Wow - another Christmas quitter! Seems I'm in great company
Two years ago, on Christmas Eve 2012, I smoked my last cigarette. Two years on, and here I am on one of my [increasingly rare] visits to the forum. Many current faces I no longer recognise, and doubtless many of you will not recognise me; many of the 'class of December 2012' will have moved on by now, and good for them; such is the nature of forums like this one. I probably stopped posting as I felt I'd said all I could - at least once:D, but I thought I'd come out of retirement to say hello.
Hopefully these last two years have taught me something - I certainly feel like a very different person now. One of the most fundamental things I've learnt is that every quit is different - what works for some will not necessarily work for others. Pick up what works for you, and leave aside that which doesn't. These are my top ten truths from when I used to bang the drum - some you may agree with, and some you surely won't, but if you're just starting out then hopefully they will give you some food for thought.
[*]There is so much more to quitting than ticking days off a calendar. As you get to know people on the forum, you will see some who are months into their quit but still struggling desperately, whilst for others something has 'flicked the switch' in their brain after a very short time and they are happy with their new reality. The aim is getting into this mindset - it doesn't matter if you are two days, two weeks, two months or two years into your quit, we are all walking the same road, and we are all only ever one cigarette away from a relapse. 'Quit apps' bombard you with statistics, but so what? - it's how you feel that matters.
[*]Smoking is the legalised face of drug addiction. Picture a drug addict in your mind, plunging a needle into his arm to get his next fix. To me this is a disturbing image, but not nearly so disturbing as the realisation that I wasn't really a whole lot different - just that my dealer was the local supermarket, corner shop, petrol station, whatever. Think of the lengths you have gone to in the past to get your next cigarette - a ten mile drive to a 24 hour petrol station, raiding the kids' money box, scooping loose change from down the back of the sofa. The actions of a sane mind, or the actions of an addicted mind?
[*]Education, education, education. Getting into a winning mindset is the biggest key to success. For me this was down to education - as an uneducated smoker I could not see any way to break free. Reading books, forums, online resources suddenly opens your eyes to the reality of drug addiction as opposed to your addict tinted view of your relationship with your life-long 'friend'. As you start to use the forum, you will draw great strength from it - the more you put in, the more you get out.
[*]Any fool can start to smoke, but to quit you have to be smart. It's probably not very PC to say so, but as a member on several forums across a wide range of subjects, it is very obvious that many people struggle to turn letters into actual words, let alone words into actual sentences. This forum stands out as being an exception - everyone is articulate and able to participate in a debate. Good for us - the mere fact that we are here, reading and understanding, rather than puffing away in [not so] blissful ignorance, means we are well on the way to a successful quit.
[*]It's not down to luck. It's the most natural thing in the world to wish someone good luck on hearing they are embarking on a quit. Be in no doubt though - luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. Once you have made that commitment to yourself, you have to stick with it through thick and thin. Flood, famine, bereavement, divorce, redundancy - no matter what life throws at you, never use it as an excuse to start smoking again. When life throws its very worst at a non-smoker, you won't see them scurrying off for a cigarette, and nor should you - indeed, once you've got the right mindset, why on earth would you?
[*]Be clear on what you are giving up. To some people, their goal is to give up tobacco, whereas to others, their goal is to quit nicotine. There is a huge gulf between the two. If your motivation is to give up smoking for health reasons then maybe NRT is the way ahead - e-cigs, gum, sprays, patches, lozenges - there are a whole myriad of alternative ways to continue dosing yourself up with nicotine. This is fine so far as it goes; you have, after all, stopped smoking. What you haven't done however, is address your drug addiction. Many people will then address this by weaning themselves off the NRT over a period of weeks or months, and good for them if they get there. However, a significant number of people will still be chomping on their nicotine gum months and even years later - and as long as you remain dependent on nicotine, you remain at far greater risk of relapsing to smoking. There are plenty who will tell you that nicotine is not that addictive and that coming off NRT is easy. If that is their experience then fine; it certainly wasn't mine. I think some people manage to quit in spite of, rather than because of, NRT.
[*]You are not a number. There are plenty of statistics relating to stopping smoking, and nearly all of them make for pretty depressing reading. Depending on what set of results you believe, the 'chances' of quitting cold turkey may be around 5%, NRT 10%, Champix 25% etc. etc. How do you measure success anyway? Stopped after three months, six months, a year, five years? Forget the statistics. They may be relevant to the smoking population as a whole, but as an individual you cannot be 10%, 30% or 70% successful. To you as an individual, it's binary - you either succeed or you fail. 'Not One Puff Ever' is an expression whose power you come to appreciate more the longer you have been quit. Not One Puff Ever, and success is absolutely guaranteed. Break this rule and failure is a foregone conclusion. Every failed quit ends with 'just one puff' (as most of us know to our cost). Non-smokers don't feel the sudden urge to have 'just one puff', and once you've found that mindset, then neither will you.
[*]You are not immune. As a smoker for over thirty years, of course I was very well aware of the life threatening damage that smoking could cause. However, just like every other smoker, I was equally convinced that I was somehow immune from any smoking related illness. I was, after all, in perfect health - smoking had made absolutely no negative impact on me. How wrong was I
Smoking sucks your energy so subtly, so slowly, that you don't even realise it is happening. It's not until you've stopped smoking and your energy bounces back that you realise how far it has dragged you down.
[*]I've yet to meet someone who regretted quitting. It's a message few of us like to hear as smokers - a former smoking buddy who quits and starts banging on about how absolutely marvellous it is to be smoke free. How could they possibly be happy without their smokes? They're only banging on to convince themselves - they'll never convince me. Traitors. Of course, this is just your inner addict trying to rationalise the situation - instead of fighting the message, perhaps it's time to embrace it - perhaps, just perhaps, it's all true!
[*]Are you a lemming, or a free spirit? When I started smoking, you could smoke just about anywhere - restaurants, offices, cinema, public transport - it was absolutely everywhere. We perceived smoking as daring, sophisticated, free spirited. How ironic that it was, and is, absolutely none of these things. It is the ultimate social conditioning, following the masses as they march towards the cliff edge. The free spirited thing to do would have been to say no. The daring thing to do would have been to say no. And so today, and every day for the last two years, I have said no.
If you're already on the road to freedom, then have a HAPPY SMOKE FREE CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR. If you are still searching for your quit, I sincerely hope you find it soon (and once you do find it, you'll realise it was right under your nose all along!). Thanks for sharing the journey
