It's been just over 5 years since I last had a cigarette and it kinda feels like I was never a smoker. Some days I can't believe that I wasted so much energy, focus, health and money on it. When I see people smoking now it doesn't bother me at all, in terms of wanting one, and I find the smell gross. But the first few times I quit I never stopped being a smoker I was instead a smoker that wasn't smoking. If I saw someone smoking, even in a movie, I'd start craving a cigarette and telling myself how much I wanted one and how good it would be. I may have quit physically but otherwise I was just torturing myself mentally. There are a few small things that helped me, that may or may not help others:
-There is no such thing as just one cigarette. In my previous attempts at quitting I'd sometimes go out, have a drink and think I'll just have one smoke. It never worked and I'd find myself smoking again eventually. I'd remind myself that one cigarette always leads to more.
-When you are craving nicotine it's because your body is trying to feel normal, or like a non-smoker. Then when you have a cigarette your body feels satisfied for a short period of time. What it's really doing is feeling normal. The nicotine withdrawal, or craving, is your body's way of telling you it wants to feel normal. When you are a non-smoker you feel this 'normal' all the time.
-Nicotine is a highly addictive substance but it also leaves your system relatively quickly and the body recovers fast. It's just a matter of days before you are no longer physically addicted to nicotine. The rest of the addiction is around the habit and the stories/lies we tell ourselves. "It relaxes me" and other similar excuses are the brainwashing we do to ourselves. Most of the problems we have quitting is around our internal narrative and the relationship we have with smoking. We need to treat it like a toxic relationship and get out and never look back. Each cigarette you choose not to smoke is a choice to end that toxic relationship.
-"I don't smoke". It's not about will power. Once you get over the relatively short-lived physical withdrawal (can be 3 days in a lot of cases) you are basically no longer addicted to nicotine. The harder thing to get over is changing our habits and even our identity. For me the hardest thing about quitting was the routine that I had built up around smoking. You could set a watch to when I had a cigarette and a lot of my day was watching the clock for when I could have the next one whether I was craving one or not. It became interwoven into my life and eventually was the nucleus around which everything else revolved. At one point, after many failed attempts using will power, gums, and other methods, I told myself that I was no longer a smoker. It wasn't my identify anymore. I began the process of reversing the brainwashing I had been doing to myself for years. I replaced my habit of smoking every hour to getting up and doing a short walk, even just down the hall at work or something similarly simple. Eventually, I didn't need to do that. If I thought about smoking I'd remind myself that "I'm not a smoker" and "there's no such thing as one cigarette" and "I'm almost completely physically clean" and it would help.
-I've never met any smoker that quit fully on their first attempt. You may have to try several times as you learn your own triggers and peel back the brainwashing you've done to yourself. You will get there eventually as long as you're a non-smoker and not just a smoker who isn't smoking.
Most of this I learned from reading "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking". It's a great, short read and helps to unravel the lies we tell ourselves about nicotine addiction.
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