Calling it quits

Ex-smokers talk about methods, difficulties in kicking the habit

Some 6,000 deaths are related to smoking each year in South Carolina, since the habit is tied to health problems from lung cancer to heart disease and circulation problems that lead to amputations. The city of Charleston's new public smoking ban takes a bite out of the places people can light up, though, and health educators say those types of laws can spur smokers to quit.

But nicotine is a highly addictive drug, so the vow is often easier said than done.

Between 5 percent and 15 percent of people are able to quit smoking for at least six months without any medicine to help with withdrawal, according to the American Cancer Society.

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

Joyce Jones of Hanahan quit smoking cold turkey in January after smoking for 16 years.

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

Before she quit smoking four months ago, Carla Waters of Goose Creek stepped out onto her front porch to smoke cigarettes.

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

Sixty-year-old Carol Tully quit smoking this spring after smoking for 40 years.

Research shows that the odds of success increase to 25 percent to 33 percent when smokers use medicines. Choices these days can include combination therapies, such as the antidepressant Wellbutrin plus nicotine patches, or cessation drugs, including Zyban and Chantix. Still other smokers report that tapering down their cigarette consumption helps, and some hardy souls find success by quitting cold turkey.

If you're trying to quit, take a page from these recent quitters, who say 2007 is the year for them to kick the habit for good.

Carol Tully

Age 60, North Charleston.

Carol Tully lit up her first cigarette at age 18. Forty-two years later, she was still puffing.

She tried to quit plenty of times before, with help from Wellbutrin and the nicotine patch. The patch helped curb her cravings, but filled her nights with bizarre dreams and hallucinations. Eventually, she weaned herself off it and stayed away from the smokes for three years. She lapsed back into the habit a few years ago while awaiting surgery. As she paced the halls of the hospital before her operation, stress and worry seeping through her, she craved the calm from her old friend.

"I thought, 'I'll just have one,' " she recalls.

But it was more than one — it was the start of full-time smoking. Again.

Then this year, as her birthday neared, her conviction rose up. The raucous coughing fits she had each morning fueled it, too.

"I don't know what it was about 60, but I needed to get off these things," she says. "When April came, before my birthday, I was so disgusted I said, 'I've got to do something.' I was bound and determined."

She began taking Chantix, a prescription drug made by Pfizer that's designed to be taken for 12 weeks. It acts on the same parts of the brain as nicotine, but doesn't actually contain the drug like patches or gums. In studies run by its manufacturer, 44 percent of Chantix users had quit at the end of 12 weeks, compared with 30 percent of those who had used Zyban, another popular nicotine cessation drug.

But since study participants received counseling and had frequent follow-up visits with investigators while taking the drug, critics say those statistics are artificially inflated. For Tully, though, it took only three days for the drug to do its dirty work — making cigarettes taste "nasty." The taste turned her off so badly she barely thought about smoking. It also altered the taste of alcohol, which banished another of her cigarette triggers.

To cement her attempt to quit, though, Tully began attending the S.C. Department of Environmental Control's Quit and Win program for peer support.

"From listening to everybody else, I knew I couldn't go through this again," she says. "It really gave me that little boost."

Carla Waters

Age 42, Goose Creek.

Like many smokers, Carla Waters picked up the habit as a teenager, because her friends did it and she wanted to fit in. Years later, the effects of the tar-filled smoke on her body were becoming clear: She coughed and gagged each morning when she woke up.

She quit once in the 1980s in order to have back surgery, but it didn't stick. This spring, she got serious.

Her solutions this time around? Her faith and breath mints.

First, she prayed a lot, "talked to God constantly" about her desire to quit. And because she says she couldn't afford Chantix or another nicotine cessation drug, she took a decidedly low-tech approach to masking her cravings.

"I would just suck on a mint until it was gone," she says. "I kept a mint in my mouth for two weeks. It was mind over matter."

Waters has gained a bit of weight since she stopped smoking, a common complaint among former smokers, since nicotine is a stimulant that seems to suppress the appetite, but she says she's trying to search for alternatives to keep herself busy when the urges to smoke or eat strike.

"If you can do something else with your hands besides eating, you're good to go," she says.

Joyce Jones

Age 42, Hanahan.

Joyce Jones was ashamed to be a smoker.

"I never really liked smoking cigarettes," she says. "I always wanted to get rid of the filthy habit."

She smoked mostly when she was bored or upset, and she knew she could curb it in certain situations. She never smoked in the house or certain social situations, for instance. She felt sure she could give it up if she really tried, especially with support from her 17-year-old daughter.

So on Jan. 1, after smoking for 16 years, she quit cold turkey. The nicotine cravings weren't so tough to beat, she says.

"I just fought it, and it would go just as fast as it came," she says, noting that sometimes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would fill the need instead.

But what Jones felt emotionally as her body got used to life without the drug knocked her off kilter.

"I never really believed you could have withdrawal symptoms from a cigarette," she says. "I had nightmares, I couldn't sleep, and my temper was really short with the people in my household. I was really losing it."

That's when she signed on with the Quit and Win program, and learned tricks to manage her stress as she inched away from her longtime habit. She pulled away from smoker friends who didn't support her efforts, and scrubbed her clothes and her car to get the smell of smoke out. More than seven months later, she's ready to declare success.

"You always feel like you could smoke one," she says, "but at this point? Please! I won't even go near them."

Quitters Win

For more help quitting smoking, visit these resources:

--www.lungusa.org

--www.cancer.org

--www.smokefreecharleston.com

You can also call DHEC's Quit and Win program at 746-3875 or phone the American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345.

Reach Holly Auer at 937-5560 or hauer@postandcourier.com.