former smokers, do you ever have random moments months or years later where you just get textbook "cravings" symptoms?

yokonzo@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 181 points –

I'm so fucking irritable right now, every little thing is annoying me and my chest is tight, I keep clenching my teeth. I'm very familiar with these things, these are how my body is telling me "go smoke a ciggy"

Problem is, I haven't done that for a year and a half. I've had this happen before, sometimes years on into my quittings, its always random and it's always insufferable, like I'm a former psychonaut who accidentally cracked his spine 20 years later. Does this happen to anyone else out there? Any tips? I had a glass of wine but it didn't help take the edge off much

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This is an anxiety response, your body is coursing with cortisol, the stress hormone. These exercises should help. I find square breathing to be especially helpful, but everyone's different. https://www.choosingtherapy.com/anxiety-exercises/

Another thing to consider: nicotine accelerates caffeine metabolism. Therefore, if you are feeling irritable and have recently ingested caffeine (coffee, tea, energy drink, etc.) then you can expect a craving for the antidote.

Think of all those folks who used to hang out at coffee shops, smoking cigarets. Up on the cup of coffee, down on the smoke. Just riding the roller-coaster all day.

I haven't smoked in 10+ maybe 15+ years, can't really remember.

I still want a cigarette.

I'm three years in, still want to smoke.

Glad I don't, and the cravings from the first bit aren't as bad, but I still want to.

Yea I'm at least 10 years post quitting properly and I'd fucking kill for a ciggie right now.

Not gonna do it, because of all the many, many reasons that they are fucked up. But still.

I quit well over 15 years ago (after 10 years or so) and I only had cravings for maybe a year or two. After that, smelling smoke just grossed me out. The worst is that I frequently have dreams where I start smoking again and it feels/smells/tastes absolutely horrible and I have to explain to people why I decided to start again. Still a monkey on my back for sure, but at least when I am awake it is the furthest thing from my mind.

Try doing deep breaths. You get the relaxation of inhaling, but no toxic smoke. Avoid the vapes and alcohol. Drink water. Lots!

I quit 24 years ago. And although I don’t have cravings, I sometimes having smoking dreams. So much of it is about breathing to relax.

Also important to cut out caffeine if you are stopping nicotine. And understand that caffeine can be a trigger, nicotine accelerate caffeine metabolism (cuts the edge) which is why the coffee-drinking cigarette smoking trope exists. Caff and Nick are the best of friends.

Funnily enough I'm pretty addicted to caffeine. I'll get a headache when I miss my 11am or 1pm coffee. But I'm not getting addicted to smoking at all. The pack of tobacco I bought dried up before I could use more than half of it, and that's with me sharing.

I smoked for 20 years. I beat it by successively taking habits away. I quit twice for a year each time and fell back into it at the bar both times.

The first time I went back, I didn't smoke in the house. That was big but I really didn't want my house smelling like that. The second time I didn't smoke in the car... Also a big one.

Then I vaped and successively brought the levels down. Each time it was really hard but my body adjusted. At my last level (3mg), I had bought some 0 for whenever I wanted to take the plunge, and accidentally switched to it. It felt really light on nicotine, but it was only after 3 days that I realized. I decided that was it and kept vaping 0.

It was surprising how badly my body would react if I didn't get my fix. I knew there was no nicotine in there, but boy did I get irritable and jittery if I didn't get my hit. By this time, my first child had been born and I knew I'd have to call it. I was contemplating a date when one night she picked up my device and stuck it in her mouth like she'd seen me do. Threw it all away right then. That was about 7 years ago.

Yea, the smell of cigarette smoke is nice and I can still remember the feeling of that first one in the morning with a coffee. The worst I do now is an occasional cigar, but I make sure it's never repetitive or a lot.

Quit for 7 years. Didn't miss it for a second after the first week. Starting again was the worst mistake of my life. Hold fast. You'll regret it if you go back. Quitting a second time seems much harder.

I do, the longer it's been the shorter they are (almost 10 years now). My trigger is seeing someone, usually in a TV or movie, take that long, exaggerated drag.

Oooh. That's a big one. I'll be fine and suddenly halfway through a movie: "Smoke break?"

Quit coffin nails five years ago after 15 years. Maybe a couple times a month after work I think about how good a cigarette would be right now

Except maybe ten percent of those times I'll actually bum one from a coworker and it's never ever ever as good as I imagine it'll be in the moment. I bum them less and less because it keeps getting harder to pretend it'll be as good as it used to

So in essence I guess I actually quit pretty effectively overall

I did in the first 3 or so years, but now I don't have any cravings at all. I'm now 17 years on from quitting and it has gotten better over time.

