I asked my one friend, who was a smoking cessation program coordinator. She took all the classes and was certified and said what can I do, how can you help me. She said sign up and I’ll take you through the whole thing.
The smoking cessation program worked because she was always there when I needed to talk to her.
It was what I needed at the time. I needed somebody to help me. I needed somebody to hold my hand. I needed to argue with somebody. I needed to be watched by somebody, to be guided by somebody, and that was the best thing… that was the best way for me to quit smoking.
First of all I got on the patch, and that was really good. That helped me a lot. And then I had to work on my habits, because there were certain times of the day that I wanted a cigarette, every time I picked up a cup of coffee, or after I ate, or if I was standing outside socializing with someone, I needed to keep my hands busy.
I drank a lot of water, I started walking again, I signed up for the gym, I got a personal trainer, I ate healthy.
I smell good, I feel good, everything tastes better, you know, I’m living.
If you can beat cigarettes, you can beat gaining weight, you can beat anything.
My name is Angie and I have been smoke-free for one and a half years.
GABRIELA
We both had talked about it for awhile, like “we need to quit, we need to quit.” And finally, you know, the day came, it’s like, the day came, and it was time and you were like “let’s do this.” And I was like, “well, baby, you know what? I want to quit too and you know we gotta do it together cause that’s the only way we’re gonna actually succeed.”
TOM
We could only do it together.
We threw away the ashtrays. I mean actually threw them out. We had quite a collection. We told our friends they could no longer smoke in our house.
GABRIELA
No smoking in the house.
TOM
We became those people. But it was a lot better. And for like three months I had lollipops in my mouth every day. I was really self-conscious about it at first, but not anymore. It’s very strange to see a grown man with lollipops, but you know, well, that guy’s quitting smoking.
GABRIELA
Tom would have withdrawals that were pretty clear to me. His face would kind of get tough and you’d be like “uh-oh, he needs a cigarette.” So that’s when I would be a little more gentle and always offer some candy. I’d be like “hey do you need some lollipops? Hey, you know, do you want to go for a walk?” Get out of the space you’re in.
I thought I wasn’t addicted, you know, I thought I was “I’m okay, I can quit anytime.” And I realized that that is not true. I mean it has been very hard. Even for someone who smoked six cigarettes a day, it’s very tough.
TOM
Oh, you can absolutely do it. I mean if I can do it anyone can, that’s for sure.
GABRIELA
That’s true. And it’s all about finding someone to support you. You definitely need a support system. Because you know it’s really not easy and you have to be able to say “I’m having a tough time today and just know that.” You know it’s just enough to be able to say it. You need that other person. It’s very helpful.
My name is Gabriela. I have been smoke-free for about four months and two weeks.
TOM
My name is Tom and I’ve been smoke-free for the same, four months, two weeks.
The first couple weeks are so hard because it’s a habit. Whether you want to admit it or not, it’s a habit, and you tie it to so many different things. It’s a struggle every day, but it gets easier every day. With family and friends helping you, it’s something that you can overcome.
At work, when I was alone, my wife wasn’t around to “monitor” me. She’d call me more, because she knew that we would go on breaks, we’d go downstairs and we’d smoke a cigarette or two. Because it gets real stressful at work, just like it does for most people. People would smoke for stress. But what I realize is I’m a lot more stress-free without the cigarette.
Not too tired to go to the park with my kids. We’d play soccer, play baseball. My son, he’s in t-ball, teaching him how to try to throw it straight. There’s a lot of running involved and before I would get real tired. Actually, I would be too lazy just to get up and go.
Now my son says, “come on dad, let’s go to the park. Let’s go and play dad.”
You got to replace the urges to smoke. Putting something in your mouth… You can chew gum, you can chew candy. Drinking more liquids in the car, obviously, for those smokers who smoke when they’re driving.
Water and exercise helps because you’re active. Being more active, just keeping yourself more occupied, other than just sitting around smoking a cigarette, obviously, are the best ways to quit.
I don’t mind telling people how to quit and what they can try to do. And to be there for people, that’s the most import thing. You can’t do it on your own, and that’s what I found out the hard way.
Since I quit smoking, I’m happy and full of energy. I actually have the time and energy to do things with my family, and that is the most important thing to me.
My name is Terry and I have been smoke free for nine months.
I drank a lot of water, a lot of water. A lot of exercise, I exercised before, but now I exercise even more so.
Actually, my girlfriend and I also quit together. We quit together, we quit the same day. We both were heavy smokers and we both quit together. So that was helpful, too, having somebody else that was going through the same thing as me.
What helped me to sleep a lot in the beginning was chamomile tea. I drank a lot of chamomile tea. It calmed me. No coffee.
