How to Quit Smoking

Tuesday, May 02, 2006 (Original Post)

How to Quit Smoking

I have an addictive personality.  No doubt about that.  When I quit drinking, I figured I might lose some weight.  I didn’t.  I switched to ice cream.  Right away I realized I was a carbohydrate junkie.
Many years ago, I was a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker and I had a photography jones.  That makes three addictions since I was accurately diagnosed by a colleague as being a serial hobbyist.  My wife, who was none too pleased with me on various grounds was especially displeased that I was spending much more of our joint income than was responsible.  I was also spending more than she was.  So, she put me on a $200 per month money diet.  That was some 25 or more years ago so it wasn’t chump change but it wasn’t enough to support all three addictions.
Clearly, I could not satisfy both of my harmful addictions and my photography jones at the same time so I decided to quite one of them.  I had been de-escalating the concentration of nicotine per cigarette for some years and felt that it would be easier to quit smoking than drinking.
There were three key factors that made my quitting cigarettes a success.

1.  Prepare to quit. Many years before I quit a friend told me how he quit.  He had a rough final semester of undergraduate school and decided that while he was determined to quit, he wouldn’t do so until the semester was over.  By the time the semester ended he was comfortable with quitting.  I had developed a strong disdain for my dependance on cigarettes.  Anyone who has scrounged around for stubs to smoke or gone out in the middle of the night to make sure there was something to smoke the next morning will know what I mean.  I didn’t know yet that like all other smokers I was a very stinky person.  All smokers reek of smoking.  That is one of the reason why in personals one sees “Black professional 30-year old woman wants nonsmoker who likes taking walks, snuggling, and watching football.”
2.  Rethinking what quitting means. We humans are very bad at self-deprivation.  Most of us operate according to the rule: “I see, I want, I take.” So, in order to quit successfully, it is necessary to rethink what it means.  One has to see it as providing you with some reward.  It might be that you could save up enough money in six months to take a nice trip.  Or, as in my case, I had more money available to satisfy my photography jones. It might even because you have a small child and don’t want him or her to suffer from your second hand smoke.  Another motivation that you may not know of is that if you are a smoker you stink and for that reason and for the reason that many people don’t like to be around smokers, you will increase the number of people in your life—the number of women you can date, for instance.  Back when I last looked some 10-12 years ago, personals went like this:  “Black female in her 30’s looking for a romantic nonsmoker who loves ...”
3.  Rethinking who you are after you quit. At the moment you quit, you must see your self, not as an ex-smoker but as a non-smoker.  Ex-smokers always start smoking again.  So when a craving for a cigarette comes over you, you reply to yourself:  “Dolt, you can’t be wanting a cigarette.  You don’t smoke.” Believe it or not, if you have gone through Steps 1 and 2, this exercise in self-deception will be more effective than you think.

So, I quit.  I won’t say it was easy, but it wasn’t very hard.  I know nothing about all the aids available to help you quit smoking—the patches, for instance.  There was a nicotine gum out when I quit but it did nothing for me.  After all, I was a nonsmoker so why would I use a gum that had nicotine.