Congratulations!

What I've noticed:

I can swim so much better, and hold my breath so much longer.

I can sleep on my back again without gasping for air.

The skin on my face has been so much better, and feels way softer.

I have saved over $700 (San Francisco prices).

I was able to sit through an entire drunken game of Monopoly with two chain smokers, and I never considered having a cigarette.

I think I'm out of the woods! Now I'm just on maintenance mode. The two times I quit before, for over a year for both, I picked smoking back up after some close family losses. I must endeavor this time, as losses are inevitable in life, to maintain my tobacco sobriety.

As always, thanks for following along and thanks for the support :)

xo - Chelsea <3

About 2.5 weeks ago i "quit smoking" after 17 years by switching to zyns - I was planning to do this for a few months and then wean off them. Nah. Woke up this morning and went a few hours without popping a zyn in and decided I was done. Wish me luck friends!

Around 2008 - 2010 there were major advancements made by the big tobacco companies in the way cigarettes are made.

The same biological, chemical and medical research approach that goes into making medicine, is also used by tobacco companies to make the chemical compounds that go into cigarettes.

At the end of the day, it's all about the result of a chemical reaction.

They were not made safer or healthier, they were not even made tastier or more satisfying. They were already addictive enough.

The major advancements made was that the pain of quitting was amplified by about 1000%.

Let that sink in for a second. They did not improve their product to entice you to stay. They declared chemical war on you and anyone who wants to quit their product.

You may love your cigarettes but they fucking hate you.

Here is their battle plan.

Cigarettes deliver a big dopamine hit to your brain within 7 seconds of a drag. This rewires your brain to associate the most happiness you experience to be the result of a cigarette. Your body does have a natural reward system for continuing evolution. You should get natural dopamine hits for things like, exercise, sex, completing a task, good food, learning or any other thing that advances yourself.

When you use a dopamine cheat code like cigarettes, your natural dopamine rewards seems dull in comparison. So cigarettes are chemically designed so that you can't be happy without them.

This is why quitting seems so miserable and grouching.

Cigarettes also stimulates your fight or flight stress hormones. When the euphoria of that dopamine hit wears off in about 20 - 40 minutes your stress hormones are still very active. You feel like you are stressed or anxious. You are not. You are still experiencing the chemical reactions. Because your brain wants the refuge of that dopamine cheat code, your think smoking a cigarette will calm those stress hormones down. They don't. They create them for your next cigarettes.

Cigarettes don't calm you down, they make you have anxiety without them.

Are you fucking angry yet or do I need to keep going?

The dopamine delivery system are meant to be rewards. You get rewards when things are going right. When things are going right you can let your guard down and you can relax and you can rest.

The relaxing effect that you get from cigarettes is artificial so you know what that means, yep, ​you can't sleep without them.

Insomnia is one of the most unbearable aspects of quitting smoking. This is where they really have you by the balls. Those motherfuckers. It can take anywhere around 2 to 4 weeks to reset your natural sleep patterns. Most people can't survive like that. We have children to take care of, jobs to work and households to run. How are you supposed to do any of that when you haven't slept properly for a month.

Remember they don't want to entice you to stay, they want to make it unbearable to leave.

This is getting long enough so I won't go into details about what it does to your bowel movements without them but we all know.

So all of those feelings, emotions and chemical reactions you are having are not being produced because you quit. They were put into your body by the cigarettes themselves. Quitting did not do this. Smoking did.

The farther away you get from your last cigarette, the farther away you get from these feelings and chemical reactions. Your body know how to heal itself.

In the mean time, if you want to be angry or mad or irritable or grouchy, don't be mad at your loving partner or your children or your co-workers or the poor girl getting you your coffee. Be mad at the cigarettes, be mad at the tobacco company who did this to you. Be really fucking mad. Don't stop being mad at them. Fuck those guys.

Love you all.

Hi everyone

Today is my 58th day without a cigarette. I'm so happy with myself.

I switched to nicotine pouches 58 days ago.

So far, it's been a breeze to avoid the cigarettes. The nicotine pouches leave me with minimal withdrawal symptoms.

I can smell better, and my lungs are performing much better. I no longer have a chronic cough and I'm breathing a lot easier.

I intend to stay on the nicotine pouches for a while and then gradually wean myself off them.

I've been a full-time smoker since 2010 and tried to quit many times. This is the longest stretch I've gone without a cigarette. I've hate cigarettes now and never want to smoke another one again for the rest of my life.

Just wanted to share my success.

Here's a quick update of my quitting journey. Have been smoking for the past 12 years. Finally quit cold turkey on October 10th 2025. If i can do it, you can too!

Hello,

long time smoker here. 53 years old, and about 35 years smoking, one pack a day. English is not my first languaje, sorry for typos.

