The Stoptober 2014 Challenge - How much will you save?

GunJack wrote: »

...and nicotine itself is no more harmful to humans than caffiene, and can help short-term cognitive functions and stave off early-onset Alzheimer's

GunJack wrote: »

nicotine delivered by e-cig is less addictive than tobacco, as it hasn't had all the additives that fags have got that make it more potent. Also, nic itself is only as harmful as caffiene. So don't stress about vaping, it really does work to get off the fags....

question - do you drink any alcohol? That's way more harmful to you than nicotine, just to put it into perspective...

I don't think you should be stating things like that as bald "facts".

Smoking is undoubtedly harmful, and there are lots of things in cigarettes which are very bad for you.

But one of them is nicotine. From everything I've read which is anywhere near balanced (not from a company that makes / sell e-cigs or NRTs, etc) nicotine is, in itself, a toxic substance.

Vaping is less harmful than smoking, but it is in absolutely no way "safe" or known to be safe. The evidence suggests that nicotine in and of itself is carcinogenic and toxic. Promoting vaping as safe is untrue and damaging. It's harm reduction, not harm removal, in comparison to smoking.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21210228


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22952803

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3622363/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22764249

I gave up smoking when I got pregnant last year, and did it via cold turkey. The disadvantage of using NRTs, vaping, etc is that you are continuing to be an active nicotine addict, just changing delivery modes.

Good luck to you all giving up smoking. It's hard, but you can do it.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I gave up smoking when I got pregnant last year, and did it via cold turkey. The disadvantage of using NRTs, vaping, etc is that you are continuing to be an active nicotine addict, just changing delivery modes.

Good luck to you all giving up smoking. It's hard, but you can do it.

I agree, but moving onto something like a vape or patches is going to be 10x better for any persons health, with the benefit of making it easier of quitting nicotine all together.

Smoking is half addiction and half habit, most people will smoke at fixed periods of the day, deal with the habit yourself, let the NRT take care of the addiction and you're on a road to recovery.

Thanks for the support but I don't think it is hugely beneficial for to be speaking about everyone and their hard work on giving up tobacco with words like 'disadvantage', it's negative, if people want to quit nicotine later on, they can. I don't feel the need to knock some of us down for using NRT(I'm not even doing so!).

jayjay21 wrote: »

Smoking is half addiction and half habit, most people will smoke at fixed periods of the day, deal with the habit yourself, let the NRT take care of the addiction and you're on a road to recovery.

Not necessarily. Personally, I think NRTs and so forth are a red herring, that it's easier to give up cold turkey than to switch nicotine delivery systems. There's been no proper double blind testing of NRTs (and, of course, it's impossible to do proper double blind testing, as smokers know if they are getting nicotine or not).

I think it's very important to counter false messages about nicotine being no worse than caffeine.

Giving up smoking is very, very hard. Different things work for different people. Any cigarette not smoked is fab!

One of the things that scared me most giving up smoking was how much "not-smoking" dominated my life. Fortunately that fades - when I saw the Stoptober forum header thing, that was the first time I'd thought about smoking and me together for ages. I'm not now a deliberately not-smoking person, I just don't smoke.

That isn't supposed to sound at all smug - it's a universal experience. The scary "I will always think about smoking every day" is a really common feeling, and it does go away.

youth_leader wrote: »

I hope to reduce my 'vapour' strength gradually to zero in my own time, but after 40 years of puffing away whenever possible cold turkey would just find me at the all night garage again as has happened in the past. Night everyone, Day 8 tomorrow!

You're doing just great. :T

In the early days I feel the most important thing is just to stop yourself from smoking and I agree people just should do whatever they feel comfortable with and by whatever means works for them. The dangers of smoking cigarettes far outweigh all other replacements and most of us would happily give up the cigs and deal with any fallout from that one step at a time. I don't think anyone should be knocked for trying any of the tools and aids that are available to them.

Like many people I replaced some of my smoking with extra eating (not advisable of course) but who cares, I was more than happy to accept that I would put on weight and eat my way out of the smoking habit if needs be - I am still living with that decision and working on the extra weight but I don't regret it for one minute. I just needed to have the fags gone from my life and was happy to accept that there might be other consequences to be dealt with further down the track.

neverdespairgirl - those were taken from various reports by leading researchers in the fields of both nicotine and e-cig research... try looking for Prof. Peter Hajeck, Dr Constantinos Farsilinos and others...