I Finally Quit Smoking
And it was surprisingly easy.
--
I did it, my friends. I finally quit. It’s about to be my first month of nicotine sobriety and let me tell you, I am thriving and feeling the need to share my story with the world.
I wish I could provide some useful tips and tricks on how to quit smoking but I am afraid that I might be a bit of a particular case. If reading about my journey is going to inspire someone to quit though, I will consider my job here well done.
I was a smoker for almost 10 years, having picked up my habit randomly at 15. Back then, cigarettes still came in cute packaging and different flavors. I miss those apple-flavored slims dearly but the reasoning behind banning them, being they are appealing to kids, is absolutely valid. It surely was the gateway to tobacco for me.
I was never peer pressured into smoking, nor did I ever think that a cigarette in my hand would make me look cooler. No, I genuinely liked the taste (shocking, I know) and craved a cigarette the same way I crave a piece of cake. My secondary reason was coping with stress — smoking really does help with that, the nicotine as well as the grounding act of lighting up itself.
Ever since that time, I smoked around four cigarettes per day on average. Less when I was around my family. More when I was partying or extremely stressed out. Before finals, I always turned into the living stereotypical student caricature, surviving solely on caffeine and nicotine for days.
But it never went past that. Sure, there were instances during which I went through a pack within two days. But the habit didn’t really intensify over time. I was your regular, everyday, casual smoker.
At 17, I stopped smoking for half a year due to temporarily moving to Canada, where I wasn’t allowed to smoke and I wasn't going to risk it. Although I did have cravings from time to time, not being able to smoke was the least serious of all the issues I ran into while living in Canada, so I didn’t really miss it too much.
Yet one of the first things I did once I arrived back home was buying a pack to celebrate my return, picking up my habit right where I left it off.
When I started my 9-to-5 job, I decided to quit and take my newly found adulthood onto the next level. At the time, I was already kind of trying to get rid of this “hobby” of mine but I never seemed to find a good enough reason.
My dedication lasted for exactly one month until I found out that our office was full of occasional smokers and cigarette breaks with coworkers were a great way to spice up the, otherwise bland and monotone, day. The magical combo of the “3 C’s” — coffee, cognac, and cigarette — became a meme and a motto to live by among the people I worked with.
I seemed to be going in circles and almost accepted my fate of dying a smoker.
My family wasn’t really full of smokers but when I think about smoking, I somehow always end up thinking about my grandparents.
Grandpa was a heavy smoker his entire life and would always smell like cigarettes, dogs and manual labor, a combination of smells I hated so I always had to hold my breath to be able to even give my pops a hug. He was a remarkable man, but cancer eventually got the best of him. The kicker is, it was colon cancer. His tar-ridden lungs served him well until his last breath.
Ironic, right? Yes, I could die from lung cancer but I can also get hit by a bus tomorrow so why quit?
My grandma, on the other hand, was a big woman and by big I mean fat. Legend has it that she used to be thin and pretty when she was younger and had put on all that weight after she curbed her smoking habit. My family members always told me how much I reminded them of her.
If we are really so similar, does that mean that if I quit now, I’m going to uncontrollably gain tons of weight? No thanks.
I loved my grandparents fondly but I absolutely used their stories as an excuse for keeping my self-destructive habit alive.
What actually spelled the end of an era for me was moving to Australia. Cigarettes are extremely expensive over here, I never learned how to roll tobacco for my own good and I really love my money more than I love my nicotine.
Australia as a country takes its anti-smoking laws very seriously and though as a European, I don’t necessarily agree with the way things are done over here, it surely does its job at keeping people from developing and feeding unhealthy nicotine addiction.
I know that “I could quit at any time if I wanted to” is something that every addict says, to others as well as to themselves. But I had always kind of known that this was the case for me. I just never had the right motivation to quit, my mentality being that I’d rather be unhealthy than fat.
Funny how the priorities change along with your circumstances. Right now, I’d rather be healthy and fat than unhealthy and poor. And so once I ran out of the IQOS heetsticks that I managed to smuggle over the border, I officially became a non-smoker.
Finally, here are some changes to my mindset that helped me quit.
Identifying the reasons why I smoked
For me, it was mostly these few: stress (exams, relationships, work), boredom (waiting for the bus, being home alone), socializing (partying and cigarette breaks) and replacing food. Putting a finger on the exact reasons why I reached for a cigarette helped me to come up with ideas on how to tackle each of those issues in a more healthy way.
Switching to IQOS
For those unfamiliar with such thing, an IQOS is a device for inhaling heated tobacco, a hybrid between a cigarette and a vape of sorts, that is gaining popularity in Europe as well as other countries all over the world right now. I made the switch back in December when regular cigarettes no longer tasted good to me and it made my transition to quitting oh so much easier.
I am not saying that alternatives to cigarettes (IQOS, Juul, vape…) are healthier or better for you at all, but they can be useful as temporary replacements before you quit for good.
Knowing myself and my limits
I know that I am not the type of person that is prone to addictions. It is very easy for me to do things in moderation, which is something I know many others struggle with, especially since for some reason, I tend to attract people that are the exact opposite of me into my life.
I have always subconsciously known that given the right circumstances, unlearning to smoke wouldn’t be that hard of a task for me at the end of the day. I just struggled to find the right motivation, especially since I feared the possible weight gain so much.
Getting tired of the negatives
We all know what eventually happens to smokers. Their teeth get ugly. Their nails and hair become fragile. Their lungs become weak, they develop a cough. And above all, they stink.
I reached the point in my life where I prioritize self-care. I don’t ever want to be told that I smell bad. I want my teeth and hair to be as beautiful and healthy as possible. And of course, it’s not a good time to be a smoker in the current age of deadly lung infections.
Reframing my relationship towards smoking
It is hard to change something that works for you, which is the number one reason why I never felt a strong enough urge to quit — tobacco was a positive thing in my life, not a harmful one.
It was important for me to remind myself of the things about smoking that were working against me. For example:
- It costs money that could be used more efficiently in the future.
- Most of my friends are non-smokers and it made me feel like the odd one out, the messy friend who doesn’t have their life together.
- Smoking in public made me sometimes feel low-class and worse than others, which doesn’t correlate with the image of myself I want to portray.
It’s only been about a month so I can’t really tell if I am observing any changes on myself but that also goes for the possible negative consequences — the much-feared weight gain hasn’t arrived, at least so far.
I don’t know if I will ever go back to smoking — right now, it seems pointless to me. I never understood how fully grown adults pick up such a nasty habit when they should know better — most smokers usually start at a young age like me. I can’t really see myself starting anew now that I am older and wiser.
I will probably always have a sort of positive relationship with tobacco and I never want to become that person who looks down on smokers and starts theatrically coughing and pinching their nose as soon as a faint smell of nicotine hits their nostrils.
But quitting was absolutely the right choice for me and I am fully ready to assume my new identity as a non-smoker and continue my life journey with one unnecessary unhealthy addiction less.
