How'd you quit?
 

Usually just trade one for the other.

I actually kept a pack of cigs with me in my car. This way I always knew I had them and it removed that jones feeling. Kept it at more of a "me vs the cig" and not freaking out cause I was out.


And my pot consumption increased significantly but I am tobacco free!!!! ROFL

I quit smoking a pack a day 13 and half years ago. I had smoked since I was 15 and quit when I was 24. I had help from the patch the first day. I think I just made up my mind to do it. I think you just have to occupy yourself with something positive and productive. For me, it was grad. school.

Battling an addiction is in its simplest form, retraining your body\mind.


Every time you get an urge for a drink start thinking about something else. And if possible do something like go for a walk or hit some pushups or something. Most cravings fade after 20-30 min.

Warn your loved ones as well that you will be moody. It doesn't happen overnight.

One day you will realize you have gone a week without a drink. And then logic will start to set in. If you can get through a week withouth a drink you can get through 2.

You just have to convince yourself that you can get by without it and enjoy life just as much.

But I know quiting smoking was tough. I started working out 3-4 times a week when I did and trying to hang out with women and others that did not smoke and dispised smoking hopefully.

l
 

Then you know you can do it. If you can go 9 years you know it can be done. Do you want to quit drinking? I am sure the answer is yes and no. Yes you want too, no you feel like you cannot.

But you know you can. My old roommate did it. Took meeting a nice girl that helped him but told him he had to calm it down or he was out. He went through some tough times but it is under control now.

But it comes down to desire. Do you want it or don't ya? I seriously kept a pack of cigs in my car. Every other time I tried to quit was when I smoked the last cig of a pack. Then I would just be freaking out thinking about not having any cigs every time I'd drive by a gas station. So I kept a full pack in the car. Then when I got the urge I just told myself, "not right now". And it was a lot eaier since I actually did have some. I could focus more on not wanting one as opposed to jonesing cause I was out.

I do too the website I used to quit last time was soberrecovery.com I wish i could kick the booze for good but it tastes so good and I like to go off on la la drunkenland when I cant stand life

I have had my battles with the sauce for a year now. I could go on and on with it, but it comes down to, I think you need serious help to quit. When I quit my quality of life didn't really improve so I just went back to it. Depending on how bad it is (and it's always worse than you think) you may need real help. Unfortunately I can't just stop going to work to get into a real program but holy shit do I drink a alot. Not during the week because I have to work, but the weekend I Crack open the first one well before noon. If you are serious go to soberrecovery and call a local person before it gets to the point it ruins shit. I don't really have family down in KC so I just ****ing around with quitting every 6 months or so, then I realize i have more fun drinking. I am careful when I drink and never drive but you know you are a slave to the drug when you plan your whole day around it. I am like ok my keys are here my glasses are here time to start drinking (or using) as I call it. I call it using because it mine as well be tying off your arm for herione or some shit.

In all seriousness you should try using your own vanity to combat your addiction. You're a fashionable guy, there's nothing hot about a drunk. There's nothing hot about being that guy with the vericose, pourous nose making a fool of himself. Think about the chicks and challenge yourself to make through life without a crutch. I'm not trying to quit drinking, but would like to curb it, I haven't had a drink in 3 weeks using this strategy.

all the mind games and shit and all, but if you have a serious addiction no amount of mind games is going keep it from coming in your body. the drug is just #1 in your life

The one thing I didn't like getting help is they would make you feel like shit. I know I ****ed up or I would be here I need something to laugh at or something to take that 100 pound gorilla of guilt off my back, but it just seems most programs show you what damage can be done from it first. The thing about it is most people never truely stop for good unless they are rock bottom. It's just hard

I'd reiterate some of what others have said. I think a lot of it comes down to really making up your mind. Unfortunately it sometimes takes something horrible to happen to you first for you to really make up your mind. Good luck man.

Also if you can get off to a good start on your way to sobriety I think you will find life more refreshing.

I don't know if you are a competitive person, but that's the way I tackle addictions, whether they be as simple as caffeine or something more serious. It's you (with family and friends) versus your addiction. And you can kick it's ass. Once you start having some success you will feel rejuvenated with life, IMO.

making your mind is the toughest for me. when i think of beer or anything I think of good times and relaxing and the way it makes me feel. I never truely want to let go of the drug, so I never truely give a good effort to quit. When I did quit it feels like someone died. Just a constant kick in the face by life. Nothing was good. The one thing I can look forward to the weekend was cracking open 30 of my closest friends (natty light) so I have managed the guilt and the anxiety by just saying "if it kills me it kills me" because for me I just don't have a good reason to quit, but on a side note if you go to alchohol boards you can see how closely people think with the drinking problem. Most people start by starting a thread "Do i have a drinking problem" or "am I a alchoholic" ok so if you are starting that thread or visiting a site you have a problem, but it always starts like "I ****ed some guy and now I feel bad, or I get way to drunk at parties" That is how the shit starts. The next part.. if you never get help is the same ****ing story. I got a DUI or I Fell down and hurt myself. You wouldn't believe how many drunks a year die just by falling down.

what I ment to put is on booze message boards you will see...and scare you how close people think alike

Simply Red and Demonpenz waxing phillosophic. It's a good day to buy a powerball ticket, or prepare for armageddon. Either.