I found spite a great tool for keeping emotional investment. The tobacco companies are all steeped in slavery, abuse, scientific fraud, and general indifference to the suffering of others. Those companies are trying very hard to get kids addicted, to insulate themselves from legal accountability, and to stop governments from phasing smoking out. They are evil if that word is going to mean anything and if I am going to be able to do anything about them it is withholding my business.

I quit smoking by switching to vape about 12 years ago. I had smoked a pack and a half of Marlboro reds a day for 30 years prior to that. After 30+ years of being hooked on the coffin nails I found a way out and I (and my family) are so grateful.

I still have my nicotine fix, obviously, but I am so much less a slave to it. It used to be that I could not imagine being without a box of Marlboros and a lighter if I was leaving the house. Now, I don't think twice about heading out for a few hours with no vape (nicotine) with me...it's just not that important.

I will probably always ingest nicotine in one form or another (vape, gum, patch), as I do caffeine. I no longer feel like I am controlled by it thanks to vaping.

Give alternatives a try.

Vapes actually turned out to be worse for me, something about having the freedom to do it just wherever really shot my nicotine dependance up. Definitely easier on my lungs but oof, glad they work well for you though

I struggle with this and it’s frustrating. That damn ease of fix adds a real detriment to my life in its own way - although I still think even casual smoking is worse.

I hope you can truly resist the temptation if that’s what you want! I am envious of that control.

Almost 3 years after quiting a heavy 26 years habit. I quit cold turkey.

Currently being forced to move having no income and no social circle and family is distant.

Super proud I haven't broken yet. I want one ALL THE DAMN TIME.

I use physical exercise to help me get through my cravings.

If a random internet stranger's comment means anything to you... keep it up dude!

I quit about ten years ago and maybe once a year I'll get a craving but overall, not really.

I'm one of those people who has never really stopped having cravings. It only gets bad when I'm really stressed but it is low key there 24/7.

Thankfully, it's only really a battle when I'm stressed.

Hey I just want to share,a thought I had about the nature of stress that has helped me reframe a lot in my life, maybe it'll help you or somebody else

We know scientifically that stress hormones speed up our aging. So stressing is literally life at 2x. If you're like me, and 95% of the rest of us, then you have to earn a paycheck/ ,have to sell your labor for finances. If you're like the 75% of us that's one missed paycheck, or one t-boning that you're 100% the victim for but still spend weeks in the hospital just to end up evicted but still like 5 years from any insurance payout (murica), and you're stressing your bills...does the stressing over a debt to a faceless, soulless corporation lower your interest rate? Will the stressing and mental berating you submit yourself too erase those overdraft fees? If you're stressing over these kind of 'faceless' things you're literally spending your life double time, but...they don't accept that kind of currency.

If anything, the time lost to stress is also time thats twice lost because you could've been working towards a quickfix if not a perm solution.

All I'm saying, is don't spend your hours on things that don't appreciate them. I will never get upset at a phone company or utility or whatever's behest and torture myself for them. They don't care about any of us, it's high time we stopped caring about them too.

Try it out. Refuse to stress for a few days. Does life fall apart then? The biological imperative of the day is to simply survive, if youve done that, you're already winning. Don't let the faceless steal your thunder. ✌️

Quit cold turkey in 2017 after 30 years of pack a day. More if drinking. Tried vaping, just ended up being a way to smoke more.Got a gnarly case of pneumonia and wadded up everything I had left for smoking and threw it all in the trash. No cravings anymore but I still dream about it.

I feel that, 2015 or so when I was about 21 I got a spontaneous pneumothorax (basically a popped lung) everyone has these weak spots on their lungs called blebs, but I had just the right mixture, being white, being tall, being skinny, being male, and being a smoker, to be high risk for those blebs getting too weak and rupturing. Literally happened 3 times before in a row due to complications and my dumb ass still went back to vaping a year or so later. Did stop smoking pot though, so that's something.

Sometimes but then I remember the taste and the craving vanishes.

Weird. I loved the taste. Even a decade after I quit for good, I still love the smell. I don't get the cravings at all though.

Alright so I quit vaping the Easy Way, and they explained to me that nicotine withdrawals are pretty much entirely psychological. It's the "I want a vape, I can't have one, AHHHHH!" feeling. Once you realize that you actually don't want a vape because it does absolutely nothing for you and is complete waste of time, money, and energy, you won't get irritable because you don't want to vape. The physical withdrawal symptom- there is just one- is just an empty hungry feeling, and it goes away entirely after about 72 hours.

