A Guide to Quitting Smoking
Or more appropriately, quitting nicotine. Which is exactly what I did. I quit smoking too and I quit smoking first, but eventually I had to also quit nicotine. I was a long-term smoker of over 2 decades and just this year decided to kick the habit, initially switching to a nicotine vape, then eventually quitting that as well. I quit and now I’m typing this up so I can walk you through it. I’d suggest saving this article if you or someone you know is interested in quitting, even if it’s not right this very second, and hopefully it will come in handy for you or someone you know.
One thing that has made quitting so difficult for me over the years is simply the lack of info out there pertaining to what it’s going to be like, what’s going to take place, what I was to be going through, in a step-by-step way. There was so much uncertainty in my mind surrounding quitting smoking that I would panic and jump back to smoking for the sheer familiarity of it; at least I could predict how I would feel every hour while smoking, and there was comfort in that. The goal here is to provide you not only with a sense of not being alone in your quit, but also a sense of knowing what’s coming next.
Quitting smoking feels like suddenly being thrust into pitch blackness, having to relearn everything by feel rather than sight, for an analogy, and if you smoke a cigarette, the lights all come back on and you can see again — but at the expense of major health consequences. The good news is that the dark room analogy holds true, in that in enough time, just as your eyes would adjust to the darkness of even the darkest rooms, so too will your body adjust to not having nicotine anymore. And it feels great once you get to that point.
This story is an attempt to give you that play-by-play so you can hopefully gain some familiarity with the process and understand what’s around every corner, making it easier for you or someone you know to quit smoking.
*I’m writing this to help anyone who may want to get off of nicotine, vapers and smokers alike, and I cannot emphasize enough how much switching from smoking to vaping first, then quitting just the nicotine later helped in the process. Rather than quitting hundreds of questionable chemicals found in cigs, I was able to quit just the vape nicotine. Either way, you’ll eventually need to quit the nicotine itself, and that’s what this is about; quitting nicotine cold turkey.*
It’s going to hurt — a lot — you’ll be miserable when you quit, but it will be worth it; it’s going to feel like every cell of your body is on fire. It did for me and I just wanted answers: “How long will it be like this? How long do I have to experience this absolute hell?” I thought to myself.
“How long will I be deficient, incapable of doing even the most basic tasks properly? How long will my cognitive functions be slowed and my reactions to other people — awkward?”
I’ve seen plenty of advertisements and online material that told me it was going to be bad, but that I could relearn how to do all the basic things I’d done before, only without nicotine — but how long would this take? How long would each stage of quitting take? That’s what I’m here to answer for you.
The First 3 Hours
After your last cigarette or hit off a vape, you’ll have a few hours of a window until your body starts to crave the next fix again. You’ll feel typical: calm, focused, yet heavy-headed, and over time that’ll start to fade, I want to say after about 3 hours, your body will start to feel an increasing panic. This is okay, it’s part of the process — you knew it was going to suck going in, and it’s just right now that it sucks. Don’t worry, things are going to get worse before they get better, and you know this going into it, so you’re armed with not only this knowledge, but the knowledge that it will get better within a reasonable amount of time.
After the first 3 hours that first wave of cravings will begin, but they’ll also subside as you get used to this new “feeling” that’s overcoming every single cell in your body. This is technically just your first craving mixed with the pride of your accomplishment; the games have just begun.
The Next 12 Hours
From there, the cravings actually come in waves. You’ll be indecisive, which is absolutely normal; I started to feel bipolar, where I’d be extremely complacent with my decision to quit one minute, then losing-my-mind-feel-like-I’m-gonna-die if I didn’t smoke right then the next, then back to fine, then back to insanity again. I emphasize that this is not only normal, but in a very real way, it’s a good thing, because no matter how miserable you are, it’s likely to change in just a few minutes once your focus drifts to something else.
I’ll say the peak intensity of craving where my body was screaming for a cigarette was about 5 hours until the end of the first day; from the time of the last inhalation, hours 5-12 after stopping were the worst— this actually continued until the next morning and seemed to oscillate, coming in waves, but diminishing in intensity over time. This is the intensity of cravings happening as the nicotine slowly leaves your body over time.
You’ll start coming up with all of the reasons why you should smoke or vape within this first day, but I’m here to tell you that if you just give it a bit of time, often times literally just about 35 seconds to 2 minutes, this will subside and you’ll realize you’re doing the right thing. The key here is DO NOT ACT ON IMPULSE. If you have a significant other or friend who can talk you through this part of the process, it’s invaluable.
My girlfriend would distract me when I’d get frustrated over something small or not having any nicotine, simply talking to me through the worst of the moments until the desire to light up subsided. Having someone to talk you through it is undeniably beneficial, but not everyone has friends or loved ones who are free, which is why I’m writing this; read this over and over again if you need to, if anything just to keep yourself distracted while you wait for the next craving to subside.
Day 2
The morning of day 2 was pretty rough, I’m not going to lie, you’ll likely wake up and realize instantly that something is missing, you’ll want that “jolt” that the stimulant nicotine delivers, but alas, you’ve sworn off smoking for good. This may be both the most distressing morning and most fortuitous morning of your life, if you play your cards right and actually make it the full quit.