That scared the shit out of me.

I know where you are coming from. I don't know if you are ready to quit. That is a very personal decision. Everyone has their own reasons on why they want too and what motivates them.

Not being familiar with your specific situation, perhaps trying to moderate yourself off is an option?. I know when I quit smoking and I started working out my body finally just told me flat out it did not want cigs. But it took a while to get it out of my system.
I quite cold turkey but I know what you are saying. Whatever road you choose it won't be easy that much is for sure.

Yeah I am dumb on here, but I am serious about alchohol problems. I have lost to many buddies from just depression and addiction. That poison will just own your life. I don't find much humor in people anymore that are like Dude i was sooooo wated the other day... or shit like that, because there are people that drink some beers in the garage and have a good time. Then there are people like me who are flat out drug abusers. Just chigging whiskey or beer trying to escape. It's wrong, it hurts others, and it will eventually kill you. What a dumbass reason to die

No.

What do you want to do? Seriously.

Well, sounds like you know you have a problem, and they say that's the hardest part. I haven't dealt with issues like these, so I can't give you a concrete plan of attack. My addictions, unfortunately, lean more towards me just being lazy. Addictions are habit forming, but so's the cure, in my experience.

You sound like a prideful guy. Use that to your advantage in this case.

The movie Pi? Wow, never thought I'd see that referenced.

Get right with yourself first.

My natural smartass tendencies wanted me to start posting silly shit on this thread from the first. SR and Demon usually are good comedic paradies on this board, so I wasn't sure just how serious this thread is/was.

I felt hung over after I watched it.

Best of luck in your path to recovery, SR.

I've had to kick just about every drug there is at one point. I had to leave a certain city to kick a couple of them completely.

The hardest by far. Roxis.

The easiest. Coke.

I'm really glad I turned it around at about 27. LIfe's good now. Drugs are dumb. Quit'em if you've got a habbit. And don't believe the psyco babble. Addiction is NOT a disease. It's a choice, and that's how you quit. You choose not to do it anymore. Is it hard as ****?.....yes, but it's possible.

Roxis?

WTF is roxis?

Well as the saying goes, God helps those.....sorry just trying to add some humor to a otherwise very serious situation.


Try this, right now ....get up from the computer and go take a walk for about 10 or 15. I don't care if it is still raining or notm get an umbrella. Go outside, look at nature. See life around you. Take a moment and appreciate what is what and our (humans) place in the world. Then talk yourself in the 3rd person. I want you to literally talk to yourself and giver yourself the adivce you know that yourself needs. You hold all the correct answers. Any help you get is just in reality helping you arive to them. So turn to yourself for advice first and foremost, cause no one knows what you are going through better than you do.

That is how I get in touch with "God". By looking at life around me and beyond the human being. The plants, the grass, the trees, the animals, the air, the wind, the sky.......let your emotional turmoil be taken by all that is God and very much all around you.

As you walk and look take some deep breaths and let the emoitonal turmoil I know you have be taken up by all that is around you. It is very good for grounding and centering yourself. Once you sort of "calm down" for lack of a better phrase, and that itch is not quite as bad then have the 3rd person conversation with yourself.


If you cannot go for a walk just sit on the floor, eyes closed, relax, no music, no tv, just breath in deeply through your nose, hold it for a few secs...then exhale slowly 4 or 5 times and listen to your breathing.

After a few times keep doing it then imagine the cravings and desires you want to be gone moving into the ground. Do this for about 10-15 min to start.


When you get up or come back from your walk, you may still want a drink but you will also know why you aren't going to have it. And you will feel good about it. :D

Roxicett. The best painkiller known to man. My DOC.

I'm going to warn you, going cold turkey can be very dangerous and it can get to a point that it can kill you. So be careful and my suggestion is that you should talk to your Dr.

Roxicet I mean.

Ahh...Hillbilly Heroin.

It can also cost you your job. It almost cost me mine when I quit smoking cause of my mood swings.

Thankfully when I told my boss what was going on in life, she put her finger on it and cut me some slack.

Actually Nashville. Everyone I knew had something for me. I had to leave to escape it. It's a lot harder to quit anything when all of your friends are knee deep in it.

Yep.

A friend of mine, has all sorts of issues been to rehab still does it, he will say he either likes it or is easily addicted then he said to me that I don't understand. When I was in high school and a little after I did alot of dumb shit but I never got addicted to anything, I never had to have it I could do something stop never do it again.

