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I posted the other day about smoking and I began thinking what can be posted here that could help smokers quit. So I thought maybe if we start a list of people who have quit, this might motivate others. This doesn’t have to be you, but can be others whom you know that have succeeded in quitting.
WIY – Let’s start with you. I remember you saying that you used to smoke. Tell us exactly how you managed to quit.
One easy way, start making weekly rounds at Memorial Hospital. that should do it.
whoa health, thanks for the mention. as bonkers as this will sound, after quitting i realized that the whole thing is blown way out of proportion. the key factor, i believe, is ones motivation to quit the smoking. i call it interested factor. if your quitting smoking cuz you know its unhealthy and your doc said youll die in 5 years, you’ll have a nearly inpossible time quitting. why? because YOU dont WANT to. you are told you need to. but darn, you really wanna keep smoking. so you will. but if you want to quit, for whatever reason you think is good enough ie- youre kallah will break off your engagement or your mother might kill herself, then you actually want to stop, and then you will. once you internalize this point, quitting becomes a joke. my book will be in stores next week. support!
Someone offered my husband $10,000.00 to quit smoking. So, guess what? HE DID! No iffs, ands or butts!
HaRav Avigdor Miller said that there is a very simple solution to the addiction of something. Let’s say that you usually smoke 10 cigs a day. Take a vow that if you smoke more than 9 today, you will donate $50 to a Jewish institution (yeshiva, kollel, etc.) that you don’t like (e.g., Lubavitcher, or whatever sect of Judaism that you are not affiliated with). Decrease the number of cigs you smoke every day, and before long you won’t be smoking!
I asked my doctor for help with it. The doctor gave me a prescription for Chantix. It’s a 12 week program but I only needed 1 month. I got down from a pack & a half to 2 or 3 a day. The Chantix made me very moody so I stopped it and bit my lip till I was able to stop the craving for those few. The Chantix really worked for me because it literally made me disgusted from pulling that smoke in to my body. It takes the whole “geshmak” out of the cigarette.
Here’s another thing: I had always known that smoking smells, but it was only after I stopped that I realized how really, really bad it is. I even apologized to my wife after I stopped, when I realized how bad it is. A few weeks ago I was in line at the bank. All of a sudden I get this whiff of something really nasty. I mean, please, this is a bank, not a shelter! I turn around and I see a friend of mine that just stepped into the bank, a smoker of course.
I’m not one of these guys who stops smoking and all of a sudden turns into a major anti-smoking nut. I know how geshmak it is to smoke, I know that if you need a cigarette and you don’t have one, you could jump through a plate glass window in desperation. But take a step back and smell yourself. Where ever you go, people say “There goes a smoker.” They smell it. Go to a shiva house where everybody is sitting in close quarters, you smell the place up. Go to a vort. As you approach the Ba’alei Simcha, people say, “There goes the smoker.” You come in to shul on Friday Night, YOU STILL SMELL!
Try, try hard to stop, you’ll feel so liberated, you’ll feel like a “man.” You’ll be able to start and complete a project at home or at work, in one sitting, without that cigarette break. You’ll be able to get into your car to drive to Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn, the Catskills, where ever, without that stop at the newsstand for smokes.
For me it’s been two years, and I can’t really see myself going back to it. I smoked for 25 years but I think I’m done, I just can’t picture myself in that whole smelly, disgusting picture.
Toi- u are absolutely right! I smoked for five years and quit because I wanted to honestly I was disgusted from it. That lasted five years. Then I went through a rough situation and started again smoking for a year now but I agree when u want to its easy, when something or someone is forcing u its really hard because u still crave and want a smoke.
Toi- u are absolutely right! I smoked for five years and quit because I wanted to honestly I was disgusted from it. That lasted five years. Then I went through a rough situation and started again smoking for a year now but I agree when u want to its easy, when something or someone is forcing u its really hard because u still crave and want a smoke. A great book btw to stop smoking is: “The easy way to stop smoking” written by Allen Carr
Toi:
Interesting that you gave that example because 2 of my brother’s kallahs would not proceed further in the dating process until they made an active attempt to quit. Thank god 10 years later they still have not picked up a cigarette.
It’s just so scary because what happens when the ‘external motivation’ disappears?
The mere thought that every puff is an infraction of a Chiyuv miDeoraisso of “veNishmartem Me’od leNafhoseichem” should be more than enough to deter any Yerei shomayim, since clearly it won’t take long to accumulate many Aveiros, given that each puff is a new & separate violation of this Mitzva Asseh.
ahavas_yisroel: i would START smoking if it meant i could get 10K to stop
well my friend married a smoker and the way she stopped him was simple she told him “if you want me to be a widow smoke full steam ahead”
and like magic-HE STOPPED
Cigarette. Definition: a roll of tobacco with a fire at one end and a fool at the other
Yatzmich: amazing story. You have something to be really, really proud of.
Rav Avigdor Miller’s idea is awesome also. I’m sure it would work, absolutely.
My husband was a heavy smoker and stopped after 40 years of smoking using the NYC quits program. He started phase one of the patches and did it beginning on a Monday and no patch on the first Shabbos. When he was up to Phase 2 the next Wednesday he decided not to put the patch on but have it with him just in case. The rest is history, he didn’t use the patch and has not smoked since then, now 4 1/2 years. What pushed him was that he developed a severe bronchitis and the doctor gave him inhalers. At night he coughed so hard that the neighbors commented on his coughing. When he coughed i told him he could use a good sucktioning, something done on people who are on vents and develop secretions in their longs which must be sort of vacumed out and is extremely uncomfortable. I kept on telling him that if he was Chas V’shalom sick, i as a wife will be at his side but if it was illness as result of smoking his friend in the nursing home business will care for him. After he stopped he realized why the children didn’t want to ride in his vehicle and had to get a new car. Someone close to us gave a large donation to a needy cause and matched the same for us, which my husband to gave for a needy chosson. In short, where there is a will there is a way. Smoking is an addiction equal to drugs and is horrible. It is also not fair to people around smokers who are affected to with smelling and getting sick to chas v’shalom.
P.S. At one point the doctor perscribed Chantix , at which time insurance did not cover cost. Yet, after reading the side effects and possible lifetime effects, i just dumped the whole batch of pills.
147 – And interestingly enough, people still do aveiros daily. Hmn, I guess we don’t have enough Yiras Shamayim. Oh wait, we’re humans, right? So that’s our life’s work! ok, thanks.
Toi – that is the essence of R’ Yisroel’s mussar – making things touch the “adam atzmo”.
Using vows as a way to break bad habits/aveiros on Yiddishkeit is something to be used extremely cautiously, and discouraged by most…um…Gedolim.
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