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I "gave up smoking" by not giving up. I just deferred the decision to have one cigarette. When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. And crucially, th

I "gave up smoking" by not giving up. I just deferred the decision to have one cigarette. When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. And crucially, the rules allowed me to have one if I really wanted. At first there was lots of deferring and then deciding to have one. Eventually I just deferred the decision five minutes then five minutes more and on and on forever. The reasoning is that your subconscious mind does not like "giving up" anything. "Giving up" implies you are losing something you value for nothing in return. When you defer the decision to indulge your addiction, you are not fighting against your subconscious - remember the rule is you are allowed to have the thing you crave. So in effect I never gave up smoking, I'm just a smoker who deferred the decision and never decided to do it. I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but just haven't had one for a long time. "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for five minutes is easy. Off topic also, I highly recommend the podcast "The Vaping Fix". It's closely related to Silicon Valley and is compelling binge listening. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id1562884524 https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id15628...

the_only_law 5y ago
Is there anything you picked up instead when you had the urge. I’ve never tried quitting, but I have ceased for up to a week (visiting family, etc.) and get incredibly agitated and fidgety after a day or so.
- hourislate 5y ago
  There is nothing, you will have to run the gauntlet of addiction. It isn't pleasant but in the end it is incredibly rewarding. You're basically given your life/freedom back. Quit a 2 pack a day habit cold turkey back in 2009. These days I get nauseous when I'm around smokers and can't believe I was once one of them.
- andrewstuart 5y ago
  If you really want one, have one, don't fight it. Just ensure that every time the urge comes up, you say to yourself: "Do I really want this cigarette RIGHT NOW, or can I have it in five minutes?" If you cannot wait then have it. In five minutes time when. the deferral has expired, ask the same question. Don't fight yourself, agree with yourself. And don't attack yourself for making the decision to have one - just ensure that the next cigarette gets the same question. This process might happen hundreds of times but don't worry about it, just keep asking the question. It's a long series of very short term decisions. It doesn't work if you have a rule in place that you cannot have a cigarette - this approach means you can, so your subconscious can relax - you are not depriving it of what it wants.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    Thanks, will try this out soon (with a different addiction)
  - MauranKilom 5y ago
    A different perspective is that it's decoupling the impulse from the reward. Very powerful at taming these kinds of habits.
  - creamytaco 5y ago
    i find this utter hogwash. Nicotine is physically addictive and tolerance builds up. When one that has been smoking moderately to heavily for years quits smoking, one goes through days of physical withdrawal. These "simple tricks" are just another way to fail. You can postpone 1-2-3-4 cigarettes, but eventually you will smoke 4 in a row to get the nicotine high with the intensity and duration your body is used to. Which is why the patch is effective, it helps with physical withdrawal. These jedi mind tricks don't.
- shriphani 5y ago
  The book that had an amazing impact on lots of friends who smoked is Easy Way by Allen Carr: https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615482155 https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615... (No affiliation). Friends report there are no lasting urges, no mental blocks, no inner demons etc. etc. reddit testimonials: https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking/comments/odyv6/anyone_try_allen_carrs_easy_way/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking/comments/odyv6/anyone_t...
- throwaway-jim 5y ago
  Anecdotal, but things get much much easier after like 2 months. The first few weeks are the worst.
escapecharacter 5y ago
Quitting by induction...
- loteck 5y ago
  By procrastination, really.
lnwlebjel 5y ago
I think you're on to something. Similarly, doing this one exercise, one more time can be easy, but committing to a lifetime of it? No way.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
qntty 5y ago
This is interesting. It reminds me both of a common piece of advice for meditating ("If you feel overwhelmed by the task of paying attention to your breath for X minutes, just ask yourself if you can pay attention to just one breath, then just one more, etc.") and procrastination. Two things that I don't normally associate with each other.
fossuser 5y ago
"Two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs set out to rid the world of smoking with an incredible new product." This seems a little like revisionist history? Apologies for awful forbes link, but it has some of their early ads: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/the-disturbing-focus-of-juuls-early-marketing-campaigns/?sh=ceb377114f9c https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/t... I don't really hold a strong position on this issue, but it seems obvious their early ads targeted high school kids (and it worked). It was only later after their success (and regulators started looking at them) that they focused on smoking cessation and being an alternative for smokers as their purpose (rather than getting non-smokers to vape). That plus it came out after the success of their weed vaporizor Pax which they made first right? I don't really know if nicotine vapes are dangerous or not, almost certainly better than tobacco - but I don't buy that it was about switching smokers to vaping early on. Maybe the podcast gets into it more and I'm over indexing on that subtitle. If so, I'd be happy to read your reply.
- jolux 5y ago