An important thing to note here that is important when it comes to strategy is timing: time your quit so you can have minimal responsibilities and maximum inconvenience for going back on your word and buying a pack or a vape.
My girlfriend was out of town for the first 3 days, meaning I could be grumpy as I wanted to be in the privacy of my own place without the responsibility or expectation of having to deal with another person. I also had nowhere to be on these particular days, making me much less likely to just drop by a store and pick up a pack of smokes and say, “To Hell with it, what’s one more pack gonna hurt?” or what have you.
I probably would have made up some nonsense along the lines of, “Well, I technically haven’t smoked an actual cigarette in months, and I can’t just QUIT SMOKING ON A VAPE, one more pack wouldn’t kill me! I’ll quit after that!”
Note: The importance of quitting is SILENCING THESE THOUGHTS WHEN THEY CROP UP — all you need to do is buy enough time until they subside and change with the ever-flowing stream of consciousness. That’s just how the mind works.
As day 2 progresses, so too does the feeling of accomplishment that begins to overshadow the feeling of self-loathing for putting yourself through this miserable excursion and the years of smoking that took place before now. This is actually pretty awesome as it happens. FOCUS ON IT. Focus on your milestones. Every 12 hours is basically a new milestone. Also, that “weird feeling” going on in pretty much every cell in your body (that will continue for a few days, might I add), not the panic, but that heightened bit of tension and sensation?
Yeah, that’s your circulatory system functioning again — congratulations, you can once again feel blood flowing properly to your cells, rather than through the highly constricted circulatory system that happens when we ingest nicotine. So when you feel this physical unease and weird sensation, realize it for what it is, a milestone of your progress, the physical feeling of your body returning to a state of normalcy, and your actual conquering of nicotine taking place. The discomfort is your testament to your victory. Enjoy the sweet misery while you have it.
Note on Relapses
Now I personally tend to view relapses a little more leniently than others, and for good reason. Quitting anything is a process, a concerted effort that takes place over time, and I feel like this all-or-nothing mentality is borne out of a desire for some people to feel holier-than-thou.
If you smoke one cigarette on day 4, for instance, then return to your scheduled quit, are you still quitting, or did you fail? Right, in my view, this was a bump in the road of the overarching narrative of the quit, perhaps a necessary lessening.
The only time you quit quitting is when you quit quitting. Remember that.
Once it’s no longer an effort that you’re actually working towards, you’ve officially quit your quit and you’re back on nicotine again.
While I don’t advocate ever reaching for a cigarette while you quit, I am saying that if you do make the mistake and reach for one, the battle hasn’t yet been lost — you can still continue your quit and move along without magnifying that one incident as the defining factor. You messed up, move along and continue the quit you’d been practicing.
Every sport has time outs. Every military campaign has moments where forward motion isn’t optimal. Everything in life has downtime. That’s just the way it is. A mistake is downtime in the otherwise forward motion of quitting.
Day 3: You Got This
We’ve all heard that the first three days are the roughest, and in doing a little research, I saw that the nicotine doesn’t fully leave your body until the 3rd day, and that there might be an episode of craving on that third day — I’ll be honest, I braced for it with a little bit of panic, here, but it didn’t end up happening. For me, the first day was definitely the worst by far, the second morning bad, and then it got progressively easier from there.
If your quit goes anything like mine, I’m here to report that if you make it past the first day and a half, you should be good to go. Just stay focused, read this as many times as you need, keep your pets nearby so you can talk to them like a crazed mad scientist plots to takeover the world or what have you, whatever will entertain your brain until the feeling of craving subsides is all good by me.
Do it up.
Day 4: And Beyond
At this point, I began to swing into an ease, and NOT SMOKING became just as normal to me as smoking or vaping had before I quit. So the old adage seems to be pretty true, even though I’ve tried to quit what feels like hundreds of times, the first three days is the worst, and if you relapse after that, it wasn’t because of a craving, it was just plain stupidity and making a really bad decision. So once you’ve crossed that threshold into day 4, you should be as good as gold as long as you don’t talk yourself into another drag, another smoke, another pack.
The nicotine is out of your system. You’re at least physically home free, now the only battle left for you to win is the ongoing battle with your mind. Keep reminding yourself of all the reasons you want to quit; better sexual health, better focus, even nicotine by itself in vape form suppresses the immune system causing more frequent sicknesses and health problems, and as fun as it can be, the daily use of a stimulant like nicotine isn’t good for you. Whatever your reasons may be, longer life, more time enjoyed with friends and loved ones, to maybe just not smelling like an ash tray, keep these handy, because you may need to dig them out to talk yourself out of a bad idea in the future. That’s perfectly normal and okay, just stay focused and you can do this.
I did, so can you. Good luck. Hopefully armed with this and some other resources online, you can quit and stay with it for good.
I’m making this an article that anyone and everyone can read FOR FREE, because I believe in a healthier society and will help anyone to achieve their goals of better health and self improvement any way that I can. I ask that you follow my work and subscribe to my publication, Moments of Passion.
© 2019; Joe Duncan. All Rights Reserved
