Stress-free steam culture: a “pyro” is not a broken leg

I’m probably not the only one who remembers the stress of various attempts to quit smoking. Many manage physical withdrawal, get through the first weeks with or without help, carried by the euphoria: finally free of all the dirt! But this is only the beginning: the longer you have smoked, the more you hang on to traditions and rituals that have developed around smoking. Before and after a “meeting”, in the morning the FIRST to the coffee, the almost indispensable cigarette after the meal – and not to forget the “cigarette afterwards”. All this and much more is now gone and missing, painfully noticeable, even if you like to talk about it as “liberation” or try to ignore it. It takes time to establish alternatives and often it simply takes too long – or the alternatives simply have too many calories! 🙂

Never again? The relapse trap

My ca. sieben Rauchstoppversuche, lasting up to half a year all failed in the same way: At some point I tried one again, just to see how it would feel after such a long period of abstinence. After all, cigarettes don’t really taste good, which one notices as a non-smoker. And yes: it can even taste disgusting – and yet you feel motivated to try it again: There was something… I told myself that I could smoke a cigarette from time to time without falling back into the old consumption. But no: soon the buzzing got on my nerves, I bought another packet of tobacco that only lasted a whole week, but soon I was back to the old level of about 30 homemade ones a day. The non-smoking communicators are right: If you want to stay abstinent, don’t smoke ONE time, never again!
Nie wieder eine Zigarette?

This “never to think again” is already stress for heavy smokers. After all, cigarettes have many positive experiences and sensations associated with them, and such a “never again!” can be quite frightening, even if you don’t want to admit it in the first smoke-stopping joy. Therefore it is recommended to avoid the thought and instead to think “I don’t smoke today” – a difficult mental Ikebana, if you come across the warning “never again” everywhere. Read more →

Report on the transfer: My addiction story and the unexpected switch to the e-cigarette

[With this article I open the column “Umsteiger berichten”. Ex-smokers who are now steaming and willing to show their faces are invited to tell their own story. Mailt mich einfach an!]

No more smoking? The topic was for me as through as a topic can only be. Also the argument with the own failure in things smoke stop lay years back. I no longer struggled with my fate as a frequent smoker and the prospect of one day dying from it. After all, I had really tried hard, had stopped using different methods several times and had gone through abstinence periods of several months. I knew why I always found my way back to cigarettes: Not because of physical discomfort or extreme “power”, but because I was really missing something even after these symptoms had largely subsided. Unconsciously I tried to replace it with food and so every attempt to stop increased my weight – remaining, it did not decrease again when I had started again. Not very motivating to try it again, but I managed to make a total of about 7 serious attempts – I write “about” because I don’t remember the attempts before the 40th very well.

Do I smoke? Intellectual and material smoke stop attempts

Anyone who has smoked for several decades has a different starting point than someone in their mid-20s. My “addiction memory” had a lot of time to develop. I come from a family of smokers and remember fatherly admonitions that I should never start smoking, because you can’t get rid of it – recited with a cigarette in your hand. If he had drunk alcohol, he had offered me one before. Anyway, when I think back: there wasn’t (and isn’t) anyone in my family who doesn’t smoke. In the schoolyard smoking was the means to “belong” and around 20 smoking already belonged to me like eating & drinking.

“Smoking no longer belongs to me” – that was the brainwashing formula of a lovable “Forentroll” who helped many people with their mental reorientation in a friendly smoking stop forum. I also tried it and followed his suggestions to visualize the inner smoker and to ask her what she could accept “instead”. Unfortunately she was quite obdurate with me! 🙂 And after a few months of abstinence, I resignedly realized: Yes, smoking belongs to me! Shameful, shitty, life-threatening, but fact!
Read more →

Switched to e-cigarette: I’ve been steaming for a month – and from now on I’m blogging!

Hello all, who have landed on this start article – be greeted!
Every few years, whenever something new really changes my life, I start a new blog. And now that’s the case again, because since mid-December I’m steaming instead of smoking! I would never have thought that I would get away from tobacco again in this life. Seven times, spread over four decades, I seriously tried to quit smoking – but I didn’t make it in the long run. The last consumption, which had been stable for years, was: about 30 self-rolled cigarettes per day, costs for tobacco plus filter plus leaves about 170 Euro per month.

The fact that I discovered chronological blogging for myself at all was due to one of these attempts to quit: “Power of Now – das Tagebuch vom Leben ohne Zigarette” was the committed attempt to tackle it “purely mentally” with the thoroughly beneficial brainwashing after Alan Carr . Initially it worked out well, physical withdrawal is quite manageable if you are very motivated. But months later I was missing something and I started with “here and there a cigarette” – and soon everything was as usual. Likewise the mit Nikotintabletten unterfütterte rauchfreie Phase ended in 2006.

At the last attempt by point-closing method, supported by a friendly Nichtraucher-Community, I didn’t even tell myself I wanted to stop smoking forever, but only wanted a “moratorium on the lungs”. That was urgently necessary, as I coughed around, but my time out lasted only two months, then I quickly smoked my way back to the previous level. The idea of wanting to quit had thus died for me in every variant. I never thought about it again!

How it came to the fact that within a few days I was freed from the compulsion to tobacco consumption with its bis zu 9600 verschiedenen Stoffen, you can read here in the next days – if you like! 🙂 The category “steam diary” will be about my personal experiences with steaming, besides that I have many ideas for articles and information about this explosive topic. YES, it’s BRISANT, because powerful interest groups don’t like the fact that so many people suddenly switch from smoking to steaming, especially not when this happens in a way that really costs much less money. More about that later.

Actually, I wanted to put together a lot of information and first articles before I publish this blog. But this idea would probably have postponed the blog to St.Nimmerleinstag – I simply don’t enjoy writing for the drawer. So I just get started!

Why this blog?

Another blog about steaming – isn’t there enough already? As you can see on the page with the Dampf-Links, there is no lack of information and reports, but the scene of steam bloggers is still comparatively small. Each new blog makes the controversial topic and its political dimension known to a wider audience and encourages smokers to try it out. The more difficult it is for politicians to simply “regulate away” such a helpful and 1000 times less harmful alternative to tobacco consumption.

Also there are topics, which are quite underexposed in the media sighted by me so far or do not occur at all. For example:
Read more →

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