Congratulations!

And I don’t intend to buy more. I am not sure if I am going to regret this.

To be honest, I don't even think about cigarettes anymore. I spent 3 years getting to this point. It is not the first time I've stayed smoke-free for 3 months.

I failed countless times.

Sometimes I stopped smoking for an hour. Sometimes for a month. The longest has been 6 months so far.

But this time I feel completely free. I can spend time with people who smoke and just feel sorry for them, without any desire to smoke.

I can drink alcohol, party, and have fun without smoking. I can travel, drive, wake up with no cigarettes in my mind.

So if you think you will always think about it and miss it, well, I don't miss it, so you can either. Just keep going ❤️

I'm a 26 year old male, been smoking a pack or so since I was 16. I just switched to nicotine replacement tools a month ago (I use a variety, gum, spray, lozenge) and picked up some snus in case I have a few drinks and really crave a cigarette. I quit cigarettes using a vape a year ago, but my lungs didn't feel any better so I went back to cigs.

I still crave nicotine (and use it), but the way my body feels is simply incredible.

I never realized how terrible cigarettes made me feel. I used to think that I was just not made for running. Now it's really no problem at all. It feels like my lung capacity literally doubled.

So to anyone struggling with it, don't be hesitant to take up NRT or smokeless tobacco or anything that will help you stop inhaling smoke. It really is worth it. I dont know if this fits the subreddit rules, as there is still nicotine usage, but I feel like the health benefits of SIMPLY NOT INHALING SMOKE is amazing. I really had no idea.

Im so happy about this. I still want a cigarette sometimes, but I know I can manage.
Proudest moment: drinking without smoking.

Quitting is about trying harder not to fail in the same way next time. There are a finite reasons to smoke, if you eliminate them all you will decide to be smoke free.

Failing is what the process of quitting feels like. It took me lots of failed attempts to quit. The difference between failing forever and failing to quit is you have to be honest with yourself about why you failed, learn from it and fail again in a different way, eventually you will run out of ways to fail and you will be smoke free.

🧠 read on if you want more brain dump 🧠

What this actually feels like: you will get a sense of wanting to quit but also wanting to smoke and at some point in the journey if you do the above you will decide you dont smoke anymore, its easy after that. I mean that, its easy once the decision is made. At this point I started saying "I don't smoke" instead of "im quitting" or " im trying not to smoke".

Unfortunately you cant really reverse engineer this in my experience. Changing your language will help with social pressures particularly, but it probably wont help you decide. I dont know why you cant make the decision at any time, but there is a point where it feels like you are making the decision but you dont get to choose when that is. This cant be forced, it takes time, but it is definitely a skill that improves with practice.

I have done the same thing now with alcohol, and it took a lot less time to reach the decision point and saying "i dont drink". I wanted to quit but I hadn't made the decision so I kept failing and learning until the decision came. In May this year I have been sober for two years.

Quitting isnt about trying harder to not smoke, all your doing here is thinking more about smoking - like trying to force yourself to sleep makes you feel more awake. Its about learning why you fail each time and solving those problems; these might be habits, cravings, triggers, etc. If you arent objective and honest with yourself it wont work. When you want to quit you are in conflict because you also like something about smoking and dont want to stop, you can be both, that the difficulty of being human we hold conflicting thoughts. Failing and figuring out what these things are and fixing or replacing them with something less destructive eliminates the things you think you like abut smoking and leaves more space for "i dont want to smoke, its bad for me", when that voice gets loud enough its easy to decide to quit because youre getting very little out of smoking thats positive.

If you want to do your own research this method is apparently called ambivelance resolution, something I found out later. This advice is retrospective, it took me years to quit because I did it on my own. If you are in the know perhaps you can speed up the process.

Good luck on figuring out how to decide you dont smoke.

i’ve been smoke-free for 3 weeks now, but this week has been a struggle. cravings hit me out of nowhere, and stress made it worse. i’m honestly surprised at how much i still think about it. but i keep reminding myself why i quit in the first place, and that helps a bit. if you're feeling the same, just know you’re not alone. let's keep pushing through together!

hi everyone, i’m going through big life changes and the natural progression of things is that i finally quit smoking.
i started smoking when i was around 19 and i’m now 28, it only got heavy in the last 5 years or so and i’d never considered quitting before. i really don’t want to hit the 10 year mark so it has to stop now.
my problem is, i started smoking because cigarettes taste disgusting and it quells hunger for a bit, which is the same reason i’ve been unable to stop since i started.
i’ve been reducing since the start of 2026 but it gets bad still when i’m especially hungry. i know it’s a pretty common phenomenon that people who stop smoking tend to overeat because of the oral fixation (which might be solved with something like adult chew toys or gum?) and i’m terrified it might happen to me.
another reason why i haven’t managed to quit is because having a cigarette gives me the feeling of having a break in between things (freelancer working from home), which is a feeling i have no idea how to recreate.
i’ll be joining a gym in september as part of the bigger changes i’m implementing in my life, which means i’ll be out of the house without cigarettes for a couple hours several days a week (i don’t bring them with me unless i’m out clubbing or eating out), which is going to help, surely.
if anyone has any experience/suggestions on how to avoid overeating when quitting i’d be forever grateful, especially if anyone has managed to maintain/lose weight while quitting!

