I quit smoking on May 6th, 2008.
The reason I know the exact date this many years later is that my quitting was directly tied into my baby sister's wedding. My entire family traveled out of state to attend the wedding, and when we left our home to return to my parent's home for the festivities, on April 29th, I left a half-eaten bowl of Lobster Bisque in the fridge...
When we returned to our home on May 4th, after getting the kids to sleep, unpacking the car and trying to settle in after an eventful week and weekend, I ate that now week+ old bowl of bisque. By 2 AM on the 5th, I was awake and vomiting. By 4 AM I was dry heaving every 3-4 minutes and felt like I had cracked a rib from the violent heaves that would not stop. By 6 AM I was in the ER and by 8 AM I had a CAT-scan done to see if there was any intestinal damage that would explain the vicious response my body was going through. Eventually, after an IV-fluid bag and with some anti-nausea medicine and Vicodin, I was sent home and told to return if I got worse.
I did not get worse, in fact by 6 PM that night I was able to hold down some broth and by the next morning, despite being weak and sore, I felt pretty much OK, no more vomiting or heaving...until I got a call from the ER X-ray technician requesting that I come back for a consult on the film they took of me the previous day. So at 3 PM that day, my wife and I returned to the ER X-ray technician's tiny little office and I was informed that they felt I should have an immediate follow-up appointment with an internist to examine a spot that was found on my kidney and looks to be a possible tumor.
Over the next 3 weeks, I received 2 additional scans and opinions and was scheduled for kidney ablation surgery for renal small cell carcinoma with possible spread. I ended up losing 33% of my right kidney, but the ablation was concluded with good margin (no spread) and the tumor that was removed was 100% encapsulated (no metastasis). I was lucky, that kind of cancer is widely believed to be caused by smoking as the blood is filtered through the kidneys and the carcinogens in cigarette smoke can become concentration in the kidneys and lead to cancerous growths. Those growths are nearly ALWAYS asymptomatic and when they are found, it is usually because they have spread to other organs and areas that ARE symptomatic. Many people believe that cigarette smoking is only going to kill them through lung cancer, the truth is many people do die of lung cancer, but many times that lung cancer is spread from the kidneys to the lungs or from other sites. The point being, without an accidental food poisoning after my sister's wedding, I would have NEVER quit smoking on my own.
I lacked the "why", the reason to quit, the driving force that said to me (and ONLY to me, from me) "if you do not change this behavior, you will die"... A cancer scare at 37, with 5 kids under the age of 12 at the time and a wife who had just gotten nack to working after out last child was immensely sobering to me...that motivated me...but I STILL needed help with the physical nicotine addiction.
I used the nicotine lozenges and Tic Tac's for the immediate 2 weeks after I quit cold turkey. I also immediately stopped my social activities at the time - which took me out of all bars and nightclubs and made me give up on pool playing as well. I knew that I had no choice but to no longer do those things because the temptation and the habit of smoking in those settings, especially in bars and pool houses, would be too great. It was the combination of these things that helped me. The physical cravings were controlled well enough in my first 8 weeks that I stopped the lozenges entirely. I began weening off of them by increasing the number of Tic Tacs that I would consume, but it worked for me. The psychological addiction took YEARS to subsist, and to be honest, its never really gone away entirely...I have caught myself even now, 12+ years out from my last smoke...thinking about having "just one".
It also came with another side effect though...over-eating and weight gain....not all at once, but quietly and persistently at about 4-5 pounds a year to the point I am now 60 pounds over what I considered a comfortable weight (which truth be told was STILL probably 20 MORE over where I should be). I have not been anywhere near as successful with regaining fitness or losing weight as I was with quitting smoking, so sometimes it is timing, motivation, self-change and support that helps and other times it is something else.
I congratulate you on making as far as you have and I hope you stay with it. Its hard and there will be times that it will seem overwhelming, when it does, I hope you have a support mechanism (and not food!) that helps you cope and survive the storm. I have heard the saying "This too shall pass" and often thought in moments of weakened resolve that it was total BS...I have since learned to accept that it is really only about 50% BS and 50% a challenge to dig deep one more time to avoid temptation or falling back. For me, I replaced one addiction and associated behaviors relatively successfully and one not so much to date.
I wish you a better success rate and a happy, healthy outcome!
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