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The difficulty of quitting varies a lot from person to person. I knew a couple back in the nineties, where one partner was able to quit using the patch. It ju
by amalcon 10y ago
The difficulty of quitting varies a lot from person to person. I knew a couple back in the nineties, where one partner was able to quit using the patch. It just worked for him, and was reportedly not that difficult. He was done with tobacco immediately, and done with nicotine entirely within the month.
The other partner tried everything. Cold turkey, gradual reduction, patches, gum, change of location plus each of those, the works. As you can imagine given the domestic situation, she had exactly the right kind of support. None of it helped for over a decade. She was finally able to quit for good around 2010, and just a month later discovered that it was too late. Smoking had already given her the cancer that would end her life.
That said, this story kind of agrees with you. The partner who quit is still alive, and quite healthy. It might be easy, or it might be the hardest thing you've ever done. No matter how hard it is, though, lung cancer is even harder.
- bbarn 10y agoI guess the point I was trying to make wasn't to brag that it was so great and easy for me to do, it's to say that maybe we have culturally made it seem harder than it is. The more press it gets the more the belief is reinforced. We have tobacco companies still cranking out the same garbage, almost with the attitude that they are forced to keep making this horrific product because people are hooked on it. They keep taking our money, apologetically, as they kill us.
- Retric 10y agoYou can't generalize from personal experience. I smoked less than 3 packs of cigarettes in my life, stopped 15 years ago, and I still get cravings. Alcohol on the other hand has zero pull for me.
- HenryTheHorse 10y ago> stopped 15 years ago, and I still get cravings. I stopped 6 years ago and have zero cravings. But I am curious how you define "cravings". Is it a physical sensation? Is it a mental "pull" when you see someone light one up?
- Retric 10y agoIt's associative. If I think about smoking I get a strong urge to do it. I stopped the first time I noticed the craving when seeing someone I did not know smoking and had the urge to bum a smoke.
- JamesBarney 10y agoSelection bias explains a lot of this. Smoking is easy to quit for most people, and ridiculously hard for most smokers. When I was 17-20 50% of my friends smoked cigarettes and 80% of my friends quit by the time they were out of college a year or two without any problems. The remaining 20% of my friends couldn't quit for the world. They've tried quitting 20 different ways and never succeeded. I think the difference is some people are just wired for quitting smoking to be hard, but most people aren't. And the former population is way over represented among the smoking population.