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I have been smoking for close to 15 years now and I'm 40. I still struggle with quitting smoking even though I tell myself daily today is the last day.

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I can recommend to read Allen Carr's "Easyway to stop smoking" if you haven't already. I had been smoking for 15 years total as well, tried to stop at least 6 times (sometimes for 18 months, with the help of Nicorette and e-cigs) and was telling myself "today is the last day" every single day. But I was constantly tempted and was always picking it up again. A lot of ex-smokers I knew kept recommending me this book with almost magical claims. I finally begrudgingly read it and stopped from one day to the next. The craziest thing is that it was actually easy to stop this time and gave me great satisfaction. I have stopped for 2 years now and am confident that I will never smoke again (contrary to all other attempts).

I'm not a smoker, but know many, many people who are legitimately addicted to tobacco. What is it about the content of this book that made such a change in you? I'd love to hear about your experience - it sounds like an extraordinary approach if it indeed works as well as you're saying, which makes me think it's some kind of written neurolinguistic programming thing, a technique that could be helpful in a lot of other situations.

I don't smoke, but my understanding of that book is that it basically reprograms your associations re: smoking and quitting smoking.

Before you read that book, quitting smoking is perceived as a loss of something that made you feel good. The permanence of this loss -- the anticipation of living the rest of your life without this source of comfort -- leads to cravings.

What the Carr book does is install a new set of associations: smoking is disgusting and your life is going to be so much better once you free yourself from this completely unnecessary weight that's been dragging you down. Instead of viewing quitting as the loss of something good, you learn to view it as the act of freeing yourself from something bad. Now, when you think about a future without smoking, the anticipation is positive: you get to live the rest of your life without this terrible thing intefering with it! And all you have to do is just stop doing it! Sure, you might have a little bit of physical withdrawal for a little while, but isn't that worth it to be permanently free of this awful thing that's been ruining your life?

That's the basic gist, as far as I can tell. In a way, it's just about being optimistic about a life without cigarettes instead of pessimistic.

That's a very good summary of the approach. It stems from the observation that every single smoker already know about all the reasons they should not smoke (health, financial, social,...) yet they still do it.

You know it's probably going to kill you, you know it costs a lot of money and you know it's anti-social. The book wastes no time trying to convince you about those things. However, it dispels in a very systematic and repetitive way all the positive myths you believe (or repeat to yourself) about cigarettes ("the brainwashing"). It does not actually relax you or bring you pleasure, it just relieves a nicotine addiction and allow you to get back to a state you already had before smoking. It does not taste good. It does not help you focus. Nicotine withdrawal is actually extremely mild. Etc.

As the parent comment explains it's a re-framing, a change of paradigm. By the end of the book I could very clearly see that quitting would not be a sacrifice or "a pleasure i would loose" but something that would make my life better. And to be honest, this has felt like magic. A few days after finishing the book I just threw my pack in the trash and it really has been easy and at times actually even pleasant to quit. Every cigarette you do not smoke brings you a feeling of pride, accomplishment and liberation.

“This Naked Mind” by Annie Grace takes a similar approach with alcohol.

Thank you for this comment, as a non smoker, not fat person, this is probably the most helpful comment of the week ! I made a [Ask HN] post [1], to solicit further tips.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720738

Congratulations! What clicked for you from reading this book compared to everything else?

I finally quit by using e-cigarettes which allow you to reduce the amount of nicotine gradually. Once you're at zero nicotine it's really just a habit that's quite easy to get rid of. One day you will forget your e-cigarette while going out and, surprisingly, it won't matter any longer.

It's important to switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes exclusively and abruptly though. I have friends who tried to switch slowly and just ended up smoking both.

Once I used e-cigarettes I quit entirely within months. And it felt easy.

You can do it.

One thing I've seen work for people is making a significant investment into a smoking counter measure. Extreme example, hire a personal trainer for $75/hr and go to the sessions 3x per week.

Now you are investing $225/week into your health, and you're going to want to get maximum ROI from that investment, right? Well, smoking is diminishing that ROI. Secondly, you have someone encouraging you to do the best possible work you can do with your body every time you go to a session. You'll naturally want to avoid disappointing that person. You'll also want to see continued progress in the results they are measuring. Smoking will impede that progress, and again, minimize your ROI.

This worked for someone very close to me after everything else failed. Incidentally, that person stopped going to the trainer after a while, but only after quitting "stuck". Good luck in your journey and never quit quitting.

The older you are when you smoke, the worse it is for you. Smoking in your twenties is far less harmful in terms of its likelihood to cause cancer than smoking in your forties, fifties, or sixties. The damage gets worse with every decade of your life.

Just stop. In five years' time, you'll wonder why you didn't stop sooner.

> Just stop.

Not a smoker but my initial reaction to you is probably pretty close to that of a smoker, and not particularly favourable. How can you possibly think that a deeply physiological addiction is going to respond to either logical arguments or simplistic slogans? Once you fix smoking, can you please stop the opioid crisis?

This is like programmers being asked to debug something, sneering back "you think this deeply complicated distributed database problem could be caused by an off-by-one error, pfft, what do you know?" and then just ... not debugging it.

> "How can you possibly think that a deeply physiological addiction is going to respond to either logical arguments"

Because many many ex-smokers have said that it happened for them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32715196

He has been trying to stop for a while. It's not easy to "just stop"

Just switch to vaping.

It's easier to step down with it, and if you fail to step down, you're still getting fewer carcinogens.

Would be great if today actually is the last day! Maybe visit this post everytime you get an urge? Don't bring a pack with you. Make it a nuisance to even access one.

I would look into varenicline (chantix), talk with a doctor. I know some people will bring up incredibly rare side effects as reasons not to try, but I think those are sort of like plane crashes, they happen sometimes and cause a very visceral response, but the majority of people will do fine flying on a plane. Also, smoking will contribute to an early death, so the risk benefit calculation makes sense to me.

Don't say it is the last day. Start by saying today is a day that I won't have one. Then, maybe you can say that tomorrow too.

The one thing that helped me quit smoking was snus. It’s not healthy, but much much better than cigarettes.

You have some good news because recent longitudinal studies show a 90 percent reduction in cancer risk if you stop at 50. 80 percent if 50. If you're older than that, your body can't keep up the same.

I found getting a prescription for bupropion from my doctor made quitting much easier. That was 20 years ago now.

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