Smoking is a terrible habit or rather addiction. I know, i used to be a smoker. I'm celebrating 16 years smoke free next month, and I'll do it with a leisurely 12 or 15 km run. I am quite sure that if I was still smoking I wouldn't be running that or any other distance.
I won't get into how I started smoking, it's a sordid affair, but I'll tell you how I quit. Five years before my final success, I has managed to stop smoking for about a year. I did not take. Almost a year quit, I did the unthinkable, I bummed a smoke. I figured it wouldn't matter, I was quit. Big mistake. Within two months I was back to a pack a day. I'd have to wait five more years, for my last cigarette.
It was my, a very large number, attempt and it was the one that took. One Christmas I decided enough was enough, I threw a half smoked pack into the trash. I had done that a few times before but this time I hoped it would be different.
Picking Christmas was important; it gave me an important date to hang my story on. Never underestimate the power of a good "quit smoking story" to help keep you clean. I quit cold turkey; the same as when I lasted a year. I have nothing against smoke cessation products but I rally hate to chew gum and I though cold turkey sounded better. Quitting is all mental. Moving past the withdrawal requires the right state of mind. So I built one.
The first thing I did, was admit that I was addicted to nicotine. Your first cigarette is a choice; all the rest are not. At the least it is a choice very much impaired by your bodies need for nicotine. When the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night is have a smoke, your body, in some small measure isn't your own. I remember taking painful puffs, during what was a really bad cold and thinking I had to be nuts.
What I did next was to tabulate the relative cost of a pack-a-day habit. I tried to look at smoking in terms of what it cost me, monetarily and contrast it to other things. I translated cigarettes into car payments, rent, trips, clothes or savings and investments. Buying smokes meant giving up other things. I might as well have been smoking my cash and cut out the middle man.
I considered what smoking was costing me physically in the present and what future I could look forward to. Physically, my performance was degraded; I liked to hike and bike; I still could but it always took more out of me than it should have. It would only get worse. I could look forward to lung damage, heart disease, cancer; on a pure point of vanity, early onset of the signs of aging, stained teeth and fingers, reeking of tobacco smoke. All of which I purchased on a daily basis.
My last act in building a frame of mind was to personify my cigarettes. I created an opponent; a well to do man, taking his ease at the beach. He was a Tobacco company CEO, perhaps an Investor. He was someone who profited from my addiction. He was a Non-Smoker. I pictured him lecturing his children about the dangers of smoking; making them promise never to smoke. I seems a bit silly but it did help.
So sixteen years smoke free, without ever a bummed smoke or a look back. I feel for smokers because I know what it's like to be addicted to nicotine. Just the same I support higher taxes in cigarettes and laws restricting tobacco use. It's good for non-smokers and in the end good for smokers too.
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