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Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

I have always believed there must exist a reason I had addictions. Somehow after about 2 decades, a midlife crisis and starting all over again, and then some years : I seem to have come to terms with these reasons. I seem to understand them, and accept them and therefore accept myself.

And then the urges just disappeared. I tapered off the substances and am clean for over a year now. Fingers crossed. YMMV.

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Clarity of purpose makes all the difference for me. The periods where I know what I want and what to do, I have no need for any addiction. When that feeling of purpose and control goes away, I become a slave to them. In some perverse way, they make life endurable when my brain says it shouldn't be.

This x1000. I wouldn't qualify as an "addict" by clinical definitions, but I have a set of bad habits. Over the last year or so I have been making journal entries . The journal entries made me realize exactly what you said - the odds of falling into bad habits multiply several fold during periods where I don't know what I should do.

I realize now that maintaining a journal is a very important and fruitful habit. It is a valuable exercise to record your feelings and state of mind at regular intervals. It will help you figure out your failure modes and patterns (if any) to your successes and failures.

I don't know about drugs as such but 15 years after quitting smoking I still dream I'm smoking and wake up in the morning with the urge to light one. If I get a whiff of one when walking down the street... It hurts.

For me: I think I'm still addicted to it or at least I have the neural pathways of one.

Actually this was one of the first 'signs' for me. When I started to really relax, say a 1-2 hour walk in one of our parks, embracing the void as I like to call it : I noticed I didn't smoke. After a while I stopped carrying the cigarettes.

Pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.

Have you read easy way to quit smoking?

Fo me it was not exactly easy. I self imposed a limit, in the beginning, of 1/h (used to smoke around 2x20 packs/day-chaining 2-3 at a time). When I was confortable with 1/h I went cold turkey with shivers and the full monty. I wouldn't do that a second time tbh.

On the other hand: My wife had 0 issues and quit overnight. She said she only wanted a smoke a few times/year (maybe 3-5 times or so)

I have a friend who has a similar experience to you. He quit years ago, around when I quit. I had been talking about the book, "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking", so I assumed when he quit he had read it. He had not. He continues to suffer when he thinks about cigarettes and when he smells it across the street or in a park.

I recommended that he read it anyway, and that it is a really useful book for getting over that part of the addiction. He still has not read it. He reads 100 books a year and has not read this inexpensive little 240-page book. Well, some people choose to suffer.

https://www.allencarr.com/easyway-stop-smoking/how-to-quit/

Really, just buy the book. But don't worry about the ceremonies of having that final cigarette. What's important is the base idea. Your mind has been tricked and tricked you in return, and all you need to do is decide to stop playing its games.

Sorry. My bad. I didn't start again. So far I managed to hold my ground and not touch ciggies.

I meant - I wouldn't start smoking again to go through stopping.

I think he is saying although you already stopped, the book might still be valuable.

Yes, this :)

I say this as a happy former smoker. Something I never thought I would say.

I reluctantly second the "easy way". I had heard about it, was skeptical, but found it for a buck at a second hand store so I gave it a try.

I hated it. Badly written, pop psychology trash. Lame circular logic. The same few points repeated ad nauseum. Almost painful to read. There's no way this would work.

And by 3/4 of the way through the book I smoked my last cigarette.

That was 18 years ago. I had been smoking since I was a teen, for fifteen years at least. Had tried to quit so many times, never succeeding for more than a couple of months.

I haven't even craved one since reading that damn book.

That tracks. A few months after I quit, I asked my Dad (who quit in the late eighties) when the cravings go away for good. He laughed and said "they don't."

It's that post dinner smoke for me. Everything else is easy, but I have to have that battle every day.

My dad says the same. But it's been five years since I quit tobacco, and I do not get the cravings anymore. I might get faintly reminded of it, still, connected to certain situations, but nowhere near what I'd call a craving.

There really seem to be different ways of quitting. You can quit while remaining addicted, but you can also quit by getting over the addiction. Clearly, you have taken the first path, i.e. are playing on hard mode. I know this path well, but for my final attempt somehow managed to take the second path after 10 years of smoking. It was easy. It continues to be easy. I don't know, but I suspect if I had one cigarette today, I'd be back to a pack a day tomorrow, so in that sense I'm still different to someone who has never smoked in the first place. But I don't have the slightest urge to smoke that first cigarette.

If we could get a clear understanding on how to facilitate this second path, that would truly be helpful to a lot of people.

Congrats!

Hm, why do you think the urges disappeared? Does it coincide with getting your life in order or not?

Not so much life in order, still working on that. The internal discrepancies, finally understanding why and what. Finding peace.

Yes, life in order is more of a work in progress in general. In any case, good work dude!

This is just an ancedata, but my 90 year old grandmother smoked like a chimney her whole life. Randomly woke up one morning and had zero desire for a cigarette. She’s been tobacco free for nearly a decade.

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