On the contrary, i hate the smell way more than my have-never-smoked peers.

I quit cold-turkey ages ago, after a decade as a pack-a-day smoker.

I never missed cigarettes, never really craved them except when binge drinking. But i quit that too, mostly. By the time I quit, I absolutely hated the smell and taste, so that helped a lot. It caused me to just avoid places where I'd encounter lots of smokers. Bans in restaurants and bars helped a lot.

edit: one key being that when I quit, I didn't like smoking. I didn't want to be a smoker anymore. So I stopped thinking of myself as a smoker.

Agree. Quit twice, the 2nd time was real bad. Now I am a stereotypical hardcore ex smoker. Get away from me with that stuff.

You probably don't hate the smell more, nonsmokers have just learned to be polite about it.

Dated a smoker once. I love the man, but kissing him was like licking ashes. A major turn off. I never let on.

Right, my lived experience isnt valid because of your lived experience.

My grandfather quit smoking after 70 years (he started when he was 6) and lived another 30 years. Apparently he would dream about smoking till he died, and they never smelled nasty to him.

Yes - to the extent I no longer have Sunday roast dinner. Every time I'd just crave a cheeky smoke after a big ol satisfying meal. It's been several years and I know I'd end up coughing up a lung and it'd taste like shit but that fleeting thought doesn't care about that.. It's just the enshrined idea of a 'nice' smoke after a roast.

i often have cravings, especially when i'm angry or drinking beer, then i remembering myself how double hangover feels like and whole this stench

It gets less and less but will never go away. The frequency and intensity of craving diminish, but it can still sneak up on you.

I had one occasion where I spent some time in a smoky environment, and didn't smoke myself. Next day the cravings where back full blow, through secondary smoke.

So what I do now if I get cravings is think back to how long ago it's been since I've had them, is nice to feel those horrible clutches lose their grasp over you. It does take dedication and time though and you're never truly free of them.

I used to smoke a shit ton of pot and never smoked cigarettes. I did grow up in a home where 4 people smoked a pack a day inside.

Yeah I sometimes get cravings for pot even 9 years later

And for the first couple years after I moved out of that place I was craving cigarettes sometimes

I quit Easter Sunday, 1996. I don’t have any cravings when I’m awake, but I have dreams where I’m pulling a packet of cigarettes from my pocket, buying cigarettes, smoking, noticing that I only have a few left in my packet. Something’s going on subconsciously, not sure if it’s cravings or something else.

I have dreams like this too. In mine, I've always been coerced by friends to "just have 1" and then I do and I feel really guilty about it. Then I wake up feeling guilty for something I didn't even do. I'm glad it's only happening in my dreams!

I smoked daily for about ten years. I got off the cigarettes and smoked e-cigs (no one called it vaping, then) for another year or two, then quit cold turkey without much issue and only the occasional minor relapse thanks to my significant other continuing the habit for a few years after I quit before she quit, too. That was about fifteen years ago, and I don't crave them at all anymore. The smell is actually a huge turn off for me, now. I can't believe I ever thought I was fooling anyone into not knowing I was a smoker. That shit seeps into everything.

Once a junkie, always a junkie. At least for me with nicotine. The cravings have never gone away. I just learn to live with them and not think about them too often. It gets easier with time.

Hey OP, how ya doing? Try any advice? Anything help?

Lol thank you, I just waited it out and read comments to pass the time. This happens once or twice a year and it'll probably be a good while before it happens again, appreciate the support though

I smoked about 20 a day for nearly 20 years, and gave up the stinkies about 12 years ago. Switched to vaping and then gave up that and nicotine about 8 years ago.

Even after all this time, about once a year my brain tells me it’s time for a smoke break. I don’t think I’m craving a fag, just the downtime and doing something else with my hands/brain/time.

Does this happen to anyone else out there?

No, you're completely unique and utterly alone in that uniqueness. Tragic, really. RIP.

Any tips?

Is $5 too little?

Okay enough jokes. Yes, every other addict ever gets craving symptoms down the road, but they'll clear up soon.

In rehab, doc taught me something that's remarkably powerful and yet insanely simple: BHALTS. Are you Bored? Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? Stressed? All those make cravings worse and make relapse more likely, especially since we're talking about the thing we used to do to avoid dealing with those feelings properly.

