Er, didn't I say that after smoking for about 33 years I stopped mid-packet over 12 years ago?

As for children smelling of smoke, my son came home one day saying that a teacher had accused him of smoking when it was my smoke the teacher could smell. I didn't smoke in the car ever, just in the house.

I already edited my post to include Snowman, I apologise for missing you out too!
Well done, oh iron-willed one
That said, when we are discussing healthy lifestyles in class, I always get children to put their hands up if they have a relative who has quit. Then say how strong-willed and admirable it is, and how proud they should be of that person because it is so hard.
We also do a long multiplication of how much a pack a day costs over a year, and then let them do a fantasy list of what they could buy with the £2,000 or so instead.

Jabberwok, I'm also a teacher, and I know exactly what you mean about students coming to school absolutely reeking of smoke. Most often it was simply living with a smoker rather than smoking themselves. You could always tell their parents when it was open house---the green fog of smoke smell that enveloped them reminded me of the character Pigpen in the Charlie Brown cartoons. So strong it was almost visible!

That for me is the most embarrassing part of being an ex-smoker, knowing that my clothes smelt rancid and nauseating.

I stopped after well over 30 years. I thought I had flu, but smoking made me sick, and then just the smell of smoke did. Most disconcerting for my smoking husband. It was actually endocarditis, and I was too ill to do anything for a couple of months, certainly to work out what to do with a cigarette.

When I got home, inspiration from the Elvis Presley diet - a peanut butter and banana sandwich at bedtime - helped me keep any cravings away, and I coped with the addiction to ritual one hour at a time. I can make a phone call, I can write a letter, I can drink a cup of coffee, without a cigarette. I too found it very easy to give up smoking every night. If I'd relied on will-power to break the habit, forget iron will, I wouldn't have stopped.

Yes I ballooned. That was 1996, and I still have some of the extra weight even now, and I'm working on that! but I have been lucky in that my lungs work, and I don't miss being a smoker at all.

I know just what you mean by feeling ill if you had endocarditis, that really isn't anywhere that I want to go again.

Have any US members of Funtrivia come across Yefim Shubentsov? When I lived in Boston for three months in 1997 I heard about this famous "Russian human energy consultant"(!) who ran clinics in Brookline Massachusetts to help people with addictions. It only cost $40 and I was spending a LOT more than that on cigarettes every week, so I thought why not ...

There were about 25 of us in the 90-minute clinic, he barely spoke about cigarettes at all, in fact with his heavy Russian accent I struggled to hear what he was saying a lot of the time ... yet I threw my packet of cigarettes into a bin before I left his office.

Now okay, on that occasion I only stopped smoking for two weeks (it was another 4 years before I finally cracked it) but it was a fortnight with no cravings and no temptation. Pretty amazing for someone on 50 a day.

(After a fortnight my then wife flew in from Belfast for the weekend, she was still smoking, and one thing led to another ... ah well! )

He seemed pretty well known across the States. I wonder if he's still running his clinics, and if anyone else has been to them?

Mr. Shubentsov is still at it in Brookline, with seemingly mixed results.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/yefim-shubentsov-brookline

My iron willpower runs in the family. My mother was almost 45 when she had me and there had been some concern that the baby (or babies, there were supposed to be twins) might not live. So while my father paced downstairs boiling water I was delivered upstairs and my brother told Dad that I looked healthy enough. My father knew that they couldn't afford for him to smoke when there was a baby to feed so he threw his last packet into the fire and never smoked again.

My brother gave up cold turkey too - we all worked on the principle that we were addicts who should never smoke again but frankly as soon as I realised what I must have smelled like I didn't want to. Seriously, I walked round stinking the place up all those years and no one said anything? Well, not any more - I don't go near smoky places now if I can avoid it and other people's hair, clothes, breath... all make me recoil. Yuck!

Giving up smoking was easy compared with chocolate. Or cake. And biscuits. After my recent heart scare I discovered that I was also borderline diabetic so I'm trying to manage that by controlling my sugar intake and losing weight at the same time. Now that's hard.

Thanks to my older brother, I am not and never have been a smoker. He introduced me to cigarettes with a forbidden packet in the lane behind my grandmother's house when I would have been about 9 or 10. It was so disgusting that I never felt the need to prove my 'grown up-ness' amongst my peers in that manner.

My brother turned into a heavy smoker, and still smokes now.

My father smoked a pipe throughout my childhood, and cigars on special occasions. I still love the smell of cigar smoke, but hate all other smoke odours. He gave up smoking for over ten years, but always claimed that even when the need for a nicotine fix had dissipated and eventually disappeared altogether, the desire to smoke was as strong as ever. I therefore salute any ex-smoker who manages to keep that desire at bay and remain a non-smoker.

Dad gave up smoking firstly indoors and around my daughter (his first grandchild) as she was very poorly as a newborn, in particular she had a serious issue with her lungs. He then went on to give up smoking altogether a couple of years ago and his motivation once again was my daughter. She always hated seeing her grandfather smoking and was afraid it would badly affect his health, which was one massive motivation for a doting grandfather, and secondly he hoped to encourage her to quit biting her nails. The first was a raging success, the second hasn't worked yet

I smoked the odd cigarette in high school - giving to peer pressure and all that - but smoking disgusts me, and I don't understand how people willingly get into the awful habit.

