The great tabooo

I have been meaning to start a journal for years and never have been quite disciplined enough to do it. One of my biggest fears is someone may read it. Now that the house is empty and demands are less that may be one of the things I can do to restructure my life.

Yeah— the less you try to pick one the better off you’ll do. Lots of them have minimum initial amounts, which can be the difficulty. A lot of good ones have ETF equivalents that have no minimum, but they’re generally a bad idea because you’re generally paying a commission for every purchase… Look at broad based low cost index funds like vtsmx from vanguard of fstmx from fidelity or things along those lines that are not actively managed. Invest directly with a fund family and not with a brokerage. Make contributions automatic so they require no decision making, the less you try the better it works generally. Above all else understand that long term investments frequently decrease in value before they increase. That’d be my advice without getting too far off on a tangent hopefully.

I am profoundly unqualified to offer such advice. So take it with a grain of salt.

1 Like

Being in the same room with a smoker either suffocates me from smoke or sends me begging them for a cigarette. I even went as far as buying a cigarette from an employee behind McDonalds as I went thru the driveway and saw him smoking. I usually go cold turkey but the endurance to stick sucks. Your right after meals or in the mornings I look for that routine cigarette so I have to replace the habit with something else

I had a friend who switched to e-cigarettes, then gradually tapered down his nicotine dose till he was just smoking the flavored-stuff. That allowed him to hold onto the positively reinforced habit until it gradually lost its association with the reward.
Of course, for many e-cigarettes can be a gateway to smoking, but Id’ also not beat myself up about the difficulty of quitting. Doesn’t it take the average smoker like 12 attempts before they finally kick the habit? Which means have of people may take more tries. I’d say not to view the times you quit then started again as failures, but rather a few months less of cumulative damage to deal with, then refocus your efforts to try again.

Smoking is such a tough addiction to kick. My dad smoked for 30 years behind our backs. My mom wanted him to quit and he just couldn’t. We got a nasty shock when he had triple bypass and the doctor asked about his risk factors and he admitted to decades of smoking.

I smoked for three years, mostly pipe, but also cigarettes and cigars. I went off cold turkey and it was hell. It took more than 10 years to get off of it. Even today i have the urge to smoke when i enter an airport.

I hope you find some help. The only sure thing i know is that you have stop and be prepared for it to be tough., But it is worth it.

2 Likes

I smoked for twenty years, I was a single father of two adults.
My son died in an accident. No question I could see my daughter was waiting for me to die from smoking. Great motifation and With help from the patch I succeeded.
16 years tobacco free. )

1 Like

Not sure if it would help, but there is a book by Allen Carr called “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking” or something close to that. He also wrote “Easy way to Control Alcohol”. Along the same principles. I’m listening to that one on audiobook. I like my beer and its painkilling effect too much these days :confused:.

Not sure if it will work yet but I like that he claims I’ll need no will power and that there is no blame on me, only on the addictive and poisonous substance. That if I see it in its true light devoid of glamor and whatever conditioning I have about it, I can easily free myself and never want it again, avoid it like the plague it is. Hmm. We’ll see.

Good luck, though! I smoked when I was young for 8 years, 2-1/2 packs a day. Bleah! Quitting was in no way “easy” but I used will power, plus, I gave it to my father for Father’s Day as a gift (I had a huge respect for him that made it more awful for me to lapse than to suffer through the cravings and withdrawal, if that makes sense? Really scary to drop that Father’s Day card into the mailbox!)

1 Like