How can I convince my mum to quit smoking once and for all?

I am 50 and I have an adult daughter and son. What I would say to you, is to stop looking at your mother as a selfish person and as a human being. She lost her father, and that had to have been traumatic for her. Do you ever talk to her as if she were a friend? Or is she this mother figure that has to act a certain way? Could you gather up some empathy for what she has gone through in her life, before you judge her for her smoking habit and how it affects you? I have interests, I have dreams, I still think I have a life ahead of me at 50. I read books, I garden, I cook, I write, I research things. I have knowledge from 50 years of reading since I was 4 years old. Stories I have heard from my parents about the history of my family. Recipes. How my great-grandmother buried a bean at midnight to cure my father's wart. My grandmother making us homemade donuts. Having to use an outhouse when I was a kid. I sat and listened carefully to my mom and dad's stories when I was growing up, and as an adult. Even if they bored me (but truthfully, they often did not). I was interested when my Dad told me how to plant a tomato or how to use linseed oil and turpentine to make a wooden planter weather proof. Or how my Mom said to cook the carrots first before making a stew, because they always take too long before the potatoes. Are you friends with your mother, or do you only see this one side of her and wish she would stop it? I think, as friends, we naturally accept each others foibles, and forgive them, and realize that humans gravitate toward something in place of something else. Perhaps she's lonely? Would you be willing to spend time with her on the phone, listening to her, or encouraging her toward something else? If not, I don't see how you can judge her on smoking alone. Surely, as your mother, she must have more value than just that or how you might have to care for her in her future years.

I'm an only child and my mother died of smoking-related illness. She stopped smoking after quadruple heart-bypass surgery. For two years she was healthier than I had ever seen her. Then her mother died and after the funeral, one of her brothers handed her a cigarette. She was dead two years later. She didn't make it to 63. Some smokers live to be 100. Some die earlier. Smoking doesn't necessarily kill you but it did kill my mom. You can't do anything about that but be annoying. I think it's interesting that you wrote this: "As an only child I can forsee her getting some horrid form of cancer and me being the one that has to look after her." No you don't. You can go to her and say, I love you very much. I'm worried that smoking will kill you. If you get sick from it, I'm not prepared to take care of you. If you smoke or not is up to you. How I deal with it is up to me." Or not. Up to you. Finally, people smoke for lots of reasons, including anxiety, stress, mental illness, boredom, etc. It's nothing personal and it's not about you. Your mom is not being selfish, IMHO. She's being human. Love her anyway, if you can.

Vaporizers have gotten a lot more popular nowadays; if patches and nicotine gum helped last time, it might be that she can keep her addiction to nicotine but kick the smoking. Nicotine itself has some small adverse health effects, but so does caffeine and people don't seem to feel like it's majorly important to get everybody off of caffeine. You could try setting her up with an e-cigarette and see if she likes it enough to use it over the burning tobacco method of delivery. It's not that e-cigarettes are necessarily good or benign, but they're not as bad as smoking tobacco, and harm reduction might be a more reasonable goal here.

You can't run the lives of your parents. Do tell her to keep up the payments on her long term care insurance because shell need help when she's dying. I will point out that she was going to die of something and being the only child, you were always going to factor into her end of life plan. Do you think people live forever if they don't smoke, drink or overeat? Because I have some bad news for you.

It's really very hard to quit if you're not deep-down feeling the urge to quit. There's very little (if anything) you can say or do that's going to flip that primal willpower switch. It's extreme, but if you don't have kids you could have one and ask her to quit for that reason and it might work. That's the lengths you'd have to go to in order to successfully manipulate her to quit. As a former smoker, I am unmoved by the "all smokers die of smoking" certainty of non-smokers and non-smoking propaganda. I could get hit by a bus, die from an aneurism or vascular deformation I've had since birth, get ALS, get a waterborne amoeba up my nose from tap water, choke on a sandwich, be murdered by a wide range of people, slip in the shower, suicide, or be in a fire. My grandparents smoked for 30 years, quit for 30 years, and were felled by cancers and diseases that probably had more to do with their extremely poor childhoods, lack of sunscreen, being old, and WWII than the smoking. In their 80s/90s. They didn't choose to shorten shit (well, my grandmother refused chemo the second time she got breast cancer, she was done and opted out), they just ran down. I mean, smoking's bad for you, I know. I'm mostly glad I quit because it's expensive and smells bad, but I'm sort of healthier except for my metabolism completely shitting the bed and having to treat my anxiety via other means and not having the absolute joy of smoking, but they say I'm healthier anyway. She's going to do what she's going to do. You need to decide how much you're going to make it about you. If you only want to take care of her if she gets sick in some ways but not others, do that. All you can really do is express your desire clearly once, support her if she does make efforts that please you, and remove yourself from the situation if you can't accept her as-is. If she is interested, you can get her that book on Amazon that everyone says made them quit. Or you can take her to that guy in New York who stares at you or something and you never smoke again (celebrities love him) but I don't think either of those options work 100% and I'm sure they don't work if you don't want them to. It is ultimately up to her to feel ready.

