A Month Without: Nicotine
How I gave up smoking in Feb’14
As part of my 2014 health resolution, I’m going to practice a very peculiar form of self improvement/torture. I am going to focus on one habit at a time for a month. I will evaluate at the start of the next month whether I want to continue it or not.
I am not the first (crazy) one to do this. A quick google search would give quiet a lot of links. It may or may not be triggered by a health initiative. For instance, last year I went on and started shutting down my digital social media outlets starting with Facebook in April 2013. That wasn’t as structured as this year’s focus. But thats the topic of another post perhaps.
February 2014 was about giving up a 6 year old habit/addiction for cigarettes or more precisely, nicotine. I picked up that habit in 2008 while working at Bentley Systems as a software engineer. I had experimented with social smoking with friends earlier at college as well. I was an energetic, enthusiastic mid-20s programmer that spent nights in the office alone. I was also going through a rough patch in personal relationships. With no family around and no company either (all my friends were still struggling at college), cigarettes seemed to be a good alternative. Perhaps peer pressure played a part too since all the cool engineers smoked and there were some really good conversations every day at the after lunch smoking breaks.
There were times when I would be smoking 20+ full-flavor cigarettes a day and sometimes only 2. There was not much of a rhythm to my smoking uptil the day I left smoking altogether. It would console me in the time is sadness, calm me in stress, focus me in pressure and all sort of goodies. All this was good until I was back into the society (read got married and had a kid).
Its only after you give up smoking that you realize how awful and offensive your personal habit can really be. It has been more than two month and now I can smell a smoker 10 feet away. If someone smokes in my car, I realize what my wife and kid would have felt. I thought the smell would disappear in a few minutes but now I can smell smoke off the people who aren’t even smokers but were just hanging out with smokers. It was embarassing enough to be told that my little one smells like a cigarette!
The side effects so far is that I can no longer indulge in the luxury of 5-10 minute breaks (7-10 times a day) for relaxing, thinking, de-stressing, brainstorming, etc. Even worse is that I can no longer congratulate myself after accomplishing something. Horrible, right? But I think I will find an alternative. I think I already have — food. I have gained 6KG since I gave up smoking on 3rd February 2014. I think this layer of fat can be burned at the road later. The good thing is that I no longer crave for it, can save up that money and I am generally more habitable.
I went cold turkey on smoking the morning of 3rd February 2014. The first week was the most horrible. I surrounded myself with material that would encourage me. Apps, books, forums, blogposts. I had read up on it so much that I almost knew when would the craving hit me and how to handle it.
Resources
The best resource was Joel Spitzer’s Never take another puff. I read a chapter of it everytime I had a craving.
The best app (for iOS) was David Crane’s Smoke Free — Stop smoking now. Its awesome feature of showing me how my body is improving really encouraged me. The goals with their funny and addictive gifs were also amazing.
Finally, It would not have been possible without the amazing power of chaining your habits. I used Lift app to track my progress one day at a time.
Taking it up a notch, using Azumio’s instant heart rate monitor app, I was able to keep track of my heart condition. Before quitting, the resting heart-beat was beyond 85bpm. At some times, it was as much as 95+ bpm. Throughout my cold turkey time with smoking, I kept a tab on my heart rate. I’m really happy to see it between 65-75bpm while resting. I feel less anxiety, sweaty palms and better sleep (not to mention no more horrible tasting mouth in the morning).
My wife had no idea I had given up smoking till about a month into the habit (or lack of), or atleast she pretended she didn’t know. Either way, there was not much of a social support for this. I’m glad I pulled it off so far myself.
So, the verdict is that I am definitely going to keep doing this as long as I can.
So, stay tuned. For March, its going to be Caffine.
Drop me an email if this article helps you in some way as well.