  Yes, it was made by the same people who invented the Pax. I don't think they'd ever come out and say it but I would fully believe they were just looking for a better way to consume nicotine, in that the Pax was supposed to be a better way to consume THC. I think they probably just wanted to make a better cigarette using technology. Whether it was used by people trying to quit or people who had never tried before, I suspect was orthogonal to their cause, though I believe they were themselves smokers.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  I listened to the entirety of this podcast and felt it to be friendly to Juul to the extent of being sort of bizarre. The host routinely brought up criticisms of Juul but then immediately dismissed them and moved on without further analysis---seemingly never even entertaining the idea that Monsees and Bowen could have been complicit in their ignorance of underage abuse, and much less that they might have been intentionally deceptive (which seems, to me, like a pretty strong possibility). Juul was repeatedly depicted as the victim in the whole thing. Even odder, the podcast makes it sound like Monsees and Bowen invented the concept of the electronic cigarette completely from scratch, making no mention of the decades-long history they have in China. It's completely possible that they were unaware of the Chinese precedent and working independently (I feel like e-cigarettes in the Chinese style had started to appear in the US, although not yet taken off, by 2007 when they launched Pax but I could be remembering this wrong), but the host not mentioning it at all was another factor that made the podcast feel very shallowly researched and, in general, like a puff piece for Juul. Further, the podcast makes it sound like the popularity of Pax for cannabis, which was not yet legal anywhere at the time, was unforeseen and unintentional. Maybe this is true, but it strikes me as a bit odd as I have never known the Pax brand to be associated with anything but cannabis, and my first exposure to it was around 2009. I would be very interested in digging into old Ploom/Pax advertising around this point. I don't begrudge Pax as a cannabis product but this just felt like another questionable and self-advantageous claim by Pax/Juul that the podcast just took for granted. I don't necessarily know that I'd allege the podcast to have been bought off by Juul or something, but it very much had the feeling of a newspaper article about a company with that company's own press release as the sole source. I think it may have just been lazy rather than malicious per se.
SkipperCat 5y ago
What you are doing is a core tenant of survival training. When in a situation that seems doomed (ie: lifeboat in the ocean, lost deep in the woods, etc), you don't focus on what will happen tomorrow, you just do what you need to do to survive the next 4 hours. You repeat this over and over until things get better. Check out the book "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales if interested.
- nradov 5y ago
  Same thing in endurance sports racing (running, cycling, etc.). Mentally break the race down into little pieces. Just suffer for one more minute. Make it to the next mile marker.
  - bashinator 5y ago
    Hah! When I’m doing reps at the gym, I’ll count down the Fibonacci sequence, so a set of ten I’d count five, then three, then two. Works like a charm when each subset is “easier” than the previous one.
- pram 5y ago
  It’s good advice. Although from my experience this is truly automatic and effortless when you’re extremely hungry, tired, and cold. I went through USAF SERE school and you have little opportunity to start worrying about tomorrow, or even 4 hours from now really ;P
toss1 5y ago
Interesting and probably highly effective. Immediately reminds me of a study where they got people exercising to focus only on the track ahead of them and only on the finish line, in some trial to the point of putting horse-blinker like glasses on them. Alternate sessions were to widen their focus to the entire workout. Those who were in the narrowed focus trials ran on average 22% faster and simultaneously felt that their effort was subjectively 17% easier. Similar advice I read from a former Navy Seal about their training sessions and in particular "Hell Week". He succeeded by narrowing his focus to 'just last until the next meal - they have to feed us every 6 hours', and he made it through, but many in his entering class did not, and he noticed that they were overwhelmed by 'how am I going to last this whole week?'. You just narrowed your focus to the next 5min, and succeeded - congratulations!
treve 5y ago
Also having smoked for almost 20 years, and finally kicked it about a year ago, in hindsight I found this kind of advice very unhelpful. There's lots of different people, and there's not really a universal way that's going to work for everyone. I doubt that there's solutions that work for the majority. I believe most smokers wish they never started, so if it was as simple as 'deferring for 5 minutes' or 'have willpower' we'd have a lot less of them. > "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for five minutes is easy. For me, it definitely wasn't, but when I read things that are written as 'general advice' that I couldn't follow it made less motivated to try to find a way to quit. It's was also frustrating to read other people being successful with seemingly 'simple tricks'. "Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking" is another example that has near universal praise, and was mentioned here on HN. Also a total dud for me, which only made me more depressed; there must be something more wrong with me... My suggestion now would probably be to treat it as an illness and go talk to your family doctor. But also: your mileage may vary and perhaps just waiting 5 minutes at a time will do it for you! Hang in there.
- koube 5y ago
  Want to add to the testimonials of people that this absolutely didn't work for. For me this was just an excuse to open another pack of Juul pods, "oh this time I'll wait longer between puffs, I'll be puffing less and less this time until I'm not addicted". I would open pod after pod, pack after pack, every time thinking this exact thought. The only thing that worked for me is switching off juuls to some other brand where I could mix my own liquid and titrate down. I would also be very interested in the percentage of people for whom deferring a cigarette for five minutes is easy. Maybe if you were waiting five minutes for a smoke buddy.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > I would also be very interested in the percentage of people for whom deferring a cigarette for five minutes is easy. I would be too. But I can’t imagine it’s very low. It’s like holding your pee for 5 minutes, uncomfortable, but eminently doable as long as you know you’ll find a toilet soon. I think the problem is with knowing that those 5 minutes are supposed to mean deferring the smoking forever.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
