I wrote this several years ago, but I never really shared it with anyone. I feel like today, right now of all nows, it is exceptionally germain as I complete my first decade nicotine free. In the last 3,653 days I have not smoked 54,795 cigarettes, for a total cost savings (in 2011 dollars, at 2011 prices) of $13,013.
Maybe you’re considering quitting. Maybe you have recently quit and are going through a tough time. If my words can help you to cross this bridge, then maybe I can tell myself that I at least did one thing worthwhile.
I had my first cigarette at age 12. Over the course of my adolescence I smoked sporadically, socially, then habitually. The day I turned 18, I bought my first legal pack from the 7-11 at midnight. Later that day, I got my driver’s license updated at the DMV kiosk at the mall, and bought my first carton while my ID was still warm from the laminator. For the next fourteen years, nicotine owned me.
Quitting smoking was the hardest thing I have ever done. I went to boot camp, went to war twice, got an engineering degree, put multiple things into space, and won the heart and the hand of my true love. None of those things compare to the difficulty of walking away from nicotine. I had tried to quit multiple times.
Nicotine is like a psycho ex-girlfriend. Getting away from her was hard – unbelievably hard. If I ever go back to her, she will make the next escape even harder. She will not let me go willingly, and may even take flesh from me. To this day, she sometimes drives by my work, she comes to my shows, and she hangs out with a lot of my friends, so I see her in social situations. I’ve found it’s best to ignore her
At 22:30 on March 19, 2011, I lit my last cigarette. My current attempt has now achieved ten years of success. I call it a current attempt because you never really quit. It remains a choice to stay clear of tobacco. The choice gets easier as time goes on, but it is always a choice.
The first time I tried to quit, it was for my girlfriend at the time. I had cut down on smoking and was spacing my cigarettes farther and farther apart. Needless to say, when things didn’t work out between us, my smokes were more than ready to catch me in my emotional time of need.
I tried to quit for navy boot camp. Despite not using any cessation aides other than regular gum, This was the easiest attempt. During boot camp, my mind was in a conditioned state and there was no access, opportunity, nor temptation to smoke for two solid months. I was free of the physical addiction, but I was not ready in my own mind to quit. Naturally, once I was clear of constant custody, I was desperate for a cig, and faltered with aplomb.
Over the course of the next dozen years I tried to quit several times. With each attempt, my resolve grew stronger, and the attempts lasted longer. Two months, six months, a year! But each time, something drew me back. I was not quitting for myself.
The current attempt began when I didn’t have a steady form of income, and I couldn’t conscience EJ paying $4.75+ per pack to keep me smoking while unemployed. I had a bit of an advantage at the time as I had little in the way of outside stress (other than job hunting), Beyond the budgetary reasoning, I was ready to quit for myself. Self-motivation got me far on the previous attempt, but I lapsed and had a cigarette. This time, I was prepared to treat it as an addiction. I surrendered control to the substance, and acknowledged that I could never touch it again. No Nicotine Ever (NO N. E.)
No cessation aide will quit for you. If you are determined to smoke, you will continue to do so. Only quitting is quitting. Cutting down isn’t quitting. Smoking lights isn’t quitting. Vaping isn’t quitting. The patch isn’t quitting. Nicotine Gum isn’t quitting. Only quitting is quitting. The only thing that has worked for me so far is the concept of NO Nicotine Ever (NONE).
NONE became my mantra. I also found a few other things that might have helped.
I kept a journal that I wrote in when I was feeling cravings. There are only a few entries in there:
This, my latest attempt, is only 51 hours in. EJ and I have already fought harshly and it doesn’t look to get any easier in the next few days. I constantly feel as though my soul is on fire from the craving. I also have a phantom limb itch to go outside (because that is where I smoke). I recognize that I won’t find what I want when I go outside, but sometimes it’s good to just step out for real fresh air. All day I’ve been out of sorts in methodology and motive. It’s like the commercial where the guy has no idea how to get dressed and operate his morning just after quitting smoking. My good timing is just off, and I might actually kill for a cigarette right now.
93 hours - I am angry at everything. EJ has faltered and been smoking at work. I just spent a day and overnight at my chimney of a brother’s* place. I did not falter, although I am a little concerned with the amount of second- and third-hand smoke that I was exposed to while there. I am finding it extremely difficult to focus on any substantial task. I have been stagnant for weeks, so it isn’t just the lack of nicotine and lowered dopamine levels. I have lost my shine, sparkle, what have you… I think that a minor victory would give me enough momentum to start moving at high speed.
*retrospective note: my brother has himself recently quit smoking. I’m so fuking proud of you Seth.
