Stop Smoking praise thread!!

[childlike2002]

I just had to jump in and say PRAISE THE LORD!! I pray for every person out there who is getting rid of this habit, may the LORD bless you and take the desire to smoke from you. I also pray that if anyone of us out there has any other issue's that war agaisnt the spirit, that the LORD would take those things from us as well.

[TheFish]

My Father stopped smoking 3 months ago. The day he was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. On Sept. the 17th he ended his battle with cancer and went on to be with the Lord. During the short three month battle, he came to accept Christ as his Savior. I implore you, if your a smoker it affects more than just you. Those left behind must find a way to continue on but we will always have a hole in our heart knowing how much he missed being there with us. My father was just 63. I quit smoking 8 years ago. The gum helped me quit, it can help you too. God Bless and may your fight to quit be successful.

[HehasmagnifiedHisWord]

did you gain weight when you were kicking the habit. Some do gain,but eventually they lose the weight too.

TheFish= thanks for sharing how you quit smoking. Our prayers for you at the time of your Father's passing. Tammy Faye Bakker Messner never smoked in her life but she died of lung cancer.

[cat]

That's my new battle, the weight gain.:doh But, just like quitting smoking,(49 days) I must look to the Lord for strength. Congratulations to all of you who have quit and thanks for your prayers.

[HehasmagnifiedHisWord]

That is good 49 days and counting!

Yes, the Lord will give us the strength to lose the weight.

What method are you using to quit smokin/

Praying for you all!

Keep up the good job!!

[cat]

I took Chantix. I only took it for 8 weeks-my ins. wouldn't pay. I didn't feel I could afford the third round. I don't like to recommend medication because there are always side effects, but I do think it worked for me.
If I had taken the recommended 12 weeks maybe I wouldn't have had the
hunger so bad?:idunno Anyway, I think it's beginning to level off. I feel better
about it now. I read about how your metabolism slows down when you quit
smoking but will speed back up as your body adjusts. I'm walking every morning to help it along.
I'm beginning to feel like a non-smoker. It's a whole new way of life for me after smoking 30 years! God is so good and so is life! I know if I can quit- anyone can!:preach

[Harpadzo]

Praise God I no longer smoke after 30 years! After numerious attempts always returning to smoking but, no more. After I quit I kept having thoughts about wanting to smoke pop into my head. I realized satan was behind this and so I began to say, Thank you Jesus I no longer smoke every time the thought popped into my head. Guess what? These incidents occurred less and less. Now I hardley ever even think about it. Congrats to all who have quit and praise God for setting us free!

[watchingandwaiting]

Daily small, victories are great victories!

[childlike2002]

I will be smoke free for 7 months on Oct 19th. Once I got past the first 2 months- it got alot easier. Now I rarely get a craving. I praise GOD just about everyday for taking it from me. For 20 years I tried to quit countless times. I pray for everyone out there who wants to quit smoking that GOD would take this burden from you!

[4given]

My Father stopped smoking 3 months ago. The day he was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. On Sept. the 17th he ended his battle with cancer and went on to be with the Lord. During the short three month battle, he came to accept Christ as his Savior. I implore you, if your a smoker it affects more than just you. Those left behind must find a way to continue on but we will always have a hole in our heart knowing how much he missed being there with us. My father was just 63. I quit smoking 8 years ago. The gum helped me quit, it can help you too. God Bless and may your fight to quit be successful.

I quit smoking 17 years ago. I was working at a very large maximum security prison in Florida. I was the compound officer in charge of escorting inmate details to work. I was at one end of the prison when a body alarm went off in a dormitory at the other end of the prison. Due to the fact I was the only extra officer available I had to run to the alarm. When I got to the scene it was a false alarm, Thank God, because I was gasping for breath. I would have been a liability and not an asset if it would have been an actual emergency. As I made my way back to my office, I reached into my pocket pulled out my pack of cigarettes crushed them and threw them in the trash. I was embarrased and ashamed that I could not run 1/4 of a mile without being out of breath. I MADE my mind up that I was going to quit them things right then and there. I had tried to quit before to no avail.

