He is being stubborn about it, and i am getting worried. He is now in his 40’s and hes been smoking since his 20’s. He has quit before but he always goes back to it. He smokes about a pack a day but it is hard to tell because he doesn’t smoke at home only at work(he does construction, so it is easy to do at work) I want to convince/help him quit for good. Is this possible? Any suggestions, similar situations, smokers are welcome (maybe you can help me understand)
Be aware, he can’t quit if not entirely convinced to do so – by himself.
I suggest reading http://stopsmoking-a-new-approach.blogspot.com/
The site has a poor design but its contents is very reach.
I’ve smoked since I was about 13 (I’m now 37) and in that time I have quit anywhere from 2 months to 5 years in a stretch and I always seem to end up smoking again. It is a VERY hard thing to give up, even when cancer looms in your future. I found a small slip of paper from the American Heart Association that listed the improvements that quitting makes on your health, starting at two weeks without a cigarette, up to 2 years or something. It helped me to see the good I was doing to my body by stopping, so that might be worth a shot. The other thing I would try is to tell him that you really want him to be around to enjoy his grandkids and that you don’t want to think about him not being around because he couldn’t stop smoking before it made him sick, also that his grandchildren will look up to grandpa and may decide that smoking is cool because he does it. He won’t want that on his conscience… I think I just made myself want to quit soon! Here is a link to that list – http://www.myoptumhealth.com/portal/Information/item/When+You+Quit+Smoking%3A+A+Timeline+to+Be?archiveChannel=Home%2FHealth+Hubs%2FType2HealthHub%2FSeniors%27+Health%2FTopTopics&clicked=true
How many does he smoke a day? You should work out an estimate of how much extra money he would have had if he hadn’t smoked for so long. For example, I have no idea about the price of cigarettes or how many the average smoker smokes, but say he smokes a packet a day and once packet costs 10 pounds or dollars (I don’t know where you live). There are 365 days in a year and so 7300 days in 20 years. 10 (£ or $) times 7300 is 73,000; if your dad didn’t smoke one packet a day, he would be 73,000 dollars or pounds better off over the past 20 years. Work out the actual figure for your dad and tell him this – smoking costs a hell of a lot and he will be shocked to know how much money he is wasting (even if he thinks he knows).
Even though I don’t smoke I can imagine that it must be incredibly hard to give up – I just imagine having to give up snacks and then multiplying the cravings I would get by about 10. Offer to buy him some nicotine patches to start him off. Even though he’ll have heard it all before, tell him all the dangers of smoking. Explain to him that there are 4000 toxic chemicals in cigarettes. Also, very important, make sure he realises how much he is harming others. The smoke he is inhaling is nice and filtered (albeit still very harmful), but the smoke he exhales contains very toxic chemicals that will be breathed in by others, thus harming them. You say he only smokes at work, but what about when he retires? He will have to smoke at home right? So he will then be forcing the people closer to him to passive smoke.
Try to find leaflets you could pick up for him and keep on nagging him to stop. But despite your best efforts, you will never be able to force him to stop, only persuade him. I wish you the best of luck and I hope your dad sees sense.
Depends on what his motivation is. Some people smoke because they just like it, others hate it but find it to difficult to quit the addiction.
Possible compromise, Electric Cigarettes. They are cheaper to smoke then regular cigarettes and healthier. (I’m not saying they are 100% healthy, but studies I’ve read said 100-1,000 times better then traditional cigarettes) He could get his nicotine fix and appease his hand to mouth addiction. If he liked to smoke he could keep using it (if nothing else it would save him $ and the benefit of no tar), if he wanted to quit he could do that too. That is how I quit.
How I used it to quit:
It so easy to cut back since I was still getting the nicotine I craved. Week one I went from a pack a day to a 3-5 cigs a day. The hard part was choosing to stop the regular cigs completely. But once I saw the nicotine in ecigs really worked, it makes me see I didn’t need the real cigarettes anymore. And since I was only having a few smokes a day my packs were lasted so long they were getting stale, that helped too. My regular cigs started to taste bad, it even started to make me sick when I smoked them. I quit regular cigarettes completely during week 2.
Once I was using my electric cig full time, I started to cut my nicotine levels back in steps. At the end I used 2 different carts Low and 0 nicotine. I only use the low cart when I was having a craving. I use the 0mg when I felt like I just need to put something in my mouth or just want to puff because it tastes good. I retired my ecig two weeks ago I am ecig free.
I should mention, for this to work he would need to start at the appropriate nicotine level to satisfy his cravings enough to get him off regular cigarettes. Then he can start the cutting back process.
It cost me between $30-$35 a month to smoke. The flavors were amazing, I thought I would want tobacco flavors, but quickly switched to fruity flavors.
I found a good vendor that was willing to take the time to answer my questions and support me. If he goes the ecig route, he should find a vendor that HE feels comfortable with. For me that was Epic-Vapor, but there are HUNDREDS to choose from, just google.