In a similar vein I "stopped drinking" 18 months ago with no set goal for how long (but one year was a desirable milestone) and I sometimes say I "quit drinking" but really it's more about deciding not to do it for a while and then not deciding to do it again. Maybe I will some day but I actually don't desire it right now and I do like having this long time period "18 months no alcohol" so if I drank it would reset that. Which some day may be fine, but it's nice for now. I also quit smoking in my 20's. I succeeded by focusing on how physically bad a cigarette made me feel. There was some kind of tobacco buzz but also an obvious depressant effect and it made me feel like shit. During the period I was quitting I would sometimes smoke a little more to make myself feel physically worse so that I would be reminded of this bad feeling and want to avoid it. It worked!
bozhark 5y ago
Interesting. I quit smoking in a similar fashion. Actually, I still consider my self a smoker. I can have a cigarette whenever I want to. But I chose not to. It helped me finally stop trying to quit. And just chose not to smoke.
gautamdivgi 5y ago
I gave up smoking 20 years ago. The one thing that helped was that I moved for work which means I had no smoker friends to party with. I picked up on my swimming and running to pass the time. Luckily the exercise and lack of company to smoke made quitting relatively painless for me. At the time of quitting I had probably smoked for around 8 years and had a 1 pack/day habit of Marlboro reds. I agree with the parent comment. I took it one at a time and in about a month felt no compulsion to smoke.
dondii 5y ago
> When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. I smoked for 13 years and stopped 13 years ago. I have had maybe two or three cigarettes since. I started by gradually cutting down then after a few weeks adopted this exact strategy. When the urge arose I just waited a few minutes and it usually pass. It's also worth noting that in addition to the nicotine addiction, I had to deal with built up habits and being used to having a cigarette in my mouth but after a few months these went away. To this day I have the occasional craving but these pass much quicker (generally in a few seconds) than they did 13 years ago. Looking back, it was fairly easy for me but I understand that it's not the same for everyone. My dad quit after 2 decades of smoking, he had vomiting spells and chills for weeks. I know of at least one person who had quit for a decade, had one cigarette and is now back to regularly smoking.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  ”he had vomiting spells and chills for weeks” These are effects of MAOI withdrawal. Nothing to do with nicotine. I’ve just about had it with the half-truths surrounding tobacco, coffee and alcoholic beverages. MAOIs from the Harmala alkaloid family as well as various flavonoid families are prevalent in all of our ”legal highs” in copious quantities, yet all we ever hear is ”nicotine”, ”caffeine” and ”alcohol”.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Could you please cite peer reviewed work that supports your repeated assertions about the role of MAOIs in cigarrete addiction?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
refurb 5y ago
This works pretty well for establishing an exercise routine as well. I wouldn't feel like exercising, but I could convince myself to exercise for 10 min. What's 10 min? Then once you hit the 10 min mark, what's another 10 min?
kwhitefoot 5y ago
I inadvertently did the same with sugar in my tea. Where I worked we each prepared our own tea and coffee from our own supplies. I forgot to replenish my jar of sugar and eked it out by putting less and less in each cup. For some reason that I can no longer remember I forgot to fill it up so of course it eventually was empty. But by then I was taking so little sugar that it was a small step to taking none at all.
bambax 5y ago
I was a heavy smoker once (2+ packs per day for 15 years) and stopped abruptly. My motivation was simply that being a smoker was horrible. Everywhere I went the only thing I could think about was, where are the tobacco shops, when do they close, do I have enough cigarettes with me to get me through the day, or the evening, etc. (Also I smoked so-called "brown tobacco" which meant I couldn't really ask other people for a smoke -- I could, but I strongly disliked more mainstream cigarettes; so I had to take care of my own supply). The first two weeks of quitting were horrible, it was as if somebody constantly pulled on my arms to elongate them; in fact during those weeks I stayed in bed most of the time. (In a way it was so horrible and strange that it seemed kind of enjoyable; the pain transforms into something bizarre where you're a kind of "pure pain" that isn't, somehow, insufferable.) And then after those two weeks the carving was gone, and I was free. It's been 20 years since I quit and I have never wanted to smoke again; I still remember vividly how painful it was to quit, and this is an excellent deterrent to wanting to start again.
jnathsf 5y ago
For me the catalyst for change was a period of personal transformation fueled by psychedelics. Another “addiction” I gave up during this time was meat. It’s been 20 years and I’ve been fortunate not to have any desire for either. I want to acknowledge how incredibly difficult it can be to give up smoking and express my support to all of you who are trying. I hope you find your path.
gowld 5y ago
You can stand anything for 10 seconds! https://youtu.be/xSX3KG1hisk https://youtu.be/xSX3KG1hisk
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
> I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but just haven't had one for a long time. Nicely put, and congrats. Your health says thank you.
lenkite 5y ago
This advice works excellent for natural procrastinators! But sadly, does little for other personality types.