Dec 6th 2025! That's the day I put down cigarettes for good. I had quit twice before for 4 months but came back. This time was different. I was a week away from a stroke. A brain hemorrhage. One week! That's how close I came, after 32 years, to leaving everything. My wife of 3 decades. My 4 children. A good job. House. Everything anyone could hope for. For an addiction that was killing me. Robbing my energy. Destroying my lungs, heart, arteries. Everything I need.

Brain bleeds are based on hole size and pressure. A few Marlboros that morning, and who knows. It would not be good. More pressure equals more bleed and more brain damage. Yet here I am, back to work. Still struggling with energy and numbness. But I am HERE for my family. To all those wondering if it is to late, no! I am 55 and almost waited a few days too long. Come join us!!! It is worth it! You can do this! For you, those you love, and those that love you. The clock is ticking. Time to get your life back.

32 F here. Been smoking and drinking since I was 11. I was sober for a year before and during pregnancy. As soon as I had my baby I smoked and drank because I felt trapped the whole time. Worst mistake ever. He’s now 14 months and I’ve been struggling the whole time. Well, I’ve started again yesterday and even stayed strong when my partner didn’t. Usually I would ween off with THC gummies but this time I’m going completely sober. No THC. No tobacco. No alcohol. Last night my sleep wasn’t that bad and hopefully the day goes alright today. I guess I am here looking for encouragement because I am tired of announcing my sobriety to my close ones just to break it. I’m serious this time. My life depends on it (high bp). I’ve got to do this for me and my son.

I’ve smoked 1600-1700 cigarettes a month for about 13 years straight (50-60 cigarettes a day, Export A Medium, Regular Size) I can’t seem to get past 2 and a 1/2 hours without a cigarette. I’ve had 50+ quit attempts. I smoke the minute I wake up, in bed, I have ashtrays in each room of my house. My friends and family all smoke heavily as well. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t smoke. I need to quit because I can’t perform sexually and cannot workout the way I want to. I have stage 2 hypertension and very poor circulation. I am 24 and started smoking at the age of 11.

This is based on my personal experience.

An average cigarette delivers roughly 1–2 mg of absorbed nicotine to your body. Meanwhile, many gas station disposable vapes contain 30 mg/mL or even 50 mg/mL nicotine e-liquid. While you won't absorb all of that at once, it's very easy to consume much more nicotine throughout the day than you would from cigarettes because you can take a puff whenever you want.

Nicotine itself isn't the primary cause of cancer, but it is highly addictive. It reinforces the habit and makes it much harder to quit.
One of the first things you notice after quitting cigarettes is nicotine withdrawal. You feel lethargic, have trouble concentrating, become irritable, and constantly crave another cigarette.

If your plan is to switch to disposable vapes and eventually quit nicotine altogether, be aware that the withdrawal can be even tougher if you've increased your nicotine intake through vaping. That was my experience.
If you're going to vape as a stepping stone to quitting, I'd recommend using a refillable device with e-liquid that lets you choose and gradually reduce your nicotine strength over time. That gives you much more control over your nicotine intake.

Personally, I'd stay away from high-nicotine gas station disposables if your end goal is to quit nicotine completely.

I've been smoking on-and-off (mainly on) since I was 13...I'm a 36M now and it's time. For my health and my finances of nothing else.

I stopped drinking with the incredible support of the stopdrinking sub so looking forward to being here with you guys.

Day 1, wish me luck!

I will not smoke with you today!

At work, I'd get up to take a smoke break and no one would bat an eye at me. But now that I'm trying to quit, if I take a break in which I also don't do anything productive, but instead of smoking I just go watch the street for 5 minutes in order to still get that mental reset, I can see everyone giving me a weird look.

Smoke breaks are somehow fine, but regular breaks are a sign of me slacking off?

I (31y/o m) yelled at my dad (81y/o I live with him, but I've only lived with him for the past year, before that Ihad little to no relationshipto him) today.

This is written by voice to text. Mostly. Done if it is just me being bad at typing. It's unedited and raw. I just need to put it somewhere.

Yelled yelled at my dad i did. He yelled loud first. Then I did.

I texted him recently and said that I wanted to talk more.

He tried to wiggle his way out of it. I started to quit smoking, just using gum and Zyns and exercise. I'm struggling. I need lots of support.

He told me he was ready to chat. He got the original letter that he sent me proposing the idea for me to come live with him. He asked me how I experienced receiving that letter. I told him: "the letter was given to ginger. Ginger held onto it for a couple of weeks before I was able to get it from her when she told me that she had a letter from dad. I didn't care.I thought to myself.Well, she's either gonna give it to me.Eventually when she sees me, or she's not the next time I saw her.She didn't have it.She had it at her house.She said, can you come to my house to come?Get it I said no. The next time I saw ginger, she had it. She gave me a big yellow envelope and I i opened it, and saw that there was a packet of something or other in it.There was lots of papers among the papers.I flipped through and found a five dollar bill.I took the five dollar bill and I put it in my pocket.And then I put the papers away, not having read them back into the envelope, and I put the envelope somewhere and forgot about it. Basically just discarded."

