I Quit Smoking Two Years Ago Today

I spent most of my adult life as a smoker from the age of sixteen. For the last seven or eight years I gradually noticed that I wasn't even enjoying smoking even though I kept doing it. I decided to quit, and tried multiple times with several different aids, and got various short term results. Ultimately what it came down to was finding the right key to unlock the door at the right time to make it stick. Over the years I narrowed down what could work for me, and what wasn't going to work.

The final thing clicking into place was the epiphany that I had to make the choice to give up smoking both cannabis and cigarettes, or neither. Since I'd been desperate to quit smoking, that took priority and I quit. That was two years ago today, and it's been surprisingly easy.

I say "two years today" but I don't actually know. A common trick for addicts is to focus on minor milestones getting further onto where they want to be:

   1. One day   2. Two days   3. One Week   4. Two weeks   5. One month   6. Six months   7. One year

I have tried this method in the past but to me it seems to be a system designed to tether yourself to the life you want to leave behind. It focuses on something and fixes it in the memory as an active reminder where the idea is to switch tracks in your life keeping everything else the same with the addiction missing.

When my epiphany came I quit the following morning. It arrived around the end of October / start of November. I didn't think to take a note of the day, it's just not important. I've decided to name November the 1st as the date as it's somewhere in the middle of that time period, and the start of a month.

Saying it's been easy is an understatement. I've struggled every other time I tried to quit, and expected the same this time round. I've struggled when I used patches, lozenges etc so I expected it much worse this time as I went completely cold turkey, no cutting down, not aids, just plain old fashioned will power. Most of the time I have no cravings at all, I can happily socialise with smokers as long as I remain upwind of them. I have no desire to have a ciggy at all. I am strong enough to be alert to temptation too, so if I feel it building I leave, I distract myself for a few minutes etc until it passes. It does occasionally happen that I smell a cigarette and think "yeah I could just have one", but most of the time I smell it and the smoker and think "eww I used to smell like that".

I've been in the position of taking a bag full of 1p and 2p pieces down to the store to buy a 10 pack of ciggies knowing that I just have enough if the price hasn't increased. I've been in the position of having to walk 5 miles along a motorway to a service station in the middle of the night because it's the only place open, and pay way over the normal price for a pack of ciggies. I've been in the position of having to find someone to loan me money for a pack of ciggies. I've been in the position of being on a long non-smoking flight actually contemplating how I could pay the fine for lighting up in the toilets. Thankfully I resisted the urge but this is what addiction does to people; I've been there.

It's easy to fall into the path of being a zealot too, trying to force your decision to quit onto others. I don't think that's helpful in the slightest, I also don't think that's an approach that will win you any friends, if anything it may lose you some. I've not been tempted in the slightest to do that. I will encourage people to quit if they bring it up. I will give them some moral support to get there but everyone must stand by their own decisions in life. The bottom line is that the only person who can quit for me, is me. The only person who benefits from not wasting money on ciggies is me. The only person who benefits from the health aspects is me. I know the value I've gained by quitting. Everyone lives their own lives.

What works for one person won't necessarily work for someone else, and without will power, no aids will help you quit. It does make a huge difference not to be enslaved to something and defining your life around it. I lost count of the number of times I'd be huddled out in the pouring rain under a bit of a doorway roof, trying to shield my ciggy from the wind, or having my mind fixated on the pack of ciggies with 2 left until I got another packet. Even down to having to wear stuff with pockets for your cigarettes and lighter when shorts and a t-shirt would be more appropriate.

Now that I have my blog up and running I thought I'd mark the two year milestone as it's something I never thought I'd achieve when I first decided to quit. They don't call them "addictions" for nothing. Even in the last couple of years I've seen the price of cigarettes rise quite noticeably, that I shudder to think how much money I wasted on them in the years before I quit. When I started smoking, a 20 pack of B&H was around £1.50.

Governments claim to keep hiking the tax on stuff like cigarettes to discourage people from smoking. This works on a small number who decide on Budget day that enough is enough, but most people still buy them at the higher prices, they are addicts after all. Addicts will always find money for their addiction, at the expense of everything else. I've been in the situation where I can afford either the bus to and from work on a cold, rainy, windy day OR a 10 pack of ciggies, and a walk both ways. Guess which I chose? Here's a clue; I got wet.

I have noticed a drastic difference in both the smell of my skin and clothes, as well as my house. I can breathe much easier now than I ever could. I don't cough anywhere near as much as I did before, and the most important thing is that a packet of ciggies is no longer an alarm blaring in my mind, making me struggle to concentrate on anything else.

For anyone else trying to quit any addiction, keep trying. It may take several attempts before it's your time, I lost count of the amount of times I got a day here, a few days there, a week here, a couple of months there etc before I finally managed to quit. If you slip up, don't beat yourself up about it, get back on track as soon as possible. All additions are beatable if you keep trying. The human body is born without the need for these substances, we add that later in life. It can function perfectly well without them, you just have to convince your mind of that.