This guest post is courtesy of Quora contributor, Geoffrey Walton, Single father of two amazing sons, with his answer to the question:

How did you quit smoking?

By accident. I was driving to work, smoking my second or third cigarette of the day, when a PSA for the “Great American Smoke-Out” came onto the radio.

Remember listening to FM RADIO in the car? But I digress.

I noticed the date for the Smoke-Out was my birthday, and immediately thought it pathetic that so many people needed a national event to quit smoking. I’d quit on my own lots of times. As soon as I got to work I checked whether my insurance covered Nicorette gum, then called my doctor’s office to request a prescription.

I didn’t expect it to work; like I said, I’d quit LOTS of times.

I smoked my last cigarette walking into the pharmacy at lunch, that day, to pick-up my gum. The pharmacist warned me to read and follow the directions, as the gum was highly addictive (Oh GREAT!), then told me 52 refills were authorized (Even BETTER!).

In the following week, my gum consumption dropped a few pieces each day. The gum was disgusting, but I wasn’t craving nicotine. I discovered my car started without pushing in the lighter. I was amazed that I could converse without a smoke – even if the other person was smoking. I didn’t need a cigarette, as counterbalance, to drink a cup of coffee.

At the end of the week I was chewing two pieces of gum per day. I decided I could continue at that rate forever, or I could just quit. So I did. All my friends – especially the smokers – warned me my victory might be short-lived.

Last week it was 26 years, so I think i have it licked. I do admit, however that there are still times a smoke “smells” like a good idea, when someone lights-up and I think, “Just one wouldn’t hurt.” What a stupid thought.

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The original post, shared on November 11, 2013, can be found on Quora as Geoffrey Walton’s answer to the question “How did you quit smoking?”

The best part is that I don’t feel like someone who is quitting smoking, I feel like a non-smoker.

This guest post is courtesy of Quora contributor, Warren Sentes, Recovering after 15 years, with his answer to the question:

How can addicted people stop smoking?

People who don’t smoke cannot understand the strength of this addiction. Telling a smoker “not to start” is moot and ignorant. Gum and nuts are no replacement for nicotine. A nicotine addiction *is* a physical one, not one “I think I need.”
The pill helped me quit, and continues to help me not to full-blown relapse.
Talk to your doctor about a prescription, be it Wellbutrin, Chantix, Zyban, or whatever other drugs are available. Check if your health insurance covers smoking cessation.

In my experience, the medication started working almost immediately. It surprised me how the normal desire to smoke almost disappeared. Suddenly, I was free of it. I stopped thinking about it. Entire days would pass without so much as a passing thought. Even smelling cigarette smoke didn’t trigger the desire again. It was incredibly liberating. Smoking didn’t control me anymore. It didn’t take up my time, distract me from activities

At night I had amazingly vivid dreams. I had never dreamed like that before. Sights, music, colours, adventures that lasted all night. These were side effects of the drug, I suppose, but I looked forward to them. There are other, more serious side effects but they didn’t affect me, and they don’t affect most people. If you spend too much time worrying about things that might happen, you will fail the treatment.

After a few weeks, my sense of smell got better, and my appetite increased. I had heard of this benefit of quitting but I thought it was just BS. It isn’t. I gained a few pounds, too. And how could I not? Food was delicious, as if I had never truly tasted it before. Indeed, I hadn’t.

I coughed up a lot of stuff. Green, grey, brown, nasty stuff, as my lungs began to heal. I’ve heard that lungs are the only organ in the body that regenerate. And they begin doing so almost immediately after quitting. People said that I would have more energy, but that was a benefit I never noticed. I certainly felt bad less often though.

Overall, quitting smoking has been a very positive experience for me, but it hasn’t been perfect. Once I stopped taking the meds I fell off the wagon a couple of times, but not permanently. I go months without any trouble, and after a night of drinks and smokes with friends, I go months again.

The best part is that I don’t feel like someone who is quitting smoking, I feel like a non-smoker.

It’s a label I wear proudly.

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The original post, shared on November 24, 2013, can be found on Quora as Warren Sentes’s answer to “How can addicted people quit smoking?”

This guest blog is courtesy of Quora contributor Viktor Toth, IT pro, part-time physicist, on his answer to:

Is there anyone here who has quit tobacco completely after consuming it for 8 years?

I smoked my first cigarette when I was what, maybe 11. I became a smoker at the tender age of 16 (I have an excuse: my girlfriend smoked.) I smoked between 1 and 3 packs a day (depending on how long the day was, or how I spent the evening.) Camel Lights were my favorite. I tried quitting a few times, especially after some 3-pack days when, the next morning, my mouth really felt like I licked an ashtray clean. Sometimes, I managed to stay away from cigarettes for a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, but I always started smoking again.

Meanwhile, I got married. My wife never smoked a cigarette in her life. (Smart lady.) That was one more incentive to quit. I still couldn’t. However, I refrained from smoking at home; if I had to have a cigarette, I’d have it on our balcony.

Just over a year after we got married, I spent a couple of weeks in late autumn in Beijing on a business trip. Everybody was smoking there back then. The day before my trip home, I came down with the flu; a rather nasty one, too, it took me weeks to recover.

As it was getting cold in Ottawa, and I had a temperature, smoking on the balcony was not really an option. So I smoked in the bathroom instead, with the fan on. This was beginning to feel real stupid… like I was a bad schoolkid, hiding in the bathroom to smoke.

A few days before New Year’s Eve that year, I realized that I had exactly enough cigarettes until midnight, December 31. I made up my mind; this was it. As midnight was approaching that day, I grabbed my last cigarette, an ashtray, and my lighter, setting it all up in the living room. I’d have my last cigarette in comfort! And that’s indeed what I did: I enjoyed my very last cigarette with the New Year’s Eve champagne, and it was good.

When the cigarette was finished, I stood up, took the ashtray to the kitchen, emptied it, washed it, thew out the empty pack of smokes, and put my lighter away.

I was 30 earlier that year. I’d been a smoker for a little over 14 years before I went cold turkey.

In the days that followed, it was really hard not to light up again. I avoided alcohol, coffee, big meals, indeed anything that would make it harder to resist the temptation to light up. As months went by, it became easier. Eventually, I began to accept that I was now a nonsmoker.

When I turned 40, I noticed that I felt significantly healthier than 10 years prior. I am fairly certain it’s because I quit smoking a decade earlier.

I stopped smoking more than 20 years ago, but to this day, I miss cigarettes from time to time. Just now, we had a nice lunch, more food than usual, and as I am writing about smoking, I salivate a little. A cigarette after a meal like this would be so nice!

Thankfully, no effort is required to resist the temptation anymore. Nonetheless, I know that if I were to try cigarettes again, I’d become an addict in no time. For this reason, I never once touched a cigarette in the 20+ years since I quit.

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The original post can be found on Quora as Viktor Toth’s answer to “Is there anyone here who has quit tobacco completely after consuming it for 8 years?“