the_only_law 5y ago

Is there anything you picked up instead when you had the urge. I’ve never tried quitting, but I have ceased for up to a week (visiting family, etc.) and get incredibly agitated and fidgety after a day or so.

hourislate 5y ago
There is nothing, you will have to run the gauntlet of addiction. It isn't pleasant but in the end it is incredibly rewarding. You're basically given your life/freedom back. Quit a 2 pack a day habit cold turkey back in 2009. These days I get nauseous when I'm around smokers and can't believe I was once one of them.
andrewstuart 5y ago
If you really want one, have one, don't fight it. Just ensure that every time the urge comes up, you say to yourself: "Do I really want this cigarette RIGHT NOW, or can I have it in five minutes?" If you cannot wait then have it. In five minutes time when. the deferral has expired, ask the same question. Don't fight yourself, agree with yourself. And don't attack yourself for making the decision to have one - just ensure that the next cigarette gets the same question. This process might happen hundreds of times but don't worry about it, just keep asking the question. It's a long series of very short term decisions. It doesn't work if you have a rule in place that you cannot have a cigarette - this approach means you can, so your subconscious can relax - you are not depriving it of what it wants.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Thanks, will try this out soon (with a different addiction)
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  A different perspective is that it's decoupling the impulse from the reward. Very powerful at taming these kinds of habits.
- creamytaco 5y ago
  i find this utter hogwash. Nicotine is physically addictive and tolerance builds up. When one that has been smoking moderately to heavily for years quits smoking, one goes through days of physical withdrawal. These "simple tricks" are just another way to fail. You can postpone 1-2-3-4 cigarettes, but eventually you will smoke 4 in a row to get the nicotine high with the intensity and duration your body is used to. Which is why the patch is effective, it helps with physical withdrawal. These jedi mind tricks don't.
shriphani 5y ago
The book that had an amazing impact on lots of friends who smoked is Easy Way by Allen Carr: https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615482155 https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615... (No affiliation). Friends report there are no lasting urges, no mental blocks, no inner demons etc. etc. reddit testimonials: https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking/comments/odyv6/anyone_try_allen_carrs_easy_way/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking/comments/odyv6/anyone_t...
throwaway-jim 5y ago
Anecdotal, but things get much much easier after like 2 months. The first few weeks are the worst.

