Quitting Smoking: Methods, Relapses, and Costs

Quitting Smoking: Methods, Relapses, and Costs

Can you quit smoking without wanting to? No. The answer is so obvious it's almost offensive, yet those who have failed twice try again. What's less clear is what accompanies that decision: a book, a pill, a vaporizer, or simply enduring. The stories in the thread paint a precise map of methods, relapses, and costs.

Willpower, the Only Undisputed Requirement

Here there is consensus, and that's rare. Those who have quit agree on one thing: you have to want it, and truly want it. "I should quit" or "someday" won't cut it; it requires a sudden start on a bad day. One case sums it up: someone who hasn't smoked for over three years recalls being halfway through a cold with a persistent cough when they said that's it for tobacco and that was that. Another has gone six years without smoking after nearly two packs a day.

There's more variety in the 'how'. There's the self-help book route, which one participant read while smoking until the last page and which was enough to quit a pack and a half a day. There's setting a deadline a month away, to let the mind adjust. And there's telling yourself that the anxiety only lasts fifteen seconds, every half hour, until one day it's gone.

Champix, Patches, and Bupropion: The Pharmacological Route

Substitutes are divisive. Nicotine patches and gum have supporters and skeptics who claim they're useless, that the only effective way is to quit cold turkey. The most frequently mentioned name is Champix: a treatment costing around €120 which, according to those who have tried it, makes cigarettes impossible to tolerate after two weeks. The real challenge is different: not relapsing after a few months.

Bupropion appears as an alternative; one participant describes nightmares and sleep deprivation. And some have used benzodiazepines, always with a prescription, to manage the anxiety of the first few days.

The E-cigarette Breaks Consensus

Vaping appears in several accounts. Its proponents describe lowering nicotine levels in the liquid—from 12 to 2 and then to zero—processes taking nine months to quit entirely, and initial costs of around €75. Smokers for 25 or 30 years claim it was the only system that curbed cravings almost effortlessly; one of them calculates it cost him about 1% of what quitting cold turkey would have.

There's a counterpoint too: one participant recalls that cigarettes were also considered healthy fifty years ago and that heroin was sold for coughs a century ago.

The Cost of Smoking: A Thread Calculation

According to a calculation circulating in the thread, a daily pack at €4.50 amounts to €135 per month and about €1,520 per year. Some have turned that saving into a alucinación. And one participant argues that, if tobacco is almost entirely taxes, quitting also means stopping the financing through taxes of those who sell and tax it.

Side Effects: Weight Gain, Insomnia, and Bad Mood

Quitting doesn't come free. Weight gain is the most cited toll: some gained nearly 20 kg and stabilized at ten over, although others lose weight because they go for 8 km walks daily. There's the insomniac, the one who swaps tobacco for two beers daily, and the one who confesses that on day 19, no one could stand him. Abstinence affects even strangers on the street.

So, the foolproof method doesn't exist. Some quit by reading, some by vaping, some with pills, and some because a scare made it easy. And there will always be someone ready to explain how it's done while lighting up their next cigarette.