As an old lady with several serious medical issues and on my last legs, really, I find it really annoying when my kids think it's okay to "parent" me. I quit smoking 23 years ago and 7 years later developed COPD which came on fast and hard and knocked me to the ground even though I was fit and energetic and doing a job that required plenty of physical exertion with no problem. I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and they couldn't get my oxygen saturations where they belonged and I was discharged on oxygen; I've been on it ever since. Note: 23 years after I quit smoking. I'm now at the "very severe" level. It didn't take long before the word "exertion" took on a whole new meaning and I could do less and less walking, working, talking, etc. - so I got fat. Yep - now I'm "obese" too, though not enough to get my physicians worked up, thankfully. My kids have alternately tried to get me to exercise more, eat less, take this herb or that supplement, etc, and they, of course, think smoking is the whole reason I'm where I am today. Nope. I also have Parkinson's, and that's why I'm where I am today; oddly enough, nicotine is actually protective against Parkinson's! The neurologist who diagnosed it 20 years ago said my smoking actually kept me moving longer and delayed the symptoms of Parkinson's by a few years, not that that would make a great difference in the grand scheme of things. Don't parent your Mom - please just don't. You aren't dealing with what she's dealing with - you have your own body, mind and spirit to take care of and that's enough to keep you busy. And when you next think that it's going to be a real bitter hassle for you to take care of her when she's dying of lung cancer and you're stuck with the mess, try - just try - to remember that she took care of you when you were dealing with stuff you brought on yourself, too - that's what people do who love each other. Addictions are incredibly nasty - all addictions. Dependence on cigarettes is very complicated because they affect the body chemically and the mind psychologically - and chemical changes to the body cause psychological changes to the mind; see? It's complicated. IOW, you can't fix it. Don't try - and try to talk yourself out of condemning your mother at any level for her smoking addiction - you're not perfect either, and she needs your love, now and later. And you need hers. Good luck, honey.

If it is reassuring to you, this is how many smokers quit. They quit for a while, then something stressful happens and they start again, and then they quit again and so on and eventually it sticks. This might just be a phase. My mum smoked all my childhood and quit when I was 12. When my gran died when I was 15, she started again. Then she quit again a couple of years later. Started again when she was depressed; quit again a year after that. Now she hasn't smoked in about 10 years and I think she's finally done. It's a pattern I've seen a lot. I think you are best waiting until she has recovered from her current stress and is actively wanting to quit again, and then support her however you can.

Does she have any interest in trying e-cigarettes? I've switched over to a pretty basic vape pen (a Kanger Evod), and my tobacco cravings went away almost immediately. I know the jury is still out on the health risks of e-cigs, but it has to be better than putting burning tar in your lungs. I've gotten my breath-capacity back, and I've been able to reduce the amount of nicotine in the juices I buy. And I like that I can still engage in the action of smoking, as that's part of the addiction. Ideally, no one would smoke, but as it is so, so, so hard to quit, even without the emotional necessity of smoking, ecigs might be the most viable option. If she is interested, I would suggest she try something like what I use instead of the convenience-store brands, as I found them pretty vile. If you live near a store, you can also try some of the flavors, which I didn't think I would like, but I found I preferred over the plain tobacco taste. I'm currently in love with a coffee/toffee/tobacco mix that curbs my desire to smoke and snack.

I think the problem is that if she's stressed, she'll smoke or have a glass of wine. Rather than learn to deal with stress in healthier ways. Like everyone's said, she has to want to quit, but if you are going to try to convince her, you need to deal with the issue of stress. There is nothing scarier than someone trying to take away your method of stress relief and leaving nothing in its place. Are there things you can suggest that would help reduce her stress level? "Hey mom, let's go for a bike ride in the forest" or "I'll come over and help you garden"? But... you have to do this with no expectation that she'll quit, because you cannot be responsible for someone else's stress level. You are only showing her options.