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Also add in small easy to reach goals, things like:
Ride for one hour without stopping, build this up in 10 minute increments over the days and weeks.
Start a diary, easy to do on the phone, about your progression and how you're feeling. This can really help whem you're having a bad day and you can look back to how far you've come.
Keep it up. 👍
are now a truly staggering £15.86 for a pack of 20
I'm pretty sure the Marlboro I was smoking in 2002 (there abouts) when I gave up were about four quid*, certainly under a fiver. Breaking a £20.00 note everyday for fags must be a shocker
* I remember that in the Budget they went up by quite a lot, 50p a pack something like that. It was part of the incentive to stop, certainly
they say “relatively harmless” – because compared to the rest of the shit in cigarette smoke it is *relatively* harmless.
Exactly. I think some people might be underestimating just how harmful tar and carbon monoxide in cigarettes are to someone's health.
. I think some people might be underestimating just how harmful tar and carbon monoxide in cigarettes are to someone’s health<br />
What are you on about? Everyone with half a brain knows that those 2 ingredients are a key reason smoking is so harmful
but .. this thread is about vaping. And those 2 aren’t an issue with legal vapes.
if you are getting though 10 bottles of liquid a month that’s around 3ml a day. Whilst that’s apparently fairly average, imo it takes quite a bit of vaping to bang through that amount in a day no?
Vaping didn't work for me - found it made my chest worse than it already was - coughing, more mucus, etc. Other than the odd one in desperation, I haven't smoked straights in 18 years, and when I quit those, I quit tobacco completley for 6 years. Then ridiculously, I started rolling. I can stay off them for a few days, but always crumble. Know i need to stop, but haven't (this time) got to the point of wanting to stop yet. I'm approx. 50g per week at the moment.
I was only ever periodic smoker, but I always enjoyed tobacco in both rollies and pipes. I will still have a pipe from time to time with another pipe smoker. But vaping has been a huge boon to me.
I have ALWAYS been a compulsive eater - as in, if it exists, then I eat it. I have poor impulse control, and every time I would get distracted (which was constantly), I would visit the fridge.
With a vape, I can concentrate better for hours on end, and feel no compulsion to eat. This has been important as, after my cycling accident in 2018, I went from 78kgs to 94kgs, and felt like hell. Since I made a deal with Mrs SR to exchange the eating for vaping, I have dropped to 82kgs and am still losing.
I feel better in every way, and have even started to move more.
And as far as all my reading has led me to believe, nicotine as a drug is really no different to caffeine. Its biggest problem has always been its delivery method.
Why do you do that knowing that it kills slugs and snails and plants 😕 Correct, because it is mostly harmless.
Good, glad we got that silly little non point point out of the way.
it’s a pretty poor analogy - salt is essential to human (and all animals) life. Alcohol is perhaps a better analogy.
disposable vapes seem to have become especially unpopular with judgemental ****s - presumably because some stupid ****s through them away in nature, as they do with NO2, used jonnys, beer bottles/cans, syringes etc. Whilst a reusable one is probably better for the environment - perhaps the cost, repeated physical purchase process and visible waste are better incentives for those who genuinely want to cut down rather than infrequently buying liquid refills.
if you are getting though 10 bottles of liquid a month that’s around 3ml a day
@tpbiker - I said it lasts me over a month, but just looking at my orders, that’s actually every 6 weeks. It sure beats 20 B&H a day, that’s for sure.
I’ve reduced the nicotine content down to 0.3mg. I’m just bloody glad I’m a non-smoker. I’m well aware that vaping is largely an unknown quantity, but I know with just how I feel that it’s a damn site better than smoking. Everything’s relative
Well done OP. I'm in a similar boat, I drive a lot for work so I used to buy a pack of tabs so I had something to do to ease the boredom, this descended into having a sneaky one at every opportunity. I'd smoked on and off for 20+ years but never got into 20 a day territory. It wasn't doing me any favours health wise either.
I decided to try a disposable vape instead just over 3 months ago and I haven't even thought about spending £15 on a pack of tabs since. I need to get hold of a reusable one as I'm not too happy about the environmental impact of the disposables. Long term I'd like to eliminate the vape altogether but that's a way off yet.
who is arguing smoking is good for you?
Read back.
it’s entirely the point when discussing smoking cessation.
It's not. No-one died from quitting smoking. Plenty of folk died from not quitting smoking (again, see above) and plenty of folk died from quitting and/or not quitting other substances. Quitting alcohol is horrific if you're dependant.
