Any people on here who are now ex-smokers got any advice on how to stop?

Given the coronavirus situation I feel like my smoking is putting me into a more vulnerable category than I need to be in and it feels like an ideal time to pack it in generally anyway.

I have tried the Allen Carr book before a few years back. It did work a treat for a while. I went about 2 months without smoking and was pretty convinced I had stopped completely, but then a bereavement in the family ended up giving me the excuse to start back up again. I've read it again since and it didn't have the desired effect, barely went a day before I bought another pack.

So yeah if anyone has any advice/tips to help me stop I'd very much like to hear them.

I think it’s actually been said that smokers are less likely to get it I am sure I read somewhere that they are trialing nicotine patches as treatment!!

Sorry for your loss and good luck though.

Wife was on 20 a day until she read the Allen Carr book. It worked for her and worked you before. 5 years on she still has the book in her bedside drawer.

I think you should try it again. Worked for my wife.

When I stopped the first time it lasted about 4 years. I approached it like a challenge and even had a countdown to the day and hour I was going to pack it in. I ditched the remaining ciggies when the hour arrived.
Like you, circumstances led me to start again. Then I stopped again 10 years later and it's lasted 25 years.
The second time, the gf and I agreed to cut down. That lasted about a day and I was sick of looking at my watch to see when the next fag was due. So I just said sod it and stopped altogether. TicTacs and Polo mints helped during moments of weakness and temptation. Full withdrawal (when the hankering stopped) took about 2 weeks in both cases.

It's in France. It's a long shot though, because as every scientist knows, "correlation does not imply causation".
Maybe they catch it less because non-smokers steer clear of them.

would love to stop myself if only to join some who give a false cough when you light up.

I stopped about 15 years ago cold turkey. Vape wasn’t really that common back then. I just decided one day to do it and stuck with it. The cravings subsided after about 10 days I recall and it gradually got easier day by day from there. It coincided with the smoking ban in pubs which was a massive help as I probably smoked a cigarette with every pint when you could smoke in bars. One of my greatest accomplishments and my life Improved in so many ways as a result. Don’t really know how that’s gonna help but all I’d say is persevere until you crack it

I used to be a maniac with cigars. Like a lot of people who change from tabs to cigars because you don’t inhale and they are ‘healthier’. I ended up completely addicted. 1 particular 2 week offshore trip i smoked 270. This was when you could buy hamlet from the platform shop duty free for 50p for 5. I developed a problem in the roof of my mouth while offshore. To cut a long story short had to go to Newcastle for examination where they removed the nasty from my mouth but this had to be sent for testing. I sat on the train to come back down to Hartlepool and stuck a hamlet in my mouth which was full of stitches and suddenly thought ‘what the f..k am i doing’. Never smoked, never fancied smoking since. its a very sobering thought when you realise and the penny drops how you might have ended up. Plus when we started a family the kids wouldn’t have to breathe in the shite that I would have forcing on them. 36 years now and still never fancied a smoke. Never reduce your intake, just shut it off completely

Similar to Ray52 I just decided to stop on the spot and went cold turkey. I was at work halfway through a rollie when the phone went. It was me mam telling me that me gran had got advanced lung cancer.

I went back to spark the rollie back up and I asked meself what the fuck I was doing. That's the last tab I ever smoked.

Cold turkey was horrible, didn't sleep properly for ages, and it was like having a really bad flu. Coughed all sorts of shit up for a week or so, but when that stopped getting the sense of taste and smell back was amazing.

One morning in January 1989 I left the house via the kitchen door on the way to my car to go to work. I couldn't stop coughing and felt dizzy. I leaned on the wall next to the bin. Cough, cough, cough. Eventually the coughing stopped and I went to my pocket to get a fag out, which was my usual first fag of the day. The fags were Benson and Hedges and there were 16 in the packet. I was just about to take one out when the thought hit me that I was killing myself. I lifted the bin lid and chucked the packet in.
I didn't have one all day although I was offered them. The worst craving was after eating something.
That night I went for a pint at the cricket club. I was stood at the corner of the bar when one of my mates walked in. He ordered his pint and whilst he was waiting he pulled out his fags and offered me one. I told him what had happened and that I was finished with the bloody things. Right he said, we'll do this together and put his packet on the bar and shouted that anybody that wanted them could have them.
Neither of us have smoked since. It wasn't easy and if he had just carried on smoking I probably would have given in. Every time we met after that we used to greet each other with quips about not giving in and it worked. I reckon we both were lucky to be able to gee each other along.
You have to turn it into a battle which you are determined not to lose.
Good luck.

Some good stuff in here, thanks for that everyone.

With the Allen Carr book I feel like it's technique is about pulling a mental trick over you, which is clearly effective for a lot of people, including me if only for a short while. I just can't see how reading it again would have the same effect.

Sort of surprised to see no one mention anything about substitutes like nicotine patches and the like. It's not really something I've had that much faith in anyway so I guess that backs it up.

Seems like cold turkey and determination is the way to go.

E-Cigarettes have helped some people I know but the medical consensus on how safe they are seems to change often if I recall correctly. They aren't too expensive but some of the cheapo ones can be faulty.

I feel lucky in the fact I've never smoked or had the desire to, by the time I legally could the prices were already sickening.

I'll tell you one thing that struck me in 2007, when I visited Britain about a month or so after the pub smoking ban was enacted (in France they were all still chugging away until the last possible date).

When I walked in to my first pub, I thought there's a rabbit off here, something unusual's going on.
It took, me a couple of minutes to work out what it was: the pub didn't stink.

Quite a few pubs really stank of piss and BO after the ban without smoke to mask it, not just scruffy ones. I can't imagine going anywhere full of smoke now.

My experience is similar to most, I'd stepped outside to have a fag one day and when I came back inside my first ever migraine started and the same thing happened again a couple of days later. I put 2 and 2 together and stopped, I loaded up on every and any nicotine aid for about 10 days which worked for me.

Anything that purports to be science and uses such an unscientific expression as "four times less" (think about it) deserves first place in the bin.

Clue: what is one times less?

When smokers do get this disease they can get it bad so stop, you won’t regret it.

I would echo some of the comments above, I messed around for years before one trigger incident made me say “fuck it” and I never had another one, and that was about 1997.

It’s tough but after a while the cravings simply go and you feel so much fitter.

I,ve never smoked, I fucking loathe it so I,m no expert on advice but how about putting two jars side by side, fill one with shite and the other with the money you would spend on fags and take a look at each one and ask yourself which is better for me.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t advocating it, I was just posting the article that PJ was referring to.

it should be easier to pack in fags once all these restrictions are over. you cannot smoke indoors anywhere but your own house so cuts down your ability to do it. used to find upstairs on buses worse than anywhere including pubs at rush hour.