• jeremyparker
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    1 year ago

    I feel like the generally accepted wisdom on the issue is that quitting smoking is hard. Whichever one works for you is the best one.

    For me, “harm reduction” was just a convenient excuse for not really trying… And, I eventually decided, again, this is my experience, not advice, but, like, eventually, every method of quitting will eventually be cold turkey, so I just went for it.

    Personally I found the nicotine addiction is overstated. I never had any trouble making it through 8 hours of sleep without a cigarette, so my claim that I needed one every hour or two kinda seemed like bullshit. Also, if I was so hung up on nicotine addiction - nicotine starts declining in your system almost immediately, so, if I was smoking for 5 minutes of every hour, I was spending 55 minutes of every hour in nicotine withdrawal. That’s… dumb. That’s a dumb way to live.

    (I was also a heroin addict from when I was a teenager until my late 20s - and - at least heroin lasts a while. Nicotine is a garbage drug.)

    In the end, smoking is a habit - and there’s not much in the way of shortcuts to changing your habits - and it’s especially hard when your enjoy it. There are better techniques and worse techniques, but no cure.

    For me, when me and my wife added tiny little people to the world, I realized that they would prefer me to be alive, and I didn’t want to make them sad, so I quit.