escapecharacter 5y ago

Quitting by induction...

loteck 5y ago
By procrastination, really.

lnwlebjel 5y ago

I think you're on to something. Similarly, doing this one exercise, one more time can be easy, but committing to a lifetime of it? No way.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

qntty 5y ago

This is interesting. It reminds me both of a common piece of advice for meditating ("If you feel overwhelmed by the task of paying attention to your breath for X minutes, just ask yourself if you can pay attention to just one breath, then just one more, etc.") and procrastination. Two things that I don't normally associate with each other.

fossuser 5y ago

"Two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs set out to rid the world of smoking with an incredible new product." This seems a little like revisionist history? Apologies for awful forbes link, but it has some of their early ads: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/the-disturbing-focus-of-juuls-early-marketing-campaigns/?sh=ceb377114f9c https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/t... I don't really hold a strong position on this issue, but it seems obvious their early ads targeted high school kids (and it worked). It was only later after their success (and regulators started looking at them) that they focused on smoking cessation and being an alternative for smokers as their purpose (rather than getting non-smokers to vape). That plus it came out after the success of their weed vaporizor Pax which they made first right? I don't really know if nicotine vapes are dangerous or not, almost certainly better than tobacco - but I don't buy that it was about switching smokers to vaping early on. Maybe the podcast gets into it more and I'm over indexing on that subtitle. If so, I'd be happy to read your reply.

jolux 5y ago
Yes, it was made by the same people who invented the Pax. I don't think they'd ever come out and say it but I would fully believe they were just looking for a better way to consume nicotine, in that the Pax was supposed to be a better way to consume THC. I think they probably just wanted to make a better cigarette using technology. Whether it was used by people trying to quit or people who had never tried before, I suspect was orthogonal to their cause, though I believe they were themselves smokers.
jcrawfordor 5y ago
I listened to the entirety of this podcast and felt it to be friendly to Juul to the extent of being sort of bizarre. The host routinely brought up criticisms of Juul but then immediately dismissed them and moved on without further analysis---seemingly never even entertaining the idea that Monsees and Bowen could have been complicit in their ignorance of underage abuse, and much less that they might have been intentionally deceptive (which seems, to me, like a pretty strong possibility). Juul was repeatedly depicted as the victim in the whole thing. Even odder, the podcast makes it sound like Monsees and Bowen invented the concept of the electronic cigarette completely from scratch, making no mention of the decades-long history they have in China. It's completely possible that they were unaware of the Chinese precedent and working independently (I feel like e-cigarettes in the Chinese style had started to appear in the US, although not yet taken off, by 2007 when they launched Pax but I could be remembering this wrong), but the host not mentioning it at all was another factor that made the podcast feel very shallowly researched and, in general, like a puff piece for Juul. Further, the podcast makes it sound like the popularity of Pax for cannabis, which was not yet legal anywhere at the time, was unforeseen and unintentional. Maybe this is true, but it strikes me as a bit odd as I have never known the Pax brand to be associated with anything but cannabis, and my first exposure to it was around 2009. I would be very interested in digging into old Ploom/Pax advertising around this point. I don't begrudge Pax as a cannabis product but this just felt like another questionable and self-advantageous claim by Pax/Juul that the podcast just took for granted. I don't necessarily know that I'd allege the podcast to have been bought off by Juul or something, but it very much had the feeling of a newspaper article about a company with that company's own press release as the sole source. I think it may have just been lazy rather than malicious per se.

