I smoked cigarettes for over 40 years.
I made a couple of half hearted attempts to quit.
I tried substituting a pipe for cigarettes and quickly learned that I could still smoke just as many cigarettes in addition to smoking the pipe, so I gave up the pipe.
I tried chewing tobacco but that just didn't work for me at all, so I gave up chewing tobacco.
I once tried the patch and seemed to be making some progress for a little while but soon found that I could smoke just as many cigarettes as ever, even while wearing the patch, so I gave up the patch.
Eventually I gave up quitting smoking.
When I had my heart attack the doctor and everyone else at the hospital insisted that I would have to quit smoking. I was not allowed to smoke in my room (Intensive Care no less) and was not allowed to leave the room to smoke, I really wanted a cigarette and I told them that I understood what they were saying and why but did not think that quitting smoking was likely for me.
Not having a cigarette for 3 days while I was in the hospital seemed tougher than getting the two stints. All my cigarettes were in the company truck and it was still at my office because I had been transported to the hospital from there. When my wife picked me up the first stop was the drug store to fill all my new prescriptions, I also got a box of Marlboro. Told my wife that I would only smoke 2 or 3 a day. I think I actually smoked about 5 the first day, twice that many the next and had to send my wife to the store for more cigarettes on the 3rd day. When I woke up the next morning I only had about half of that second pack left. I made it last until late that night. When I finished that last cigarette, I snuffed it out really well, threw the ash tray in the trash can and announced to my wife that I had just had
my last cigarette.
There were 6 boxes of Marlboro left in the carton under the seat of the company truck. I hauled those 120 cigarettes around for several months, fully expecting to need them when I found it impossible to give them up for good. After a few months I finally gave them away and for the first time in many years I was out of cigarettes and not on my way to the store for more.
Patches and other "methods" of quitting never worked for me. What did work was telling my wife that I was done with smoking. Call it honor, pride, or country bumpkin ways, whatever, it's a matter of not going back on my word which has enabled me not to have so much as a single drag off of a cigarette in about 5 years now. Not to shabby and quitting didn't cost me a cent.
