I asked my doctor for help with it. The doctor gave me a prescription for Chantix. It’s a 12 week program but I only needed 1 month. I got down from a pack & a half to 2 or 3 a day. The Chantix made me very moody so I stopped it and bit my lip till I was able to stop the craving for those few. The Chantix really worked for me because it literally made me disgusted from pulling that smoke in to my body. It takes the whole “geshmak” out of the cigarette.
Here’s another thing: I had always known that smoking smells, but it was only after I stopped that I realized how really, really bad it is. I even apologized to my wife after I stopped, when I realized how bad it is. A few weeks ago I was in line at the bank. All of a sudden I get this whiff of something really nasty. I mean, please, this is a bank, not a shelter! I turn around and I see a friend of mine that just stepped into the bank, a smoker of course.
I’m not one of these guys who stops smoking and all of a sudden turns into a major anti-smoking nut. I know how geshmak it is to smoke, I know that if you need a cigarette and you don’t have one, you could jump through a plate glass window in desperation. But take a step back and smell yourself. Where ever you go, people say “There goes a smoker.” They smell it. Go to a shiva house where everybody is sitting in close quarters, you smell the place up. Go to a vort. As you approach the Ba’alei Simcha, people say, “There goes the smoker.” You come in to shul on Friday Night, YOU STILL SMELL!
Try, try hard to stop, you’ll feel so liberated, you’ll feel like a “man.” You’ll be able to start and complete a project at home or at work, in one sitting, without that cigarette break. You’ll be able to get into your car to drive to Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn, the Catskills, where ever, without that stop at the newsstand for smokes.
For me it’s been two years, and I can’t really see myself going back to it. I smoked for 25 years but I think I’m done, I just can’t picture myself in that whole smelly, disgusting picture.