93 ½ hours - Nicotine is a poison of the body, true enough, but it is a thousandfold a poison of the mind.
97 ½ hours - Still difficult to focus. My mind plotted a path to cigarettes and how I would get them :( NO! A cigarette won’t give me what I want from it.
The four-day barrier is probably among the worst days in a smoker’s life. The ten that follow are pretty hellish, but the body is starting to heal day by day.
I made a tracker in a spreadsheet to keep tabs on how long my current attempt has been going. I also added a feature that kept track of how many cigarettes I hadn’t smoked based on my pace just before quitting, and how much money I hadn’t spent based on that pace and the cost of a pack at that time. The latter number became rewarding fairly quickly. Nowadays, there’s probably any number of apps for your handheld that do the same thing.
Quitting is a skill that needs to be exercised like any other. You won’t necessarily succeed if this is your first or even third attempt. Quitting takes practice. Sometimes you will relapse. Forgive yourself and get back on the path.
I cheated. A few months into my attempt, I asked a friend for a drag of her cigarette. She said okay and I had nicotine. Fortunately, my tastebuds had healed by then and I tasted every bit of that drag. She offered me my own cigarette, but I got everything I needed to know out of that one drag. I was done. We don’t always come to that same conclusion, do we? What is important is when you falter, to not dwell on it. The key is to get back on the path, and try not to falter again. Don’t let yourself feel guilty and relapse back into it. Just get back to quitting. It is always so simple, but never so easy. Reset the counter to zero.
The last aide to my attempt was an understanding of the physiology behind smoking and quitting. Particularly, the effects of carbon monoxide (CO), the timetable of healing, and a bit of cognitive defense.
When I was studying aviation physiology, I learnt that CO when introduced to hemoglobin, will bond to that cell permanently. This bond inhibits the cell’s ability to carry oxygen to your other cells. When that cell dies, some of that CO will find its way to another cell, but much of it gets filtered by the kidneys and pissed away. Recovering from CO poisoning takes the body several days as a result.
There are several infographics that explain what happens to your body the further it gets away from nicotine and tobacco exposure. This is what I have experienced personally:
- 1 hour – Normal gap
- 2 hours – Cranky, I’ll probably get over it.
- 2 hours-4 days – Steep rise in stress levels. I didn’t get over it.
- 4 day mark – I want to kill everyone and incinerate the ground where they stood. This is the peak of the craving irritability.
- 4-7 days – Irritability gives way to a drop in dopamine levels. The body is really starting to heal now, but it’s gonna hurt.
- 7-14 days – As the body starts to get used to operating on lowered dopamine levels both mind and body suffer from a case of The Stupids. I had to re-learn everything. Motor skills, mental skills. Everything was difficult; nothing was right. I tried and failed to tie my shoes and cried for half an hour. A cigarette could fix all this, but all that suffering would have been in vain.
- 14 days – The physical addiction is broken. This is the hard part. Congratulations. Do not celebrate with a cigarette.
If breaking the physical addiction is the hard part, the harder part is breaking the mental habit. Regular gum helps. Holding things helps. Clicking pens will irritate your partner. Fidget spinners won’t get you shot in some of the classier neighborhoods. There are many ways to kowtow to the oral and manual fixations that won’t literally fucking kill you.
Beyond the fortnight is also where your mind starts to turn on you. Any time you attempt to break a bad habit, the reward center of your brain will try to fight you. This is also where diets fail and exercise regimens die on the table. This phenomenon is known as the extinction burst, wherein your mind will try to trick you into picking up the old habit. With nicotine for me, this mainly manifested itself as a dream where I would smoke a cigarette, feel guilty about it, think I’ve ruined my run, and resign myself back to smoking. It was important to remind myself that this was just a quitmare (quit/nightmare), and that didn’t truly count against me. It was also important to forgive myself and get back on the path. I still kinda had to start over, and that sucks, but the physiological effects weren’t there so recovery went much more quickly. Early on, the dreams would wreck my entire morning, but I started getting better at getting over them. The frequency and intensity of these self-attacks fade, but still sometimes happen.
This is the long tail. The cravings never completely go away, but they get fewer and weaker as you starve them. I liken the addiction to a shrinking monster. At the beginning it may seem bigger than you. But over time, it gets smaller until it becomes nearly microscopic. At that point it becomes easy to contain. After a while, it won’t matter as much how long you’ve been at it, but you must always be on guard. Defeating those late cravings won’t require a lot of will, bit it will require some. Eventually you may lose track of how long it has been.
When you come back around to thinking about it, open up the Quitometer, check out how long you’ve been at it and see how much money you saved. You’ll probably be glad you did.
Good luck.