If anything on that checklist checks out, attend to it ASAP. You'll be shocked how quickly the cravings leave your body.

Maybe do shrooms somewhere its legal? Just once has been shown to do wonders for kicking addiction

Done plenty my man, unless I get a guided therapy session with the specific aim of cessation I doubt one more time dosing is gonna do much

I still vape but I haven't had a real cigarette in almost a decade and I still get cravings for them when I'm stressed. Whenever I think about buying a pack I try to remember waking up coughing up phlegm every morning, getting winded from even a little bit of exercise, and how I used to get sick way more often and I can talk myself out of it

Essentially the same story and timeframe, but no independent cravings. I do occasionally smell one, a good one that takes me right back to high school. Those are the only tempting moments for me.

I’ve tried them a few times over the years when out at bars when my vape died, after vaping for.. fuck since like 2009 or so? Real early on. Can’t manage to give up that habit but.. meh.

They are quite honestly terrible. Super sickening (like wicked strong urge to vomit on the first small drag even if you don’t fully inhale it sort of sickening) because they are so so much stronger than a vape. Plus they taste like shit. Very unappealing to actually do after quitting so long ago. So you can add that to your reasons not to do it. :)

I had way more of an issue the first time I quit, made it like just over a year and it was easy to go back. This is much different.

Been clenching my teeth for about two years now, I started when I quit smoking. I actually had to get a splint (mouthgard) because I'm fucking my teeth.

So I quit because I was about to become a dad, a home-owner, and also because ciggies here are about 30 usd a pack that doesn't go well with having a family and and paying a mortgage. But mostly health, I need to be around as long as possible for my family.

I don't think about it nor I miss it most of the times, but every time someone takes a long drag in a movie, I just start salivating and I wish I had one in my hand.

Accidentally I temporarily became a smoker again for a week or so just recently. Wife took the kids away for a few days and I was given some weed, I bought two packs of ciggies with the intention that once they are gone that's it. They are gone now and i am again a non smoker but I thoroughly enjoyed them. Unlike other people on this thread I LOVE the smell, and I really really like smoking. What I don't like is to have an addiction, the fact that they kill you, and the cost.

As for suggestions, nothing that gives immediate relief but microdosing mushrooms really helped me before (I quit many times before, longest i think was 7 years not smoking)

Only sometimes in specific cases. At a bbq, after Xmas dinner, sitting by the campfire etc. other than that, no cravings. Do dream of smoking though...

A few thoughts from someone who quit about 10 years ago.

First, Congratu fucking lations! You quit! That is a BIG GODDAMN DEAL. I hope you appreciate that and celebrate it.

I am very happy that I quit. There is little doubt in my mind that I would be much less healthy now if I still smoked.

Quitting smoking was just the first step on a path to better health. I used the money I saved to buy a Vitamix and a rowing machine. Keep going beyond quitting.

If you must have nicotine do it as safely as you can. I got a prescription for nicotine inhalers. Vaping is better than smoking, etc. If you fall off the wagon, it does not have to be permanent.

Use ANYTHING that MIGHT help you. Rub a worry stone, mastrubate, chew gum, cinnamon oil toothpicks, stress ball, play video games.

The discomfort will not last forever. It will get better.

Best wishes. Keep up the great work!

Not random moments, but intense anxiety is a trigger decades later. And it's not just traumatic stuff, but positive anxiety like first dates.

When I was quitting I swapped cigarettes with tea tree oil infused toothpicks to handle the oral fixation part. Helped a lot. I have (thankfully) never experienced what you describe and haven’t been a smoker for about 7 years now. Maybe get some toothpicks to nom on if it happens again.

Edit: somehow forgot to add “never” to that third sentence. Sorry for any confusion. Hope you can conquer these spells of cravings.

Mostly, I just want to hang outside work, bum or share a smoke and socialize.

I've had people who quit 20 years ago say to me they still get random cravings but not often. I think it's just something some people get.

I quit more than a decade ago now. I still occasionally get a craving for one. I don't get the same physically reactions that you listed. Mostly get the cravings when I'm stressed.

An ex of mine would only smoke when she was drinking.

Nothing better with your 3rd beer than a cigarette.... Apparently.

If she didn't have that 3rd beer. She'd never drink.

I mean yeah I can relate, drinking specifically mikes hard makes me want to smoke

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Interesting, also I learned a new word (contraindications: something that makes taking a drug inadvisable)

I quit years ago, and very seldom does a day go by where I don't find myself craving nicotine for at least a little bit.