I started smoking at an early age and in 2000 I started using the "patch" to quit smoking and I successfully did. I told myself that I wouldn't become one of those "nasty ex-smokers" that complained about smoke, but I did anyway. The smell of a cigarette made me gag as did the smell on clothing. Then one horrible night on the town with girlfriends drinking, dancing and partying, I said to a friend who smoked "here, let me try that cigarette". I can't believe I took a drag, gagged, then took another. Pretty soon I was smoking that cigarette and nine years just fell away like it was just days. So here I am, three years later, and I've become a closet smoker. I don't smoke around anyone, so therefore no one knows that I smoke. I carry hand-wipes, perfume, and gum. I've tried to quit again with the help of the patch but it seems to be harder this time around to totally let go. Even hubby doesn't know I smoke. I am very careful to never smoke around him or anytime that we're going to be together. I don't know why I smoke, I don't ever even finish a whole cigarette, just a puff or two and I'm good. Makes me sick.

Sue, I still remember some of the hallucinations I had. They were all freaky enough to make Ingmar Bergman blanch.


Alexx, you are not alone.

You'd put money on that, would you?

My husband's friend's wife was always very good about walking the dog, even when she had next to no energy, but she had an incentive. She told us her husband had no idea that she smokes.

Meanwhile, her husband is telling us, she thinks I don't know - but I do wish she wouldn't smoke in the car.

Just a thought.

I guess I neglected to add that during the first year of smoking again, I told hubby that I started up. He complained, so after awhile I told him I quit again. Yeah, I'd pretty much bet on it that he doesn't know. If he did, he's not afraid of voicing his opinion on it.

The fact that they thought you were twins explains a lot flopsy!

Yep, two of me would scare anyone's cigarettes into the fire, lol. That idea was the result of an x-ray of course - I'm always amazed that my generation doesn't glow in the dark.

I'm smokin'... oh, you mean cigarettes? Quit those over five years ago when I just decided that it wasn't right for me to be damaging my lungs which I need to ride my bike a few miles a day. Upon making the decision and immediately ceasing the habit, I experienced no withdrawal symptoms, making me question if my addiction was physical and not just psychological. I find myself sitting on a humidor with a hundred cigars in it. They improve with age, don't they?

Pleased to say I've never smoked One reason is because of a small hole in my palate (from several botched cleft palate operations) - I'd probably not be even able to puff a cigarette even if I wanted to Another reason is the smell. I used to go out to a local club with both parents and friends, when smoking wasn't so "anti". There was nothing worse than coming home with your clothes stinking of smoke.
Both Mum and Dad smoked, but they both gave up for health reasons and for the expense.
So a very proud non-smoker here

I think that I need to speak up a bit here. I was born in 1940. At that time there was a war on and things were difficult. Many people smoked. There was no one saying it was not a good thing to do. As I grew up you could smoke in restaurants and pubs, shops, hospitals, taxis, cars, cinemas, theatres, buses, trains, parks, swimming pools, sports venues,school staff rooms (even classrooms so long as children were not going to be in there for half an hour.) You could smoke in most places, it was the norm. Soldiers were given cigarettes, accident victims and even in 1962 when my daughter was born, smokers were asked to use the balcony, not the wards. I smoked from 14. I could buy them in shops and pubs, I just had to say they were for my mum and no one checked. We smoked at school, under the stage , and when found out we were told off for missing lessons, not for smoking. I didn't smoke to try to be grown up, it was usual, that's what we did.We had no ads saying don't, we had no reasons given us not to start.I do remember someone saying you could start smoking when you could earn money to buy them yourself.That was all.
So before you say
" Yuk, I don't know how people can even start to smoke,"
think again. Rant over.

Ren, I don't think anyone is speaking about those who began smoking long before the public had any inkling it was harmful. I think what is puzzling to most non-smokers is why anyone would begin smoking now. The dangers of both smoking and second -hand smoke are so well documented that it's mystifying why anyone would want to begin a habit that is so difficult to stop.

Point taken.I hope you are right.

I remember "no smoking" notices springing up everywhere. You could no longer breeze through shops with your ciggie alight, and pictures of crossed-out cigarettes started appearing inside taxis and even some private cars.

In 1961/2 I had a geography teacher who started every lesson by hopping onto a desk facing the class, sitting cross-legged, and lighting up. He would then puff and drone till we all fell asleep or the bell went. Wonder if that was against the rules. Of course he couldn't do that now - he'd be strung up for even trying!

Just yesterday the government put through a bill that puts all cigarettes will be sold in "plain packaging" from December. The packets will be mostly grey, with a large picture of something gross and just the brand on the bottom .. all brands will have the same font etc.

When I first went overseas in the 80s you could still smoke on planes and cinemas and lots more places. I can never remember teachers smoking in classrooms but there was a cloud when you went in the teacher's lounge

I am so much older than you Jill, I can remember teachers smoking, an ashtray on the desk.

As for smoking on planes, you used to be able to smoke anywhere on the plane, then they introduced smoking and non-smoking areas although for the life of me I don't see that the people in the first couple of rows of non-smoking were much better off other than not sitting next to a smoker.

When I was working in an office it was normal for there to be a great pall of smoke in the rooms, the same in pubs, smoking was the norm, non-smokers tended to be the minority.

I remember an office job I had in the early '80s - so, fairly recently all things told - where I was told I had to start smoking tailor made cigarettes. My hand rolled ones made big ashes that smeared all over the paperwork. They transferred me to the RJR MacDonald account (this was an ad agency) so that I could get a free carton of their tailormades every month - Export A if I remember correctly.