How I Quit Smoking

Twelve years ago I quit smoking. The first thing I  had to do was to learn about addiction.  I thought if I could make it past the chemical dependency on nicotine, I’d be out of the woods.  Wrong!  Like a well trained mouse, I ran for a smoke every time I smelled coffee, liquor, heard a phone ring, got into the car, and finished a meal.  The habit proved far harder to break than the addiction!  And then I had to deal with my mental, emotional, and physical behavior as well.

 It has been found that smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, causing cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, respiratory diseases, and many types of cancer. Nicotine has dozens of harmful effects. It is a natural pesticide that kills anti-cancer cells in the body, is harder to quit than heroin, hardens the arteries, accelerates tumor growth rates, kills brain cells and impairs memory, causes depression, and takes years off your life. There are 81 cancer causing chemicals in cigarettes.

 True, when we older folk started smoking, none of this was known.  Too bad!  Stamp your foot, whine about how unfair it is, and then stop making excuses. You say it costs too much for stop smoking aids?  What are you paying for cigarettes these days?  Just because cancer and emphysema don’t kill you overnight, doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to kill you or shorten your life. Over five million people are dying every year from tobacco use.

 Quitting smoking is easy.  You do it every time you put out your cigarette and don’t immediately light another.  It is not falling off the wagon that is tough. I discovered, after failing three times, that I never had the right reasons, and I hadn’t dealt with the biggest problem of all…people telling me what I had to do! “You can’t make me!” was screaming in my head.

 The answer was as simple as that.  No one could make me.  I put the ashtrays back, went out and bought a dozen cartons of cigarettes, put a fresh pack in my cigarette case and put it, with the lighter, in the glove compartment of my car.  I put an unopened pack in my purse.  The rest went into my freezer.  And I never smoked another cigarette again.

 I am not saying it was easy.  I simply never told myself that I could not have a cigarette.  And when others said I couldn’t, I’d smile agreeably, and think about all the ones in the freezer waiting for me if I needed them. Every time the phone rang, I wanted a cigarette.  I’d tell myself to wait till I was off the phone.

 And I did some deep breathing to get the oxygen moving faster. I discovered that I no longer was doing that when I stopped inhaling smoke.  That is probably one of the reasons they suggest exercise when you are quitting.  I thought it was to occupy my thoughts, but I’ll bet it is more complex than that.  All that panting and sweating circulates more oxygen thorugh your body!

 Then I would open the freezer and look at all those cigarettes and realize I didn’t HAVE to have one just yet.  Maybe later. 

 Later never came. After a year, I was confident enough to start giving the stored smokes away. But even then, I didn’t do it all at once.  A couple of packs at a time, at first, then a carton…I knew I had succeeded when two things occurred.  I was able to picture myself on a cruise with a rum punch in one hand and nothing in the other.  And I gave away my beautiful gold cigarette case and lighter!