Today is a big day for me.
I wanted to share that 5 years ago, today, and after several attempts at stopping, I finally “kicked the habit” and quit smoking cigarettes.
And I’m pretty friggin’ proud of myself for doing it.
Yes, it was hard, especially over the first few weeks. But eventually the challenge faded.
But I don’t even really think about smoking anymore — only when I walk past someone who is smoking outside and think to myself that I’m SO glad to be done with it.
Primarily, there were two things helped me quit smoking:
- I learned how tobacco addiction worked using resources like whyquit.com and albertaquits.ca. Understanding that tobacco has a 2-hour half life means that in approximately 72 hours pretty much ALL nicotine was gone from my system. That means that after approximately 3 days, the rest was psychological.
- I wrote down every cigarette I had throughout the day (for weeks) and what I started doing was trying to have the earliest one later and the latest one earlier. So, if I’d smoked at 8am I would wait until 9, then eventually 10. And if I’d smoked before bed, then I’d have my last one an hour before, then two hours before, etc. Eventually there were only a few “smoke breaks” left in my day, and when I felt ready, I dropped them, too.
I also noticed that around lunchtime I would often have 2 cigarettes within about an hour. So, I decided to go for a walk around that time to eliminate one of them, eventually both, leaving another larger gap between fixes.
It also helped me to stay away from other smokers for a bit. Most people don’t mean to drag you down when you’re trying to do well for yourself, but it’s slippery to keep yourself in a situation where you might be tempted to cave.
Anyway, that’s the news. And today I am celebrating ME for it!
If you want to quit smoking, I recommend learning a bit about nicotine addiction. But learn about that “nicotine” and “addiction to it”, because then you know your enemy.
I personally don’t think that learning about smoking-related diseases is helpful when trying to quit. In my experience, I found that frustrating, and thoughts about death and cancer would only stress me out (and you know what smoker does when they get stressed).
I also read the book, The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by Allen Carr.
Insightful book that shows there are absolutely NO benefits to smoking.
Also, one crazy statement is that smoking is [pretty much] the only thing in the world that, when used as directed, kills you.
So, needless to say, I recommend the book as well.
Thanks for reading.