After 20+ years of smoking, I have seen a lot of changes. I have paid from $7.00/carton (over 20 years ago in the commissary) to over $70.00, and I've even seen single packs selling for $11.00 (Summerfest last year - insane!) I've gotten sick of the price and tax increases and spent a year making my own with a tube stuffer and pipe tobacco. I've learned that this also makes a mess - loose tobacco all over the table and on the floor where I'm packing them. I've coughed up globs of crud and considered this to be normal. I swore to quit smoking by the tiime I was thirty. And again by the time I was forty. I've tried quitting cold turkey. I've tried zyban. I felt I was already crazy enough and avoided Chantix. Then I found e-cigs, and boguth a smoke 51 trio, and was not impressed. But it was an option anyway, and I showed them to a friend who found ECF and showed me the way. On his recommendation I bought an iGo and about a zillion juices. Being a cheap ba...rd, I kept smoking to finish off the supplies I had. I did buy another bag of loose tobacco because even after a month of vaping and smoking, I wasn't sure that vaping alone would do the trick., but have not opened it - and I have now gone a straight week with no cigarettes.
HOORAY!!!!
It really is too bad that you passed on the Chantix, though. That stuff truly works, and can even work for the vape addicted. I quit smoking on it. My mistake was not following the plan. I quit the Chantix too soon, and in a weak moment I had a smoke. It was all on again. But truly, Chantix did work for me, and I know many others who've kicked the habit on it. Next to vaping, it's the best thing out there. Even for vapers, if one is truly hooked on nicotine, Chantix will get you off it with no effort. Chantix works by mimicking tobacco on a molecular level, and hooks into the receptors where nicotine normally would. There is no place for nicotine to attach. One day you look at your cigarette, which is doing nothing for you by then, and wonder why you're smoking it.
I tried Zyban, too. That messed with my brain, and it truly scared me. Everything was fine while I was taking it. I was in an *exceptionally* good mood, even. But when I quit, and followed the "weaning" schedule to the letter, scary stuff happened to me for the next 3 days. For example, I was driving to a friend's house who lived about 2.5 miles away. I had driven to her place countless times. On this particular trip, I got *lost*. I was on a road I had driven daily for a decade, and stopped at a traffic light. I looked around me and *did not recognize anything*. It was like what Alzheimers must be like. It was truly frightening, and wasn't the only weird episode. I was afraid I had permanent brain damage, but after 3 days things went back to normal. So no, I do not recommend Zyban for *any* reason!
Congrats on the vape success!!!!!