SkipperCat 5y ago

What you are doing is a core tenant of survival training. When in a situation that seems doomed (ie: lifeboat in the ocean, lost deep in the woods, etc), you don't focus on what will happen tomorrow, you just do what you need to do to survive the next 4 hours. You repeat this over and over until things get better. Check out the book "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales if interested.

nradov 5y ago
Same thing in endurance sports racing (running, cycling, etc.). Mentally break the race down into little pieces. Just suffer for one more minute. Make it to the next mile marker.
- bashinator 5y ago
  Hah! When I’m doing reps at the gym, I’ll count down the Fibonacci sequence, so a set of ten I’d count five, then three, then two. Works like a charm when each subset is “easier” than the previous one.
pram 5y ago
It’s good advice. Although from my experience this is truly automatic and effortless when you’re extremely hungry, tired, and cold. I went through USAF SERE school and you have little opportunity to start worrying about tomorrow, or even 4 hours from now really ;P

toss1 5y ago

Interesting and probably highly effective. Immediately reminds me of a study where they got people exercising to focus only on the track ahead of them and only on the finish line, in some trial to the point of putting horse-blinker like glasses on them. Alternate sessions were to widen their focus to the entire workout. Those who were in the narrowed focus trials ran on average 22% faster and simultaneously felt that their effort was subjectively 17% easier. Similar advice I read from a former Navy Seal about their training sessions and in particular "Hell Week". He succeeded by narrowing his focus to 'just last until the next meal - they have to feed us every 6 hours', and he made it through, but many in his entering class did not, and he noticed that they were overwhelmed by 'how am I going to last this whole week?'. You just narrowed your focus to the next 5min, and succeeded - congratulations!

treve 5y ago

Also having smoked for almost 20 years, and finally kicked it about a year ago, in hindsight I found this kind of advice very unhelpful. There's lots of different people, and there's not really a universal way that's going to work for everyone. I doubt that there's solutions that work for the majority. I believe most smokers wish they never started, so if it was as simple as 'deferring for 5 minutes' or 'have willpower' we'd have a lot less of them. > "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for five minutes is easy. For me, it definitely wasn't, but when I read things that are written as 'general advice' that I couldn't follow it made less motivated to try to find a way to quit. It's was also frustrating to read other people being successful with seemingly 'simple tricks'. "Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking" is another example that has near universal praise, and was mentioned here on HN. Also a total dud for me, which only made me more depressed; there must be something more wrong with me... My suggestion now would probably be to treat it as an illness and go talk to your family doctor. But also: your mileage may vary and perhaps just waiting 5 minutes at a time will do it for you! Hang in there.

koube 5y ago
Want to add to the testimonials of people that this absolutely didn't work for. For me this was just an excuse to open another pack of Juul pods, "oh this time I'll wait longer between puffs, I'll be puffing less and less this time until I'm not addicted". I would open pod after pod, pack after pack, every time thinking this exact thought. The only thing that worked for me is switching off juuls to some other brand where I could mix my own liquid and titrate down. I would also be very interested in the percentage of people for whom deferring a cigarette for five minutes is easy. Maybe if you were waiting five minutes for a smoke buddy.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > I would also be very interested in the percentage of people for whom deferring a cigarette for five minutes is easy. I would be too. But I can’t imagine it’s very low. It’s like holding your pee for 5 minutes, uncomfortable, but eminently doable as long as you know you’ll find a toilet soon. I think the problem is with knowing that those 5 minutes are supposed to mean deferring the smoking forever.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

In a similar vein I "stopped drinking" 18 months ago with no set goal for how long (but one year was a desirable milestone) and I sometimes say I "quit drinking" but really it's more about deciding not to do it for a while and then not deciding to do it again. Maybe I will some day but I actually don't desire it right now and I do like having this long time period "18 months no alcohol" so if I drank it would reset that. Which some day may be fine, but it's nice for now. I also quit smoking in my 20's. I succeeded by focusing on how physically bad a cigarette made me feel. There was some kind of tobacco buzz but also an obvious depressant effect and it made me feel like shit. During the period I was quitting I would sometimes smoke a little more to make myself feel physically worse so that I would be reminded of this bad feeling and want to avoid it. It worked!

