lots of times.

Yeah, this has been my 3rd or 4th time quitting ;)

Depends how you measure success. I quit four years ago and haven't smoked since, but you can never get complacent.

I quit for 8 years, and I don't really remember how I started again. I smoke maybe one or two a day now if I'm not out drinking, more if I am. What's that book everyone always says to get?

I've never had a problem stopping.

I'm one of those rare folks who don't really get addicted to the nicotine. I can smoke ten cigarettes every day for a week, and then not smoke at all for days if I forget/get too busy. I truly am an occassional smoker. Right now I'm in a smokey phase, which means I'm smoking (on average) about three a day. But next month I could decide I don't want to smoke at all, and won't take a drag for months...

I smoked from 15 to about 29. The attempts to quit were all fairly pathetic, but all it really took was for me to get very sick and that somehow made a shift. I occasionally smoke a cigar but can't even be slightly downwind of a cigarette. Weird, I know.

Oh, and I quit three years ago. Never want to go back and physically can't.

I quit about 8 years ago and it was the best thing I've ever done for myself. I could never smoke a cigarette again. And I smoked 2 1/2 packs a day. Yes...two and a half packs. And no one liked smoking more than I did.

Good luck with the quitting thing - you can do it. Try to remember all the reasons you quit in the first place and realize that those reasons still apply. I found it really helpful to write down all the negatives and carry the paper around with me and read it.

Wow, iconomy, I never pictured you as a smoker for some reason.

I quit the latest time about 10 months, 4 days, 3 hours and 15 seconds ago. Not that I am counting or anything. My previous attempt lasted just over a year.

I would start again in a heartbeat, but I feel so much better and I know that I have a good chance of being around longer for my kids. I will always be a smoker, though, in kind of the same way that alcoholics are always alcoholics (rarely does a day go by that I don't feel like a cigarette at some stage, even if only for an instant). I have found that I can smoke when I travel for work without feeling the need to go back to it at home and that seems to help in some strange way.

I found that nicotine patches worked for me - no physical cravings whatsoever. I also put on 15kg, which is not so good, but that is now slowly coming off. I think that they do prolong the quitting though and would probably try without them if I had to do it again - as long as I had the support because I would never be able to do it alone.

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere: I quit four years ago and what finally worked for me was the patch and being brutally honest about how much I wanted a cigarette and how good it would taste and feel. For some reason, that worked a lot better than the usual advice of thinking about how much better you feel, how great food tastes, how fluffier kittens will be,etc. Concentrate on the craving and work through it, that's my advice.

God I want a cigarette.

Me too.

"What's your advice/experience?" My advice?

Stop! Now!

No cigs for 5 years now - never ever thought I would say that, I was a true junkie. Kept quitting and starting again, always started back slow the way you are. But then I went to the famous mad Russian in Brookline MA, thought he was a complete quack, walked out of the session thinking that it had been a waste of $65, but have never had so much as one cigarette since. Amazingly, I don't even miss it.

I successfully never started. I had lots of good (negative) examples in my family that turned me off to smoke at an early age.

And yes, those corny American Lung Association ads had an affect on me in the 60s when I was a wee tot.

I doused myself with a bucket of water. I was still smoking for a few minutes afterwards, but with the flames out it eventually dissipated.

Quitting was always easy for me. And I wouldn't start again until I didn't feel any need for one....

Quit once by smoking all the Chesterfield King Size I could for as long as I could. Finally became clear I could keep smoking or buy a small gun and blow my brains out with the same end result so I gave it up for several years.

What finally worked for me was just telling myself "No!" just "No!" when ever I thought about sliding back into it.

I smoked my first when I was 14 in the summer - within weeks it was a regular habit. By late fall/that winter I found my brand (Pall Mall plain) and stuck with them until this feb. That's 19 years of smoking!

Anyway, I had good reason to quit now (it's not just me in here!) so I went cold turkey. I noticed about two months ago while watching a film where everyone kept smoking that hey - wow - I totally didn't even think of smoking myself. It took a while, the "i'm-used-to-smoking-in-this-situ-craving" took two, almost three months, the mental craving went away soon after that.

To keep me from sliding back in, I decided to rewarding myself with nice teeth. A new front one (I have a busted front tooth) and soon a whitening treatment. :)

I never tried quitting before. I used to take "summers off" whenever I was at my grandparents house as they could smell a fag a mile away, and my mother didn't know that I smoked until I was 20, so whenever I travelled with her I'd not smoke. But I never tried to quit.

cali - the book is by Jan Geurtz, I have no idea what it is called in English. My SO read it but he has only managed to cut down on smoking, he's not quit (yet).