The way to quit smoking is to stop going into the shop going "20 fags please." Everything else is habit and excuses.
All the experts acknowledge that the bad stuff in cigarettes is the thousands of chemicals produced at highly toxic levels. Not the nicotine itself.
So, yay?
I assume smoking rather than vaping or chewing nicotine gum.
You assume correctly. Vaping wasn't overly commonplace when my dad started smoking aged 12.
My dad lost his mind like throwing a switch. He was at home one evening watching a quiz show on TV and answering all the questions. Then he started seeing things crawling up the walls, clawing fibres out of the chair arms and shat himself.
He was in hospital for two years, which is a story in itself, and then in a care home for another two. His extremities were necrotic and some were amputated.
All 100% down to smoking. Remind me again what smoking for 50 years costs? Ten quid a day... that'd pay for my house.
Vaping is certainly one of more, if not the most, effective ways to give up or cut down smoking, we are fortunate that to date our authorities haven't fallen for the moral panic about vaping that has happened in some states and have appreciated the dangers of the precautionary principle.
My costs are at most £150 per annum.
The way to quit smoking is to stop going into the shop going “20 fags please.” Everything else is habit and excuses.<br /><br />
im not sure exactly what your point is, but that’s the sort of thing my ex-smoker in laws say, and then they extend it to heroin etc too. They quit* so others can too. Smoking is in part a habit and in part an addiction; it may be easier to break one than the other. It’s widely recognised that simply telling people to stop something whether it’s addiction or habit is not an effective way to achieve it. Vapes typically don’t address the addiction (and *may* actually make it worse) but substitute the habit, for a similar but less harmful one. Vapes could be a good way to get off your nicotine addiction (and join the throngs of judgemental pricks!) but that will take the will power - and perhaps a recognition of why you smoke, which might need some tough inner reflection.
*after about 20 years and several attempts - at a time when they had good motivation to do it and “life was good”.
I'm sure there are other threads that I've commented on, but this was the only recent'ish one that came up in a search
Just noticed something in the car. I'm struggling to give up the vapes even though I can tell they aren't doing good things to me.
The new car has an air quality monitor and purification system. It only lets particles less than 2.5 microns in from the outside.
1st pic is after driving for a while with purification on.
2nd pic is sat waiting for the Mrs in a shop with the engine running (hence the high exterior reading). Check out the interior reading after a couple of puffs on a lowish power vape (not a cloud machine)
I'm going to risk sounding like a patronising **** saying this but I hope it's not taken that way. About cessation. Vaping is relatively less dangerous but that's perhaps where the risk is - it's less important to give up as it's not as deadly but it's equally addictive and we smoke to avoid the horrible temper and anxiety or nerves that withdrawal creates, that's all.
I don't generally talk about it as it feels like it undermines my self-image of being a fit cyclist but I used to smoke. I'd got out of cycling for a while as a partying teenager and ended up smoking well into my 20s, a few a day, up to 10 a day on a weekend if I was at the pub. One day I just wondered why I did it, I was back into riding my bike which meant so much more to me yet I carried on smoking, and I'd seen what it had done to family members.
Anyway. For me the hard stop was the way to do it, I wanted to prove that I could beat the nagging bastard addiction that it is. I did have some nicotine gums briefly, like 1 pack, and nytols helped me sleep in the first couple of weeks but there was a definite end point to the cigs, no cutting down and kidding myself. I think that's the way to go. Just ****ing do it. Hard stop. Deal with the withdrawal as a challenge because you can beat it. Every day that you deal with the nagging in your head and the bad temper is a crappy experience that you'll have had for nothing if you re-start. It is hard, for sure. But the nagging fades and after only a few weeks you'll be free of it. In hindsight it was an experience that made me more confident in some areas of life overall because I knew I could set my mind to something and stay on track. I could be me more honest with myself when I thought about what committing to something meant. More than just a health benefit. "If you call it you gotta do it" - BMX rules.
Like I said, not wanting to sound patronising and apparently there's little as annoying as a preachy ex-smoker. Just saying this like at a smoker's anonymous circle, in case it helps someone with a way to beat the addiction.
1st pic is after driving for a while with purification on.
2nd pic is sat waiting for the Mrs in a shop with the engine running (hence the high exterior reading). Check out the interior reading after a couple of puffs on a lowish power vape (not a cloud machine)
Run the test again, without the vape bit. That should show if opening the door had any effect on internal air quality,and also sitting with the engine running.
.