bozhark 5y ago

Interesting. I quit smoking in a similar fashion. Actually, I still consider my self a smoker. I can have a cigarette whenever I want to. But I chose not to. It helped me finally stop trying to quit. And just chose not to smoke.

gautamdivgi 5y ago

I gave up smoking 20 years ago. The one thing that helped was that I moved for work which means I had no smoker friends to party with. I picked up on my swimming and running to pass the time. Luckily the exercise and lack of company to smoke made quitting relatively painless for me. At the time of quitting I had probably smoked for around 8 years and had a 1 pack/day habit of Marlboro reds. I agree with the parent comment. I took it one at a time and in about a month felt no compulsion to smoke.

dondii 5y ago

> When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes. I smoked for 13 years and stopped 13 years ago. I have had maybe two or three cigarettes since. I started by gradually cutting down then after a few weeks adopted this exact strategy. When the urge arose I just waited a few minutes and it usually pass. It's also worth noting that in addition to the nicotine addiction, I had to deal with built up habits and being used to having a cigarette in my mouth but after a few months these went away. To this day I have the occasional craving but these pass much quicker (generally in a few seconds) than they did 13 years ago. Looking back, it was fairly easy for me but I understand that it's not the same for everyone. My dad quit after 2 decades of smoking, he had vomiting spells and chills for weeks. I know of at least one person who had quit for a decade, had one cigarette and is now back to regularly smoking.

eurasiantiger 5y ago
”he had vomiting spells and chills for weeks” These are effects of MAOI withdrawal. Nothing to do with nicotine. I’ve just about had it with the half-truths surrounding tobacco, coffee and alcoholic beverages. MAOIs from the Harmala alkaloid family as well as various flavonoid families are prevalent in all of our ”legal highs” in copious quantities, yet all we ever hear is ”nicotine”, ”caffeine” and ”alcohol”.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Could you please cite peer reviewed work that supports your repeated assertions about the role of MAOIs in cigarrete addiction?
- deleted 5y ago
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refurb 5y ago

This works pretty well for establishing an exercise routine as well. I wouldn't feel like exercising, but I could convince myself to exercise for 10 min. What's 10 min? Then once you hit the 10 min mark, what's another 10 min?

kwhitefoot 5y ago

I inadvertently did the same with sugar in my tea. Where I worked we each prepared our own tea and coffee from our own supplies. I forgot to replenish my jar of sugar and eked it out by putting less and less in each cup. For some reason that I can no longer remember I forgot to fill it up so of course it eventually was empty. But by then I was taking so little sugar that it was a small step to taking none at all.

bambax 5y ago

I was a heavy smoker once (2+ packs per day for 15 years) and stopped abruptly. My motivation was simply that being a smoker was horrible. Everywhere I went the only thing I could think about was, where are the tobacco shops, when do they close, do I have enough cigarettes with me to get me through the day, or the evening, etc. (Also I smoked so-called "brown tobacco" which meant I couldn't really ask other people for a smoke -- I could, but I strongly disliked more mainstream cigarettes; so I had to take care of my own supply). The first two weeks of quitting were horrible, it was as if somebody constantly pulled on my arms to elongate them; in fact during those weeks I stayed in bed most of the time. (In a way it was so horrible and strange that it seemed kind of enjoyable; the pain transforms into something bizarre where you're a kind of "pure pain" that isn't, somehow, insufferable.) And then after those two weeks the carving was gone, and I was free. It's been 20 years since I quit and I have never wanted to smoke again; I still remember vividly how painful it was to quit, and this is an excellent deterrent to wanting to start again.

jnathsf 5y ago

For me the catalyst for change was a period of personal transformation fueled by psychedelics. Another “addiction” I gave up during this time was meat. It’s been 20 years and I’ve been fortunate not to have any desire for either. I want to acknowledge how incredibly difficult it can be to give up smoking and express my support to all of you who are trying. I hope you find your path.

gowld 5y ago

You can stand anything for 10 seconds! https://youtu.be/xSX3KG1hisk https://youtu.be/xSX3KG1hisk

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

> I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but just haven't had one for a long time. Nicely put, and congrats. Your health says thank you.

lenkite 5y ago

This advice works excellent for natural procrastinators! But sadly, does little for other personality types.