Is not easy if you wait till your old. Doctor said it is dangerous to quit too fast. He said to taper down or could cause a stoke. But tapering down is too hard. I've quit before about 30 yr ago but started back and my SIL quit a couple years ago no tapering down. Ahe was 68. I'm 72. What do you say?
I've never smoked so I'm no help. I've never heard of that "taper down" thing, though. My husband has been a smoker for 0ver 40 years and I expect he'll never quit. He smokes out on the patio; never in the house or car.
I know you should taper off of alcohol, but have not heard this regarding tobacco. I'd follow your doctor's advice and, of course, read about it on the internet I picked up a cigar habit when I quit drinking and used Nicorette gum to quit...then I had to use regular chewing gum to get off of the Nicorette. I've lost a father and 2 brothers at young ages to the habit. It's good to quit.
We never smoke in the house and seldom in the van and then only moving down the road with windows down. Stopped smoking inside over 40 years ago. I'm glad you never picked up the stinking habit.
It's kind of weird that I never smoked; my father was a tobacco farmer and everyone in my immediate family smoked except me. (My brother died a year ago of lung cancer.) When I was a kid my mom was never far from her pack of L&Ms and I'm sure I inhaled enough second-hand smoke that I should be classified as a "smoker." Smoke was always hanging in the air in the house or any vehicle we were in. Four of our 5 kids dabbled in smoking in high school/college but thankfully none smoke now. They all nag their dad but I never say anything to him. I figure he's an adult and it's his life, though I worry about the health effects.
My mother died of lung cancer in our front room, she would not go to hospital. Nor allow Hospice to help me with her care. We rented hospital bed, oxygen tanks and took her to get radiation treatment's which I was against but it was her decision. She wanted to see the Jax Pier one more time so we had a nice daughter mother time on that trip. My aunt, momma's sister also died at home with her daughter from lung cancer. It is a bad way to go. I took her last pulse and called fire dept. I was very glad to be able to care for her. Momma begged me to stop smoking did not want this kind of end for me.
I managed to quit decades ago; however, tapering down never worked for me. I had to go "cold turkey" to make it off.
I smoked from about my sophomore year of high school to a couple of years after high school, and I only smoked about a half pack a day, but I still couldn't quit on my own and stay quit. When I was going to adopt my son, I wanted to quit so that he wouldn't pick up the habit, and I ended up going through a program called Stop for Life, which actually made it pretty easy, and I haven't had a drag off of a cigarette since.
I do not give advice or nag to adults. But dammit you got it in your immediate family!!!!!! And so do I. I still recall when I quit drinking (also a family problem for me) and picking up the cigar habit. "I deserve at least one vice." I was 36 years old. Where in the heck does that kind of logic come from??????? And I, too, lived with my father when he died of it at 55 years of age (actually, it was the combination of smoking and drinking that got him.) I was 19-20 years old. My older brother and I lived with him for a couple of years. This was 1975. We were given a fridge full of Demerol, lessons on how to give shots, and permission to shoot him up as much as he wanted. Good times (not!)
I had my first granddaughter at 37 when Momma was sick with it, she helped me to get thru the loss and pain.She was 9 months old.
I don't know if you could find this anywhere, but if you can, get the original old time Indian Tobacco and smoke as much as you like. Since it does not have any harmful ingredients like the cigarettes manufactured since wwi at least in the usa, there is no harm to the smoker nor the smokee, or other people around. Some people were able to get harmless cigarettes, smokes, or cigars in Japan, but those were not allowed to be sold in the usa.