How I Killed the Smoke Monster (And Quit Smoking like a Queen)!

The smoke monster growled savagely in my mind. Its saber teeth pierced my awareness. It shook my nervous system like an earthquake. My brain blinked off its image stabilization.

The smoke monster whispers lovingly in my ear, “It will all go away with one drag…”

The opposite of a smoke alarm, but massively more annoying, the smoke monster screams in my brain from lack of nicotine. My nerves jangling reminds me of a Loony Tunes character walking disjointed, twitching after a run-in with a Mac truck. The smoke monster howls, “feed me!”

I go on with my day reminding myself, though that was an intense “withdrawal symptom” it will pass. I tell myself I used to be a smoker, and now I’m not. No biggie. The time for me to smoke has passed, and that’s okay. I let go of the memory. Smoking was great fun, and now I’m on to my next adventure. “Wait…”, you ask. “How was smoking great fun, and how does that relate to your next adventure?” It all relates to how I frame situations to myself and am aware of my self-talk. Why is this important? Self-talk is the secret key.

I started smoking at 21 while working in nightclubs. Everyone smoked. Some people didn’t like cigarette smoke, but they were a minority, an irritant when they would voice their tinny objections. Back then, for me, smoking was a reasonably inexpensive way to take a break. Smoking was a way to breathe and be mindful of the moment. Smoking was the Buddhist Zen of the last era. I liked the rebel attitude that went with smoking. Smoking gave the appearance of aloof cool, of the quiet observer shrouded in mystery — someone you might not want to mess with. Smoking acted like emotional armor. It was an energetic shield. I would take a break from everything and realign my chakras by dragging a camel. To me, smoking was an honorable exercise. Until the day I quit, I kept this thought. That day came many years later. I quit smoking because it was time to quit. Just like other milestones in my life that I hit and passed, and then shed the accouterments of that period such as diapers, big hair, ex-husbands, I set down smoking simply because it didn’t fit with my future. It fit with a time past. Smoking was making it hard for me to breathe. Smoking cost too much money. People are currently judgmental of smokers, and smoking was hindering my ability to slide through life with my usual stealth. Smoking was taking up too much of my time. I have an image of myself, a great warrior queen, in great shape, who completes law school in middle age, and who then travels the world writing and working from a laptop the wearing of her crown optional. Smoking was no longer a fit to my future self-image. At the time I quit smoking, I was working on my undergrad and was two years from law school. The time to manifest my new self-image was upon me. I made the observations. And then I made a shift. I killed the smoke monster (I also slew the dragon, but that’s a story for another day). Here’s how I did it. Leading up to the time I was to quit, I started to consider what my life would be like if I quit smoking. I never did beat myself up for smoking. I don’t believe in beating oneself up for any reason. I don’t think beating oneself up is conducive to motivating oneself to achieve anything. Guilt, shame, and blame are for abusers, not achievers, and certainly not for queens and other bad-asses. If someone is being abused, whether they realize it or not, the first thing they want to do is take a break and be free of the abuse. If one smokes to be mindful and to take a break, this can create problems if they are self-abusing.

These problems then are a never-ending cycle of — taking a break and smoking and beating up oneself for smoking — which will emerge like a hamster running on a wheel in a mental institution that’s situated on a hamster wheel, Inception-like, which is a never-ending nightmare in a cell-block of addiction with the smoke monster as your celly.

Acting like a locked-up hamster running on a wheel and getting no-where is the behavior of common hamster plebs named Creamsicle everywhere and not the behavior of royalty. Just thinking of it all and the mindless, endless drama bores me. Give that hamster some cake and give it a break. The moral here is: don’t be like a hamster running on a wheel with your thoughts and actions. Beating up oneself emotionally and mentally for something that you currently choose to do is a form of mental illness by choice. Unless you enjoy getting attention for being a victim, try to avoid this behavior. If you find yourself engaging in this behavior don’t beat yourself up for it, observe your self-talk and behavior without judgment to determine how to change it so that your self-talk is supportive of yourself. Have conversations with yourself that go, “Okay, I see that you are smoking and beating yourself up. Let’s just completely enjoy smoking this pack of cigarettes today without self-judgment. It’s okay. You’re the queen (or king).” Do this for a few weeks.

After a few weeks of non-self-judgment start considering all the good things that will emerge in your life if you decide to quit smoking. See how I am suggesting you go about this?

I’m suggesting you shift your behavior from a place of power. I never beat myself up for smoking. I simply allowed myself to smoke. I often imagined myself as wholly healthy and happy when I smoked. Smoking was my time to be mindful. As the old experience of smoking started to pass, the new adventure to quit was approaching.