He explained to me that "people like him and people in rehab hate people like me because I make something so difficult look so easy" I felt that was a copout response but I'm not in those shoes so I can't say 100%.

Clarify?

Which part?

Addiction runs in my family, and I can say without a doubt, from my experiences with drugs, that people don't fail to stop doing drugs, because they can't, but because deep down inside, they don't REALLY want to. It's really sad. They will lie, and do anything possible to convince you that they want to stop, but they don't, and unfortunately, the doctors give them the ultimate cop out by telling them they have a disease, and then everytime they "fail", they can just blame it on this "disease". Truth is, they like doing it, and don't care what the consequences are, but they want everyone to think that they just want to stop sooooo bad.

Sadly the only other advice I can give you is AA, I have been to a few events with some family members and if you find the right meetings there are actually some pretty cool people in there.

Luckily I'm one of those people who learns from others mistakes, generally, so I never fell into any of that.

noted.

I went from a guy who did a bunch of reeruned shit, of course I never did it by myself either so I was never that far into it, to what I am now where I don't even drink.

yeah although my mania is probably more depression related. Are you nervous pacing and feel like impending doom is upon you? I get horrible spells hungover or not where I feel like what almost happened really happened case in example. I wasn't drinking this night but I moved a friend in and I was just dropping shit all over the place and I almost set a microwave down on his newborn that was sleeping on the floor. I was like oh shit that was close. Later on drinking and all that I woke up in the middle of the night and I litterally felt like I dropped a microwave on the kid. I still let alittle guilt seep in when I am hungover but I try to stay positive. The worst is driving. I don't drink and drive but for some reason even like the next day I drank yesterday but going to work today I just feel bad for even driving. The shame, guilt, and just disaster feeling is worse than anything else. When you have depression bad enough you can understand why people blow thier brains out.

Yeah, I've been addicted to things. My mother is an addict. So I talk from experience. I've been to rehab, and the things those people tell you, are exactly what creates the lifelong addict.

#1 they tell you once an addict always an addict. (BS)

#2 they tell you it's a disease. (BS)

They give you all these excuses to not take responsibility for the fact that your just a junky who wants to do drugs all the time. I never bought into all that crap, and new I was just a dirtbag, and I think that's the reason that I was able to leave it all behind.

Just a comment

There is a pretty strongly established causal connection between addiction along family lines, even if the children did not grow up with the parent (or parents) who are addicts.

I never went to any rehab I just decided I wasn't really having any fun that way and I didn't need to do that anymore.

It's funny to tell that to people who know me now, they'd never realize it, one time I was telling this story about how when I was 17 me and this girl I dated would do coke and stay up for 3 days at a time, and they just look at me stunned.

That's pretty much what I mean when I say I can't relate to those shoes I don't have those genes and I would have considered myself a casual user nothing more.

That's very true. That's always been my strategy for quitting anything in the past. If I'm not around drugs, I don't do them. The problem is that booze is legal and available anywhere, so it's a little harder to isolate oneself from it. Still, if I wanted to quit, I'd stop hanging around all my friends who drink. It would suck, but that would be my first step.

Well do they put out?

I know. It's the reason that I got so deep into drugs I think. It's a family trait I believe. Not a hereditary disease.

The point I'm trying to make is that kicking drugs is a choice. You CAN stop. I'm living proof. Don't buy into the shit they tell you about what addiction is. That's how it gets you for life. I've seen it a lot of times. As soon as they go to that psychiatrist, and he convinces them they are sick with a disease....it's all over.
Then he writes them a perscription for some shit, and a lifelong addict is born.

I have been having problems again also. It is hard shit to deal with. I met my wife almost 3 years ago, and I was doing great then. Looked like an NFL strong safety type and pretty much had things together. Then we chose to get married. Weddings and planning with the mother in law are awful. We have family issues with a father (I am the step-father) that is a 100% ass and doesn't like paying his child support because he lost in court. Now, it is coming back on us again. Most likely going to have to go to court over this again. I didn't even know how bad it was until the past year. Our daughter is on Adderall and is a complete space monkey almost all the time. I have also had several issues myself recently, including no income. Credit stuff building up, loss of faith in many things, etc. That makes for one pissed off wife, let me tell ya. They are usually pissed about something anyway, but hey. lol I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Good luck to you. I am sitting here at this time with two Keystone Lights sitting in front of me. I feel ya man.

I drink too much and I chew. Going to quit chewing....AGAIN....starting Oct. 1. I quit for a year and just started chewing again for some stupid reason....once I got back to over 1 can a day, I realized I needed to quit if for no other reason than for my kids.

I don't drink a lot, but I drink often enough that I'm concerned. You know, a couple beers a night. Maybe I shouldn't be all the concerned because I don't sit around and get drunk, but just the fact that I feel like I want to have a couple beers every night kind of concerns me.