There are times that I still crave a cigarette. I’m not going to lie; there are times that I crave it. If I see somebody else with it, sometimes I crave it. But in general, I’m feeling a lot better. I sleep better. I taste food. I’m actually a lot calmer. I thought that cigarettes took away my stress, but, if anything, they made me more stressed.
I’m Justin, I’ve been smoke-free for over four months, and I feel terrific.
It was a pretty drastic lifestyle change, you know. So, it was the running. It was actually eating better, because somehow in the back of my head, this is a weird thing, but I guess that I would think that “oh if I smoke a cigarette it’ll burn some calories” or it’ll increase my metabolism. Yeah, that was a little crazy. And, so when I quit that, I was like “oh no I’m totally going to gain weight like it’s going to be really bad, so I’m going to have to offset this, and I’m going to have to eat healthy.”
I’m very much a goal oriented person. So that as long as I know that something is coming up in like May 2006, I like to work towards that. And just recognizing that, as long as there is a larger vision, that every day that I wanted to smoke or have that cigarette, I would stop myself.
It is good to sort of set a date, whether, maybe it’s not necessarily the day that you decide to quit, like ” November 15th it’s going to be this,” but more, for me, I’ll always know my good friend’s birthday as the day that I did quit. That I, you know, had my last cigarette.
My name is Christine and I’ve been smoke-free for two and a half years, and I feel pretty great about being able to say that.
The day I decided the final time that I am going to quit and this is it, I didn’t let anything stop me. I knew I couldn’t just cold turkey stop; I was smoking over a pack a day at that time. So I couldn’t do it cold turkey, so I knew about the patch. I said, “I’m going to try this.” I went out the same day, got the patch and very painfully went through the ten weeks or twelve weeks, whatever it was at that time.
I decided at that point to also try to change some other habits. Went to the gym regularly. I was careful about what I ate, because it didn’t make sense to work out on one side and then eat unhealthily on the other side.
I drank a lot more water, but, again, I don’t know if that was just because of the patch and trying to do that or just my more healthy lifestyle. In terms of working out, I had a bottle with me during the day also.
My wife definitely preferred it, in terms of the fact that I wasn’t smoking. She was very happy for me because she knew that I’d tried a few times before that and I had failed. So she was thrilled for me.
It was actually good because I stopped smoking and we had our son shortly after that. The timing worked out also, so maybe it was meant to be.
I’m Nikhil and I haven’t smoked for 17 months.
I picked a date that I was going to do it and I did it. It was a struggle, but I did it.
Right then I had one cigarette left in my pack. I said,”I’m going to smoke this cigarette and tomorrow, when I get up, I’m not going to smoke any more cigarettes.”
So the next morning I got up, and I had no more cigarettes. I didn’t want to talk on the phone. I didn’t want to do anything that I had to do because I was so used to smoking. I had my hands going, you know, being really cool and comfortable while I was having a conversation on the phone. My husband kept saying to me, “You can’t stop talking on the phone” because he couldn’t understand it was a process.
I tried the popcorn and… candy seemed to be the only thing that did it. Candy was my answer. I had to have something in my mouth.
I went through different things that happened to me by stopping, but I was determined that I had to do it, had to. I quit something that was bad for me and I’m proud of that.
You can quit smoking, it is not impossible.
My name is Etta and I have been smoke-free for four years.
BOB
When I retired, I was home and I could smoke any time I wanted to smoke. My smoking started to increase. My wife was concerned about my health. I’m in a gym all the time, but I was still smoking.
She pretty much stopped because that was the only way I was going to stop. I couldn’t stop if she was still smoking, so she did it for me.
LARRAINE
I smoked less than he did, I wound up being the one to say, “No cigarettes, come on, have a cake, have a cup of coffee.”
BOB
It’s like you wake up in the morning, you say, “You know what, I’m going to stop smoking.” It’s not that easy because obviously I could see the change in my body, where my body was craving it. So it was more than just a habit of having something in my hands or in my mouth.
What I did, I picked up the pace on going to the gym, with the exercise, with the walking and then back to the running.
LARRAINE
I found it a little bit easier. Maybe because I didn’t smoke three packs a day, the way he did, but I still smoked. I found it a little bit easier anyway because I loved fruit. There was always fruit in the house. I liked more nourishing things. I’d eat nuts, fruit, just vegetables, and things like that. I’d just keep putting things like that in my mouth.
We went to the gym together. We always made ourselves wake up in the morning early, and go to the gym together.
BOB
I think it becomes easier for couples, because you lean on one another, and it’s like anything else. If you’re doing it together, you have a partner in this war.
LARRAINE
I’m Larraine.
BOB
I’m Bob.
LARRAINE AND BOB
And we are smoke-free for four years.
EBENEZER
I think different things work for different people. I think—in general, I think exercise helps a lot of people.