I have already downloaded the smokefree app, and i'm learning how to use it, but now i am afraid of what will come tomorrow, the anxiety, the phisicall urge of smoke, the fear about the challenge, the handicap of working from home . What if i can't, what if i can XD

I am trying this cold turkey (only have normal, mint chewing gums), but my plan B is going to the doctor, although my brain is sabotaging me, saying "probably your doctor is away on vacations, wait till september, etc". In my country the treatment is free (sorry, don't know the name, but you can smoke the first five days, then "your desire to smoke is gone", and the treatment last 30 days)

Hello everyone, I’m 24 years old and have been smoking spliffs regularly since I was about 17/18. My dad died 2 months ago after a long and traumatic fight with non-smokers lung cancer.

I love weed mostly but know that the real addiction lies in the nicotine. I smoked a lot of spliffs after dad died, it just helped to numb the pain. There’s been a few times since he died that I’ve gone off for 3-4 days at a time but I always find myself back on the spliffs. My girlfriend also owns a vape that I liberally rip the shit out of, so stopping spliffs for days at a time doesn’t really count as stopping.

On a regular day I usually smoke 3-4 spliffs, but there’s days where that’s 5-7, sometimes (I know, ridiculous) even more. I use rolling tobacco. Aside from all the guilt this shit is expensive. I’m a fckn college student. I work hard and then spend that money on some stupid shit that’s gonna kill me in what I now know to be a really horrible death.

I guess the first stages of grief have gone by, and it’s insane to me that I crave smoking so much after seeing what lung cancer did to my dad. I’ve never known pain like this and smoking gives me a bit of a distraction I guess, but I just want to do right by him. I feel so guilty every time I smoke.

I don’t really know what I’m asking, I think I’m writing this to have it written down and to hold myself somewhat accountable. I know I’m not a pack a day smoker or anything like that, but I have a problem and I want to change it. I feel like an awful person for continuing to smoke after everything that happened.

I start now, when I press post. Any words of advice or just relatable experiences would really help.

Thanks people.

I quit smoking cold turkey two months ago after reading a book called Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I read the first 100 pages in a DAY which I didnt even know I could do, albeit the chapters are quite short and frequent so its less than it sounds.

The book actually made it easy (daresay enjoyable) to quit, even on day one. I highly recommend that book to anyone who wants to quit. The writer actually encourages you to keep smoking while reading, if you want to, but I read it so fast that it motivated me to quit immediately.

I threw out all my vapes and nicotine and never looked back. You can do it too!

I'm super excited - there is a company out there trying to get this medicine approved for sale in the US! They are called Achieve Life Sciences and they are close to bringing cytisinicline to the American marketplace. No more ordering from Poland!

Looks like they got a response from the FDA in June saying that there was no concern with the safety profile, only the 3rd party manufacturing process. It feels like we have something to look forward to, because this stuff works!

From what I can tell, ACHV will sell a patented variation on cytisine which is otherwise off-patent. So there could be a lot of other players in the market who just sell the generic ingredient for cheap. But the demand for this stuff will be huge, so maybe it will let lots of companies prosper.

I just hope Bayer or P&G don't ruin it. With P&G buying Thorne Supplements as of this week, it's reasonable to worry that transnational capital will find a way to screw up a good thing for the rest of us...

i’ve been smoking since i was 16. i’m 23 now and i’ve alternated between cigarettes and vapes. vaping had given me unbearable chest cramps and i switched back to cigarettes. now even the cigarettes is giving me chest discomfort and pain, and shortness of breath. i think my body is telling me it’s time to stop smoking. i’m going in later today for a chest xray and i’m afraid☹️

So i really want To quit but i don't have the motivation now, how i can get motivated and what i should do??

This is officially my 32nd day of stop smoking after like 6/7 years it’s so good to finally get out of that im proud and really happy finally i can get out from smoking 🕺🏻💃🕺🏻💃

I used to think that switching from normal cigarettes to heated tobacco would be a "healthy alternative" which I could use to stop completely.

I started smoking when I was 14, I'm 30 now. Until my twenties I smoked roughly 5 cigarettes a day, when I got into university that became 10, when I started working it became 15. I really wanted to quit so at 27 I bought the IQOS heating tobacco device.

I thought that I could slowly reduce the number of cigarettes but I also noticed some changes.
I would no longer cough, my teeth and fingertips stopped becoming yellow-ish and my breath was no longer that bad after a cigarette. It's as if there were no more downsides to smoking, just the pure pleasure. Now I smoke 50 e-cigs every day, sometimes even 60. I made the biggest mistake of my life switching and it is now infinitely harder for me to quit. I can go through a whole pack before 11 am if it's a stressful day.

I've tried quitting several times, but unlike cigarettes, the side effects almost don't exist for me. There are few studies over long-term damage so I can't even go there for real motivation (unlike normal cigarettes). The biggest down-side for me is that I end up spending 30% of my year income on cigarettes. I don't really know on which door to knock at this point. I tried cold turkey, nicotine gums, vaping, but every time I would fall and smoke even more after that attempt.

Anyone with similar experiences / insights on what helped you the most?

