I was a smoker for over a decade, because it took me that long to quit smoking. I was hooked at an early age, when smoking was considered cool, and yes at one time smoking was considered cool. I loved the high you get from tobacco. All my friends were smokers so when I was out of cigarettes there were five more people to borrow smokes from. Out of all these friends only two quit smoking. Myself and one other. So how did we do it? The other friend moved to a high altitude. He quit immediately. He was doing outdoor sports and had to breath.
I however, when into the computer industry. A less exhaustive pastime where brain work was the key to success. I didn’t think about quitting smoking. I think it was about the time a pack of cigarettes passed a dollar each. This had to be late nineteen nineties. I was done with smoking.
Quitting smoking was another problem entirely. I tried to quit and found I was losing the battle. I always ended up buying more cigarettes. I didn’t realize it at the time but I had surrounded myself with smokers. They also liked to blow smoke at anyone that wanted to quit.
I did some realization. I had been a pack a day smoker from shortly after starting smoking. At least I wasn’t a three pack a day chain smoker. I decided I was going to look for help. I called the health department and asked for gum. It was a new invention at the time. They said they can’t help me and they didn’t have a program I could use.
I went on smoking for a long time after that.
One day I started buying roll your own cigarettes. This was a month before Pulp Fiction came out. My friends saw the movie and remarked about my rolling. I didn’t know what pulp fiction was at the time. I was doing it to save money. It was also a plan I hatched to make it more inconvenient to smoke and maybe cut down on the chemicals in factory cigarettes.
I was rolling my smokes for months. I ended up at a party and drunk. I asked my friend that moved to the mountains for a smoke. I had not seen him for years. He said I quit a long time ago.
I asked another friend for a smoke and he was out. So I ended up rolling a cigarette. It was so perfect, it looked like it was made in a factory. My smoking friend asked who I bummed it off. I told him I rolled it and he made me make him one. I decided at that point I wasn’t progressing in quitting. I had replaced the factory with my own drunk labor.
Many months later I hit a discovery that may have changed my life. I had been back to buying packs because I didn’t have time to roll anymore as it had become inconvenient. The rolling brand I like was no longer available. One day I didn’t buy my regular smokes and I purchased lights instead. I didn’t like lights but at the time I wanted to cut down on nicotine. I went to hang out and play board-games. My smoker friends asked to borrow a smoke and I said sure and offered a light. They responded with no thanks and borrowed cigarettes from another smoker. I had successfully stopped the mooch in real time. I was on to something! I continued on with the lights for several months. I am not sure what the nicotine content of lights were but I had convinced myself I cut my nicotine in half. At the same time I had cut all mooches off. Nobody wanted to mooch smokes off me.
The day came where I quit. I was unable to quit cold turkey however. I ended up smoking cigars. At ten dollars I could get a nice Dominican republic cigar and gets a months worth of nicotine in a single shot.
I smoked many different cigars once a week. Then I smoked them every two weeks, and then none at all.
I am no longer a smoker. It has been so long now I wonder why I ever smoked in the first place. I removed the ashtray in my jeep and put in a towing trailer computer. My cloths smell good, my teeth are whiter, my dependency is gone.
I have come to the conclusion that the only way to successful quit smoking is to quit buying tobacco. In fact I guarantee if you stop buying tobacco you will quit smoking every time. I try not to be that ex-smoker that bags on smokers. They are the worst, always evangelizing how bad smoking is. I know how hard it is to quit. If you keep at it you will succeed, just be ready to think outside the box and maybe be the odd person out.
Good luck