I told my dad also that I eventually read the papers, " when I read the papers, I thought of this idea that you proposed, and I thought there's no way. So this guy hasn't really been there for me, my whole life. And then all of a sudden, i'm just gonna go move my whole life to go to him. To go back to school? I don't think so."

Then I told him, " i talked to my mom about it and she said, well, I think you should just go and I thought about it for a long time. I started talking to you more dad. I started texting you more and you told me a lot of your thoughts and you propose that I go visit you in october for a couple of days and get to know you and olga, a little bit better.And see how I feel."

I told him, " after that trip coming home from that trip?I also thought it's out of the question.I'm not going to move to maryland my dad doesn't even understand that he abused my mom.I have eight other accounts that say that he did."

He told me, "I wasn't expecting that kind of answer"

I told him, "more negative than you were expecting?"

He said, "majorly" and then started yelling, getting real mad and pitiful. Saying that his wife and family left him. He was abandoned. Not the other way around. He thinks that he did what was right and his wife was wrong to leave him. He said he was never abusive. Abuse leaves bruises. (This whole dialog was at volume level 10 with a very angry tone and littered with fuck and shit and other profanities that suggested that he's pissed)

I scream at him, making sure to be twice as loud as him and twice as angry as him, "well when you yell, it has an effect on other people" slamming my fists into the couch, " how do you think that I feel right now? If you have a wife and you are yelling, and she has asked you to stop. And tries to talk to you, and you yell, that is abuse.You are not listening to her. When you yell at someone, their heart rate goes up. Their breathing, they feel nervous. They feel unsafe, you are putting them in a position that they don't want to be in, and that over time is abuse."

He eventually admitted that maybe it is abuse. It took a long time tho. We talked a lot, yelled a lot more and got mad a lot more, for a long time.

It was amazing, sometimes scary. Definitely I wanted cigarettes, but I didn't. I chiewed nic gum.

If I go to sleep at 7:35, I think I can make it

What’s your greatest benefit from quitting smoking. Please share.

I don’t want to quit. I love smoking. Smoking has been my constant companion for 20 years. I know I have to quit, I’m getting older and I don’t want to get COPD or cancer, but I don’t fucking want to.

How do you motivate yourself to quit for health reasons when you just love smoking?

Today is day 3 for me, cold turkey! Why is this so hard? The anxiety is unreal and the dizziness is no joke!

I could use some support, or even a funny joke would help.

I've been nicotine free for two years. I stopped due to pregnancy and ever since then Ive been craving every day even though I know mentally, it's better for me to not. but the only reason I'm not smoking is because I don't want my daughter to smoke when she gets older. Every day it's like my body and mind are screaming to smoke. When does it stop, does it ever?

Edit for grammar

I messed up and I feel like I'm about to slip up. I don't want to... help!

I have quit smoking weed for 2 weeks today and I'm very proud of myself 😊

I'm 24 years old and I've been smoking about a pack of cigarettes a day for around 8.5 years.

Yesterday I tried my friend's IQOS for the first time. What surprised me was that it completely satisfied my nicotine cravings, and I didn't feel the need to light another cigarette afterward.

Since then, I've been researching IQOS, but I'm finding a lot of conflicting information.

I know it's not harmless, and I'm not looking for someone to tell me it's "safe." What I want to know is whether it's genuinely less harmful than cigarettes, or if that's mostly marketing.

My goal isn't to replace one habit with another forever. I'm considering IQOS as a harm-reduction tool and, hopefully, as a stepping stone toward quitting nicotine altogether. If it can make the transition away from cigarettes easier while exposing me to fewer harmful chemicals, that's something I'd seriously consider.

In my country, IQOS isn't officially sold, so I'd have to buy the device from abroad. The tobacco sticks are available through unofficial sellers, usually at around twice the price of regular cigarettes.

Honestly, the cost doesn't matter to me if switching would meaningfully reduce the harm compared to smoking cigarettes. I've seen people say that after switching they stopped waking up smelling like cigarettes, their morning cough disappeared, they woke up feeling more refreshed, and their overall quality of life improved. I don't know how much of that is real, so I'd like to hear from people with actual experience.

For those of you who have used IQOS:

• Is it actually less harmful than smoking cigarettes based on what we currently know?
• Did switching improve how you felt physically?
• Did it help you eventually quit cigarettes or nicotine, or did you end up using both?
• If you could go back, would you switch again?

Im 23 and currently on day 18.

I used to think quitting was one big decision. So far, it has felt more like making that same decision again every time a craving shows up.

Ive had 27 moments where I seriously wanted to smoke but didnt. The cravings still come, but they also pass. Seeing that progress and the estimated €258 saved makes this finally feel real.

I’m still early in the journey, but Im proud of making it this far. Im curious, what was the first situation you genuinely thought you couldnt handle without a cigarette, but eventually did?