I think I admire you all.
In all honesty, I've never actually tried to stop.

10 years ago I stayed at my brother's place in the country and reduced my packet a day intake to just 2 or 3, while I was painting his house.

I stayed there a few days and at the end of it, I just sort of went: "Hmm...that was interesting", and went back to the former habit.

I've always wanted some sort of selflimiting but hospital requiring, modest disease. Just sick enough to have to stay in bed but not altogether dangerous (Yossarian had it down right).

It's funny hearing the polarity between Specklet and dg for instance. I'm definitely down at iconomy/dg's end of the addiction spectrum. Specklet, you be careful, hear?! It's insidious for some.

But I've had a couple of girlfriends who were part-timers. Amazing. I could never understand why they bothered at all.

*grumble* I suppose I should put the 'serious thinking about it' back on the front burner. I will remember to make a note to discuss arranging a time to debate the date when a serious thought on the issue will be formed for ratification and revision by the Board.

peacay, if you want a quitting buddy, let me know. Like dabitch, I started when I was 13-14. By the time I was 16 I was smoking a pack+ a day--and have kept up that pace for 15 years.

For the past couple of months I've been working up to trying to quit again. Folks I know in my parents generation are beginning to die from the fucking things, and I'm getting ever closer to settling down and having kids--I'd like to make it beyond my 60s, into retirement, and to know my grandkids before I keel over.

I live in North Carolina--cigarette nirvana. Most of my friends smoke. It's not going to be easy.

Anyhow, if you want a quitting buddy, peacay (and anyone else), let me know. Quitting feels a little to me like a friend is dying (I know how stupid that sounds), so I could use the company. You can cuss me out when you're feeling withdrawl rages.

*lights another Marlboro*

The odd cigarette I smoke every several months, its smell, taste, accompanying head rush, jitters, and eventual morning nausea and vomiting, affirms my having quit. I'll never smoke two packs a day again.

But sometimes, when I'm just the right amount of drunk, the air outside the bar is cool, and the beautiful girl in whose eyes I am lost says, "Let's go get some fresh air. Wanna smoke?" -- sometimes it's worth the price.

Quit 3 years ago after 20 years of smoking. I have never felt better and happier.

I used to try and quit by saying "after this pack" but it never worked. One day I was standing outside in the rain smoking while I had a slight cold. And I had an out of body experience and realised I looked really stupid and sad. I crushed the pack of cigarettes in my hand and never turned back.

I quit about 4 and a half years ago - I decided I needed to quit before I turned 25, so I did. I found it was really helpful to make a long-range plan like that. I plan to take up smoking again when I'm 80

A phys. ed. teacher once told my class how he quit smoking over the summer. He promised his wife and kids he would quit that summer, and he really had almost quit, but once every week or two he would just feel he HAD to have cigarette, so he would sneak out to the back of his house and have one. He thought his wife didn't know because she never said anything about it. Then one day he came oh-so-nonchalantly back into the house chewing half a pack of Clorets, and she said, "Jim, you look like the world's biggest idiot out there. Who do you think you're kidding."

That's when he quit.

i'm like the specklet
and i enjoy being able to occassionally indulge
and i would stop if i had a fitting reason
and i just don't feel like one right now

bah. I always feel like having a cigarette. I could smoke all day every day if I let myself. I quit because I felt physically ill constantly. My heart would hurt, my lungs would hurt, and I disgusted myself.I would dig through my ashtrays looking for a butt long enough to smoke, or if there were none I would empty out a few cigarette butts and roll one from the tobacco.

One summer two friends of mine were rooming together (Evan and Jack [names thinly disguised]). Both were totally bumming out for the season.
The one time during the summer that Evan had a job (begging for money for Greenpeace/NYPIRG), he came home looking forward to the moment he would empty his ashtray and roll the butts into a cigarette.

When he go in, he found that Jack had smoked all of em already, and there was just a pile of cigarette butts with no tobacco left in em.
That's the sort of nasty behavior that I'm trying to stay away from.

But I frikkin love cigarettes! If I can control myself to the point that I can smoke a cigarette once in awhile without immediately regressing, I would be so happy. But I don't know if I have the self-control for that. I've lost girlfriends over smoking (one possible the other actual). I've almost lost jobs over smoking. I'm not, however, willing to lose my life for it.
However, I really really really miss my Marlboro Reds.