.

I'd just like to say that this helped my father who smoked for over 20 years.

2 months of using an e-cig/vape box, with a graduated decline in nicotine percentage.

I have known a couple of people, including my father, who went through a program run by Seventh-Day Adventist hospitals. My father had smoked for about thirty years at the time. The other guy had probably smoked for about half that.

What worked for me after trying (and failing) to quit cold turkey a few times was trying to smoke just a tiny bit less every week or two, maybe even every month, over a period of ~3 years.

The way I did this was by making it a bit harder/uncomfortable to get my cigarettes, and by tring to smoke just 1 cig less every period.

E.g. I would usually carry around a pack in my jeans, so I started leaving them at the car, so if I wanted to smoke it would be harder for me, so that would reduce the impulse when I was very busy or just didn't have the time. After some time doing that it was no longer a problem so I had to up the ante: I would only bring so many cigarettes with me and leave the rest at home. So if I knew I only had say 10, I would try to spread them over my working hours.

Then I would bring only 5 and so on. At some point, some 2 years later I would only smoke 1 in the mid-morning, 1 after lunch and 1 in the afternoon.

Then I would set myself to only have 1 after lunch. Then 1 every other day.

After that it was easier to go several days without smoking until one day I just didn't feel like buying more and I stopped.

Also, I think what worked quite good for me was to avoid "punishing" myself if for some reason I didn't make it one week and smoked a couple more, as long as I was kept reducing it overall the other weeks.

Doing it like this was easier for me I believe, because my own body was breaking the addiction so I just enjoyed smoking less and less, which I think it's why I couldn't do it cold turkey: my craving was stronger than my will. However reducing the craving over a long period allowed me to weaken that craving until my will to stop was stronger.

I know my method sounds a bit stupid if you phrase it like "how to quit smoking in 3 years", because everyone wants to do it NOW. But by avoiding such an unreachable (to me) goal, I managed to quit even if it took that long, so I am happy with the results :)

Hooe that helps.

This video is about quitting sugar, but it mentions a part from Alan Carr's book that helped my boyfriend quit smoking. Realizing it isn't making you calmer, but actually just restarting the cycle of ups and downs while steadily going downhill. (the part with the graph) https://youtu.be/olEMIohTgzQ?t=3m18s

Also for him he did the "don't break the chain" method. Bought a paper calendar, a pen, and a red and green marker. Week one was 8 cigarettes per day, week 2 was 7 cigarettes per day, etc. You write down that number with the black pen through the calendar so you know what your goal is. Exception being for 2 weeks you do 2 cigarettes per day, and for 3 weeks you do 1 cigarette per day because when it's that low you are fighting more of the mental aspect.

Then every day at the end of the day, exactly midnight you can put a a big green checkmark if you kept to the number, or a big red X if you didn't.

The idea is that you never want to break that chain of green checkmarks.

He hasn't smoked in a few years now. :)

Get a high quality vape box and reduce the nicotine % of your liquid until you get to 0, and then you can just do it to help deal with the ritual/oral fixation aspect of it

Some people have success with electronic cigarettes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cigarette#Smoking_c...

did you normally ask smokers about their vitamin cocktails?

No, but smokers are masters of justification and excuses. Almost all smokers talk about with each other is wanting to stop smoking, and how bad it is for them.

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