This covers as couple of addictions and at the end, what I feel is some unique and pretty good advise for getting off the ciggs, so bear with me.
I was an avid Cigarette and pot smoker for 40 yrs plus and not saying the pot is really an addiction, because it's just not to me, not a physical one anyway, I just enjoyed it. But that's not an excuse as I don't feel it's an excusable habit in Gods eyes. Yeah, I made up excuses why it was probably ok early on but never really believed them, and finally forced myself to realize that it just wasn't going to cut it, and to do it if I must, but don't ever tell myself it's ok. That way there is at least a good chance of quitting, as opposed to if I made it ok/acceptable in Gods eyes, there would never really be a reason to quit because I wasn't doing anything wrong in my mind.
A few years ago I kept getting spooked by the spirit, conscience, or whatever it was, and to the point I was always on edge when I partook and that feeling of anxiety overrode the enjoyment. When I went to quite after trying only once or twice for a year or less in that 40 yr period, it did actually have mild withdrawal symptoms, nothing like tobacco, and I guess after just using it for so long. Anyway, I was still easily able to quit and for the first time ever with no desire to touch it since, and haven't. All a pretty boring and run of the mill story..no big deal. The main thing with quitting pot for me was deciding one really wants to, that's al. But now for the part I found very interesting and how my pot smoking indirectly helped me quit Cigarettes with very little effort.
I'm making a short story long here, I realize that, but what the hay...probably a good idea to include the details in this case. So I find myself still smoking ciggs, and in the past I'd tried everything to quit, at least a few times, but wasn't successful, not even close and to the point I thought "this is terrible, how will I ever be able to pull this off?"....just that bad but nothing unusual about that either.
I did vape for a time and that made it easy to get off the ciggs completely but to me, although I felt a lot better and it's actually likely not harmful and I highly recommend it, it's not stopping the addiction. Still, I could and would take vaping over ciggs any day if I thought I was going to stay on nicotine, especially after finally getting a decent mod. FWIW, my opinion on vaping is it stops the nicotine cravings, and enough so to get off the ciggs with no effort, but it's not quite as satisfying as that cigarette... to me, a good thing. The way I saw it, is since it wasn't as satisfying I could see myself slowly getting bored with it and eventually getting off it, problem solved. At least that's how I think it could go..I never proved that out.
Anyway..I was making my own ciggs at the time with the premade paper tubes/machine and pipe tobacco in order to take advantage of the tax loophole, and avoid the horrible expense when they suddenly taxed ciggs out of range for me. I ran out of tubes one day and decided to just use the little pot pipe I still had around, with it's small bowl. I went on like that for several months, smoking all I wanted, but this stopped me from feeling obligated or actually forcing a whole cigarette down each session, something unbeknownst to me, I never really needed or wanted. There's a lot of tobacco in the conventional cigg. This was before I had actually decided to try quitting again. I began to think I might actually be cutting down, even though I am getting all the tobacco I want. A few drags at a time, put it down, pick it back up when I want as well as the convenience of conventional ciggs not being there anymore seemed to have made at least a partial difference in the amount I was smoking. Even though I eventually calculated I was only smoking the equivalent of 3 to 5 ciggs a day now, I thought something had to be wrong with the calculations because I had done nothing to try to cut down...it happened without even trying and I had evidently done so for so long now, when I went to quite it was a piece of cake. Less than a week and I was done with very little effort.
If you can quite, great, but if you have trouble, I highly recommend it. The results, with no conscious effort for the most part, were actually stunning to me, but your experience may vary.
Now before someone asks, I did quit for a year and then went back to a standard pipe for the past few months, and for my own reasons and maybe stupidly, maybe not...doubt I'll do it for long. However, that has no bearing on what happened...a year is full blown quit as far as the physical addiction, and I can and will do it again when things calm down.