I had always figured the reason I could not quit was it IS a Two Part addiction. Part One ~ Physcological and Part Two ~ Physical, an addiction of the mind and body. If you cannot beat both addictions, I do not believe you can quit. The physcological addiction is the toughest one to break. You have to conquer it first. You have to want to quit, then you have to make up your mind to quit. Why do you smoke? What reasons do you smoke for? What triggers the need to smoke?

The physical addiction will take longer than 90 days to leave your body, and that is the worse part it is like the smoking DT's. In fact they say it takes a year. I believe that varies by person. The lungs begin to heal themselves, the doctors say if you quit for a period of ten years your lungs will be like they were before you started smoking. That is a long time for healing.

I knew I had to quit and I wanted to quit, but I could not quit until I consciously decided to quit for good. Now I did throw away the cigarettes that night, but I knew I would have to taper off gradually to be successful. I went from smoking two packs a day to 1/2 a pack, then down to three a day, then one a day in about a month.

Each day I would pray diligently for God to take away the desire to smoke from me. Sometimes I believe God requires an action to get a reaction. Everyday after work I would stop by the high school and run on the track. When I first started back running I could not run one lap 440 yards without being out of breath. After two weeks I could run the 440, after a month I was running an 880 and after six weeks I was back to running a mile a day. At 90 days I was running 3 miles a day, which was my goal. When I reached this goal I cut back to running 3 miles every other day.

I could not stand to be around someone smoking for almost a year because it made me want a cigarrette. It was about a year and a half after I quit when I felt the Lord say to me OK I am going to lift this burden from you Andy. Praise God! Because when He took it from me I knew that instant I would never smoke again. I went from smoking two packs a day for the previous 9 years to 0. When the Lord lifted it from me He gave me something in return too. He gave me a sincere disdain for even the smell of smoke. I could now smell it from 50 yards away, and it smelled awful. I would leave resturaunts and other places because the smell would literally make me sick to my stomach.

After I quit, (I only smoked for about twelve years), I tried for about 5 years to get my mom to stop smoking. She had been smoking 38 years at that time. After 5 years of constant pleading and nagging her I finally gave up trying to get her to quit and I just resolved that she would never quit. Mom had developed a smokers cough that would not go away. It eventually caused her to get pneumonia. That what the doctors diagnosed her with. She called me up from the hospital and said she was going to quit because it was killing her. She started using the patch and taking Wellbutrin and praise God she did it she quit!

But for her it was too little too late. The doctors treated her for pneumonia for almost six months with no improvement. I took her to Savannah, GA. to Memorial Hospital. They admitted her and did a lung xray, the doctor told me he did not like what he saw so he was going to do a CT (cat scan). CT is what my wife, who is a nurse, does for a living. So I have seen hundreds of CT scans. Which did me no justice when I saw the segmented pictures of my moms right lung. I saw the cancerous tumor in her right brachial branch and I knew what it was before the doctor even saw the scan. The doctor came to me and told me it looked suspicious and they were going to admit my mom and do a lung biopsy in the morning.

I was with mom when the Pulmonary Specialist came in and told her she had small cell carcinoma (smokers cancer) and it was terminal. Eleven months, twelve chemotherapy treatments, and twenty five radiation treatments later my mom died, two months shy of her 60th birthday. That year was a living hell for my family. It is a horrible and painful way to die.

The last two weeks of her life she was in our local small town hospital. The respiratory therapists would come in her room and suction this apple jelly looking crud out of her lung. The last week they were getting over a liter a day out. The guy would finish suctioning out moms lung, then step out on the courtyard behind her room and smoke a cigarette. I steped out and asked him how he could do that. How can you suction that cancer out of her lung knowing it will kill her in a few days and then step outside and smoke? He says, yeah I know I really need to quit as he exhaled the smoke. I told him that was my mom dying in that room and I only see that once in a lifetime, but you see it everyday how can you still smoke? He could not answer me.

I will speak to anyone anytime in anyway I can help them quit. In fact I was somewhat instrumental in helping the Georgia senator from Dalton, who is a physician, in helping getting smoking in resturaunts banned in the state of Georgia. What a relief to be able to eat a meal without smelling that disgusting smell or having my children exposed to the toxic secondhand smoke.

You can quit, You must quit, for all our childrens sake!