AURORA
Gum, gum. I—I picked a brand, a sugar-free brand that I decided to stick with the entire run of my quitting.
ANGIE
I learned how to knit. I did meditation. I read a lot. I kept myself busy. I tried to replace all those bad habits, replaced them with something good.
ETTA
I picked a date that I was going to do it, and I did it…with a struggle. But I did it.
NATURI
I anticipated times when I would have a problem. Like if I was going to go out on a Friday night, I would anticipate myself drinking a beer and feeling all, you know, and not—not going outside to smoke. I would see myself not doing that or saying, “No,” if somebody offered me.
ILSA
I gave myself incentives, and maybe it wasn’t too positive, but if I went a week positively without touching a cigarette, I was—I would get my manicure.
ANDY
The exercise helped. Taking care of the oral fixation helped with the drinking water, and some candy, and gum, and things like that, so you have something to occupy yourself with, and also, I guess, the water helps to fill you up, so I felt full. A lot of people say they gain weight. I didn’t. I didn’t gain weight from quitting.
BRAD
I did yoga, visual relaxation, which actually helped the most.
CAROLE
We found this medication. For me, it really made it easy for me. For him, he had a harder time because he was a heavier smoker.
GUY
Found an inhaler actually helpful. It’s basically—it’s a little—so I drive about 45 minutes commuting, so I had to replace the—the hand motion.
AMIR
When the sensation hit me to smoke a cigarette, I started substituting the cigarette with candy, actually peppermint balls.
JOHN P
The patch, the gum, and sheer mental tenacity.
JUSTIN
What helped me to sleep a lot in the beginning is chamomile tea. I drank a lot of chamomile tea. It calmed me. No coffee. I’m actually a lot calmer, you know. I thought that cigarettes took away my stress, but, if anything, they made me more stressed.
BOB
I picked up the pace on going to the gym with the exercise, with the walking and then back to the running.
ANDY
There’s a lot of different ways you could quit smoking, but it’s not going to work unless you’re committed, and I think that was—that was really the most important part of why I was successful this time.
MICHAEL
Cravings pass. They feel painful momentarily, but you change your surroundings, you do something else, you call somebody, and it goes away and soon you’re not thinking of smoking again.
BEN
Just tell yourself you can do it, and whatever you need to occupy your hands, keep your mouth going, Get that mint, get that gum, get anything you have, anything you need to chew, get it. It will work.
LESLIE
And it is hard, but it can be done I can honestly say that.
ETTA
It is not impossible. You can do it.
MATEI
It’s not easy, but people do it every day. People stop smoking every day.
CHRISTIAN
Stopping smoking is certainly achievable. Your life would be turned upside down in a very positive way. Your health will get better, your relationships will get better, and you’ll feel better.
ILSA
New beginning. New start. New life. New everything.
ANGIE
You know, if you can beat cigarettes, you can beat gaining weight, you can beat anything...
AURORA
It’s a big decision and it’s a deal that you really have to make with yourself. You really have to decide definitively that you want to quit.
NATURI
Smoking is such an impulse behavior, that I think that if you stop on an impulse you’re operating on the same level that gave you the problem in the beginning. Figure out why you smoke. Like watch yourself when you smoke, write it down like is it stress, is it exhaustion, is it anger management, and figure out alternatives to dealing with those problems. You have to exercise and drink water, and plan on the appetite being a little bit of a problem.
CHRISTINE
It is good to sort of set a date, whether, maybe it’s not necessarily the day that you decide to quit like “November 15th it’s gonna be this,” but more, for me it’s like I’ll always know my good friend’s birthday as the day that I did quit. That I, you know, had my last cigarette.
JUSTIN
Exercise, drink lots of water, use a cinnamon stick to put something in your mouth so you’re not always eating so you won’t gain a tremendous amount of weight.
KELLIE
It has to be a decision that you make on your own and it has to be something that you want to do, because you can’t even really do it for anybody else, like, that can be an inspiration but it’s like ultimately like when you’re by yourself and no one else is around, you have to make the commitment and say “I’m doing this for me, I’m gonna be honest with myself and I’m gonna do it because I want to.”
MARK
Each period that you’re able to go without smoking, pay yourself five dollars, put five dollars inside a--a coffee can and continue paying yourself. At the end of the month take that money out and you say to yourself “okay I have smoke-free clothes, I have a smoke-free household, I live in a smoke-free environment,” take this money, whatever how much it is that you accumulate and buy something that makes you feel good.
CARLOS
You have all these products out there, I mean, they are easy to get, just go to a drugstore and try it. You have the chewing gum, you have the patches, you have all this little step by step, the three weeks, then two weeks, then one -
CRISTINA
But the most important thing is the willing, and to have someone to lean on, that’s the most powerful thing. Thank you, Carlos!