So sit with the engine running but not the doors being opened, and also sit with the engine running after opening the door for approximately the same amount of time the wifie had it open.
EDIT: Im a little confused as to how that exterior reading works. Pic 1 implies that the outside air is clean, when we know it is not.
Run the test again, without the vape bit. That should show if opening the door had any effect on internal air quality,and also sitting with the engine running.
.
So sit with the engine running but not the doors being opened, and also sit with the engine running after opening the door for approximately the same amount of time the wifie had it open.
EDIT: Im a little confused as to how that exterior reading works. Pic 1 implies that the outside air is clean, when we know it is not
Don't read too much into the pics. They were taken to show the molecule content of the vape, not an example of exterior air quality. Does the same when it's showing clean air outside. Bear in mind I'm in a semi rural area, so the air isn't bad. Usually shows between 3 and 20 when moving. The interior will stay at around 2 normally. Vaping, it's in the 100's
2nd pic is sat waiting for the Mrs in a shop with the engine running (hence the high exterior reading). Check out the interior reading after a couple of puffs on a lowish power vape (not a cloud machine)
I don't think vaping produces particulates, your car's air monitor is detecting microscopic droplets of vape to get that inside reading. These don't have the tissue penetration or persistence of particulates.
That concentration might be undesirable, particularly to somebody ingesting it passively but it's not the same thing.
I don’t think vaping produces particulates, your car’s air monitor is detecting microscopic droplets of vape to get that inside reading. These don’t have the tissue penetration or persistence of particulates.
That concentration might be undesirable, particularly to somebody ingesting it passively but it’s not the same thing
Fair do's 👍
of course it does. The term “vape” is a complete misnomer. It’s an aerosol.I don’t think vaping produces particulates
Erm, they are clearly not an aerosol
I'm no expert, but a quick flick through some science journals would suggest that vaping very much DOES produce particulates....and the power setting on a vape can affect their size.
I don’t think vaping produces particulates
of course it does. The term “vape” is a complete misnomer. It’s an aerosol.
I think you're right, I worded that a bit carelessly. I was meaning to draw a distinction between solids and liquids. Having done some more reading around it though (thanks @Tom-B) it looks a lot more complicated than I'd first thought.
I really don't have a dog in this fight but having looked at it a bit more I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.
Full disclosure - after a couple of decades of smoking I gave up 27 years ago and still believe that a cup of black coffee with a Marlboro Red is the finest breakfast known to mankind.
still believe that a cup of black coffee with a Marlboro Red is the finest breakfast known to mankind.
cor, amen to that. (Quit smoking 7 years ago, quit coffee this year)
Well done TJ
TJ i agree that nicotine is physically addictive.
I stopped about 30 years ago, I was smoking around 30 -40 a day.
Used the gum, which tasted foul back in the day. I really saw behind the curtain when I started enjoying the flavour, your brain tricking you in getting more of the "good stuff".
However, if you are a heroin addict or an alcoholic, if you simply stop altogether, then you would be putting your life at risk. Which simply isn't true with nicotine. Feel like shit, yes but not any serious physical harm.
However, if you are a heroin addict or an alcoholic, if you simply stop altogether, then you would be putting your life at risk
Alcohol yes. Heroin no. I know ex heroin addicts who said it was easier to give up than cigarettes and heroin withdrawal is not life threatening - alcohol and benzos are
I was 20+ a day for around 12 years. Went out one day on my bike to Clent, couldn't keep up with a mate, threw my fags in the bin at the top of the hill and haven't smoked since. This was 20 years ago.
I guess it's different for different people, but I had no physical withdrawal symptoms and stopping was easy. I found it much harder to kick the speed after a few years of putting a quarter away every day.
I still believe that a cup of black coffee with a Marlboro Red is the finest breakfast known to mankind.
@johnners - I packed in 8 or 9 years ago and that’s the one I still crave. Getting up, walking downstairs into the kitchen, coffee machine on, large Americano, then open the back door and light up a B&H gold
Breakfast of champions!
Oh… and well done Uncle Jezza
I guess it’s different for different people, but I had no physical withdrawal symptoms and stopping was easy.
It was much the same for me, physically it was no problem for me, breaking the habit of doing it in social situations was by far the hardest part. It wasn't helped any by the fact that much as I always thought it was a bit minging, I really enjoyed smoking cigarettes. Some people can have the odd one for old times sake or whatever, I've never even had one in the past 27 years because I just know I'd still like it.
Well done anyone who's managed to give up, and for those of you still trying, good luck and keep trying, as many times as it takes!