The biggest reason my mother kept smoking is her behavior became horrible when she stopped. When you say the “crazies” keep causing you to go back to smoking, I hear your pain; I saw it myself firsthand and it's not pretty. As others here wrote, it can sometimes seem like a mercy to your family to start smoking again.
Some “mercies,” however, have consequences far greater than the benefits.
My mother died about a decade ago of what the doctors said were the consequences of long-term smoking; my father said she had quit smoking but the medical tests showed otherwise. I have no way to know whether the tests were wrong or whether my mother was sneaking cigarettes my father didn't know about. What I do know is that my mother's inability to handle the anger and rage — not just mild irritability but outright rage — resulted in her being unable to quit and led directly to her death.
Personally I love the smell of cigarettes. I'd smoke today if it weren't for the fact that they cost too much and will kill me sooner or later. What I saw my parents go through with obvious addiction was more than enough for me to decide not to take up the habit, even though to this day I love to inhale smoke, especially some good aromatic pipe smells, or to sniff a freshly opened pouch of tobacco. I need to realize that wonderful smell is not something good for me but rather a powerful addiction waiting to pounce if I would permit it to do so.
Why do I say this? It's to rebuke in the strongest possible terms what Humblegunner wrote. Smoking **WILL** kill you eventually. It's already messing up your life and draining your pocketbook.
Fortunately not one person on this thread on Free Republic agreed with him.
Surround yourself with people who hate smoking and will encourage you to quit. Don't listen to people like Humblegunner who will give your addicted mind the idea that maybe, just maybe, he's right and you don't need to stop smoking to have the surgery you need.
Lots of good practical advice has been given. Some of it is probably better than others; some of it may work better or less well for you than it did for others.
What counts is that all of the advice is better than what you're getting from people who want to keep you from quitting. If they stop you from quitting, they are helping you kill yourself. Flee such advice. You're obviously addicted or you would have been able to stop on your own, and you need to surround yourself with encouragers, not discouragers and excusers.
Best wishes to you.
Darrell, you never fail to show up at the most unexpected
times and provide "insight" into things you imagine that you
understand. Not the least of which are my motives and the
underlying reasons behind them.
You may provide this fine service to others, I'm not intrigued enough to check.
I've been meaning to thank you for your concern and for the
thirteen (on average) paragraphs you devote to either explaining
or debunking my statements. I'm glad you are not my parent.
I'd run away.
Darrell, don’t worry about HG. He’s caring in his own way. I actually appreciate the emphasis that this is MY choice and nobody can bully me into this. (Not even my doctor)
I’m a contrary individual and any pressure to quit, just makes me want to light up all the more.
HG actually helped me. He’s right. This is MY choice.
So I boiled it down like this: I can continue to sit here, disabled and smoking or I can quit, get the surgery and move on. I do agree with HG that the dangers are seriously overblown and exaggerated. They’d blame a hangnail on smoking. (I once had a dr lecture me for half an hour about how my constipation was caused by smoking and wouldn’t hear me when I told him repeatedly that I WASN’T, and never had been, constipated!) They act like you’ll be immortal if you never smoke.
The fact is, I do need to quit for my health. This surgery is risky enough that I wouldn’t do it, even if I had the option, while smoking.
*********************
So here’s my update.
I started to compile a ‘plan of attack’ for this quitting situation.
And suddenly, I got seriously irritated with all of it. I’m freaking tired right now and I don’t want to deal with it.
I decided that the easiest way to quit is to quit. Just tell myself that I’m done.
As of right now, I’m 20 hours smoke-free. I’m avoiding irritants. (My family, TV news, etc.) I do have Nicorette lozenges, but I don’t like them and I’ve only had two.
When I get a craving, I just tell myself that it’s not worth the stress and let it go. My daughter smokes and I’ve left her things alone. I told her that she can smoke, but she has to take it outside.
The big accomplishment was that I had a very long, very stressful medical test done this morning and I was able to get in the car, come home and move on without a cigarette to calm down afterward.
I plan on posting an update at 4:30 when I’m 24 hours smoke-free.
So far, the weird thing is that I’m coughing like crazy and yawning my head off. Everything stinks. :-\