Hi. I’ve been heavily smoking for a few months now due to stress and having to deal with my parents, but it’s starting to take a toll on my physical health. My throat is sore, I have strange stains on my teeth, I wheeze, and the back of my throat looks bumpy like a cobblestone road. I’m going to stop tomorrow and try to find other ways to deal with stress.
I wish I had come here sooner, but I honestly didn’t want to quit because it just helped so much and made me feel better immediately. But I really don’t think it’s worth the toll on my health anymore. I’m going cold turkey tomorrow. Any and all tips from former smokers would be really great.
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Hey! That’s great news to hear! One thing I found helpful is downloading a quit app. You can monitor the improvements to health, including the improvement of teeth staining and oxygen levels. Some of them are free or if you want 1-1 and community support you can purchase the apps, but I find the free trial is really good. It even shows how much money you’re saving. In the purchase app you can list cravings/triggers and get support with how to cope with those.
One thing for me was seeing my overall mood improve. Not getting snappy with nicotine urges.
I know when my friends want to hang and have a drink there will be smoking so for now I come and stay for an hour or so and either drink water or have one drink and excuse myself.
It’s easy to replace one addiction for another, so sometimes we have to find healthy “addictions” like exercise or a distracting hobby. Especially when it comes to dealing with frustration it can be good to let it out through exercise.
Hope you’re going okay!
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Thanks so much! I’ll look into downloading an app like that and replacing smoking with a more constructive habit. Hope I can come back to this forum with good news in about a week or so (this is all much easier said than done)
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Bimini’s suggestion of the app she uses it great, but if you’re having a hard time doing it cold turkey, try calling your doctor and talk to them about Chantix or whatever else they have now for that. I know two people who have used it and stopped smoking successfully.
There isn’t any real need to suffer, ya know? They say quitting smoking is harder then trying to get off heroin, so make sure you are not hard on yourself if it becomes difficult.
You got this and you have the support of this community!
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