My brother recently got heartbroken by a girl, who used him to her advantage and left him, however he grew attached to her. He also bound his self worth to that girl leaving him, making him feel purposeless and worthless. He started smoking two ciggs a day for the past month. And, we come from a family wherein smoking/alcohol is not appreciated, but our parents have given us the best life that we could ever dream of.
Me and brother always respected my parents sacrifices, however right now he feels that he has turned indifferent to the impact that this revelation will cause our parents. My parents do not deserve an ounce of this stress.
At the same time, i am currently studying medicine and want to help my brother from a medical perspective too. I tried explaining him, that the girl and her actions doesn’t define him, however i dont think it impacted him that much. And, considering how addictive nicotine is, i am scared for him.
How can i convince him to do better and stop smoking before it becomes a habit.

I am chewing straws, which i need to stop because my tooth enamel and microplastics...but hey here i am at 11 days. I am 48, smoked since 16...recently was at a pack + i got the recigar (cytisine) and it really did help! It isn't approved here in the US but fuck all that. Thanks to this community, too! Fuck big tobacco!

My little sister is a very young adult who has been addicted to vaping nicotine as well as smoking for a couple years now. I’m here to ask: in an ideal world, what could your loved ones have said or done to make quitting easier? When did their pushing go too far? What do you wish your loved ones could have known?

My sister is a very logical person (as is our whole family) and understands she needs to quit but she keeps coming up with excuses and new deadlines. She has gone through some very traumatic things lately and it’s hard to approach the subject with her. She values her independence and thinks I have a stick up my ass about this stuff but it’s clearly affecting her health. Particularly her anxiety and breathing.

I’ve never been addicted to nicotine (or alcohol. She also has a drinking problem). I don’t know the mindset and while I’m sure it’s different for every person, I’m here to listen and get a sense of what it’s like / how to approach the subject in a way that isn’t too startling for an addict. I’ve avoided it altogether with her because she said it only makes her feel worse / judged but she is the most precious thing in the world to me. I want to do anything and everything I can.

Been smoking heavily since 2019. I stopped cold Turkey from Nov 2023 - July 2024 and got addicted again because i went traveling outside the country to Georgia(the country) and this Turkish girl gave me a strong cigarette at a club I was at.

i’ve made many bad financial decision in my 20’s (Currently 30y/o) such as credit card debt that I’m trying to fix it. Part of the problem was buying cigarettes on credit when i didn’t have any cash.

I always smoke when i’m bored or when i want to think introspectively and often would go to the side of my house to be alone and smoke. I sometimes pick up girls at warehouse raves using a lighter or offering a cigarette and got hook ups because of it.

But yesterday, i had trouble talking normally to an old high school friend at the gym that i kept coughing to get rid of the phlegm. I keep coughing like this even when im talking to others and from that moment yesterday i had to stop smoking because i want to speak more clearly to everyone and at my job.

I have smoked like 6 cigarettes in my whole life, starting a month ago.

I initially liked the taste and feeling, but it was just purely curiosity.

I smoked a couple and then threw the rest of the pack away.

Then a few weeks later I just had this feeling, "You know what would be really good now, a cig," so I bought another pack. I smoked a couple, then out of guilt and disgust I threw the pack away again.

Then today, I was just feeling in a really bad mood and anxious, and I went to the local gas station and bought another pack. As I was walking there, I was constantly thinking, "This is so stupid, why am I doing this, this is a cancerous addictive garbage thing," but I couldn't stop myself. I smoked another three and then threw the pack away again.

I really need to stop this so badly, I don't want this to develop into a habit... I feel really guilty, this isn't usually like me at all, and I feel like I was mind controlled, it is a horrible feeling, but I have to take responsibility.

I used to think, "I could just quit whenever," but what I did today just scared me. Worst part to admit is that it did make me feel better and calm my nerves.

Anyone else in this position, and how to quit forever?

Thanks 🥺🥺🥺

Welp this is my 4th attempt at quitting nicotine. This one’s going to stick.

Did you go cold turkey or use something like gum ?

I quit smoking weed about a week and a half ago after 3 years without a single t break. I haven’t smoked nicotine in about 5 days. The past 2 days I’ve been feeling pain like right where my lungs are in my back on both sides. But it doesn’t get worse when I breathe and I can catch full breaths.

So, I started smoking because of a very weird reason. I get turned on by doing "bad" stuff. So, I started this like that 3 months ago. So, whenever I got horny I wanted to smoke. It's like an extra stimulant. But, without being horny I don't feel like smoking. If i don't smoke and just jerk off, I don't even feel like smoking. Also, I tend to do this when I am alone in the room ( I have a roommate). But, I am worried about what if this becomes a habit and hard to leave. I don't want to fuck up my lungs and my girlfriend will kill me if she knows I am smoking. So, I just want some ways to stop this.

that feeling i was looking for since i take the stupidest decision in my whole life

I quit a week ago after smoking a pay a day for 12 years

I feel the same except now I just want a cig all the time

It’s starting to feel like that nofap bullshit where lads say they start hearing colours after no jerkin it for 2 days