I began to mentally prepare myself for the time when I didn’t smoke anymore. I started to ask myself questions like, “I wonder what it will be like when I quit smoking?” and then I would answer myself, “I won’t worry if I smell like smoke anymore, which will be nice. I’ll have better lung functioning, which will be nice so that I can do more cardio at the gym. I will save a lot of money not smoking because smoking is now expensive, and won’t it be nice to save a bunch of money?” All of my self-questions and answers are positive and self-affirming.

Notice how I am not attempting to control my behavior through self-abuse? I then started to imagine how I would quit. I had already decided when I quit smoking I would quit for good, and I wouldn’t be one of those people that acted weakly and complained about wanting a cigarette and complained about how hard it was to quit.

You command the mind first to decide to quit, and once you make that decision, it is made. You then deal with your physical addiction. I knew it would be hard to quit smoking because of the pain and agony of withdrawal, but that wasn’t going to be a big deal. I just had to get prepared to battle the smoke monster. I prepared for war to the death and I wasn’t the one who was going to die here. I decided to prepare myself mentally and physically for nicotine withdrawal. I did this with the same sense of happy anticipation and due diligence that I imagine a hiker would have to prepare to hike up Mt. Everest. I read up and learned about physical and behavioral withdraws so I would be ready for the smoke monster when it came. I saw quitting smoking as an adventure.

I experimented with the nicotine replacement patch and gum and found it did eliminate my cravings for nicotine. I found I could go the entire day without even thinking about smoking. I also found a program online that sent me six months of free nicotine gum. At this point, I hadn’t fully committed to quitting smoking; I was only trying it on for size. After several months of preparing, I decided to commit and picked a date. May. May was the month I was going to quit smoking. It was October when I decided that.

I told no-one. This fight about smoking was only between me and the smoke monster and I was going to keep it that way. My plans were top-secret. A queen gives no-one her power that way a queen keeps her power. I wasn’t going to let friends or family nag me to death. When May rolled around, and I was still smoking, I noticed, without judgment, that I was still smoking. I remember thinking, ‘Wasn’t this the month I decided to quit smoking?” Since I was still smoking, I figured I would push the date out until my birthday in July. Then fate intervened. At the end of May, I went out dancing at a nightclub in a building I think might have a mold problem. I woke up the next day with severe bronchitis. Being sick was strange because I don’t usually get sick. I knew I was ill; I didn’t know yet how bad. I smoked my last cigarette that morning. My lungs hurt when I tried to inhale. I knew the time had come. Just like one prepares for and accepts the birth of a baby complete with the pain, agony, and joy, I decided at that moment to birth my new non-smoking self. I had prepared for it. Let me repeat this: I had prepared for it.

I was able to quit smoking because I had prepared for it. I declared I had just quit smoking, and that was it. I chewed some nicotine gum I had ready for the first day of my new non-smoking life.

The next day I met the smoke monster.

Oh, the smoke monster. Out of no-where, the smoke monster would rage. The smoke monster wanted his smoke.

The smoke monster is my nicotine withdrawal personified. I think of the smoke monster as a “him,” full of masculine energy determined to dominate. So bad the smoke monster rattled my nerves my eyeballs shook, glass panes of pupils dancing in the windows to my soul.

A few times, the smoke monster roared so deep and loud, my reptilian brain-stem activated, and my pupils turn to slits. Or at least it felt that way. The feeling of panicked, gasping hungry ghosts permeated my soul. It would be so easy to get rid of the withdrawals…

The smoke monster is scary and tough, but I’m tougher. It’s hard to carry on with your day when a damn smoke monster is raging inside your body and mind making it seem life is taking place on a landscape of earthquakes. The feeling of intense burning coming from my nail-beds was annoying, saying nothing of the extreme anxiety and hyper-awareness I was experiencing.

I ignored the smoke monster like a QUEEN and chewed my nicotine gum, saying nothing of my experience to no one. I had prepared for this. I practiced mindful deep breathing every time I felt like smoking while letting go of the feeling of wanting to smoke.

I let it go. Breath. Let go. The time for smoking had passed.

My joyful days of being a non-smoker were upon me now. I just had to support myself during the battle of the nicotine withdrawal monster. A queen takes her power, or it takes her. My smoke monster put up a good fight, battling me for four to five months. He gradually faded away like a childhood imaginary friend. His raging became quieter, his substance faded and thinned. He tried to be sneaky and exist in the shadows and attack me when I was vulnerable, but I ignored him, shields up. I knew he was still around and wanted my attention, so I had prepared for his raging and built up my armor. The smoke monster faded in intensity from exhaustion. After five months, I weaned myself from the nicotine gum and declared myself a non-smoker.

The smoke monster is now a distant memory. I ghosted his ass. I am now on to new adventures. I am working out to lose the 30 lbs I gained after I quit smoking, but that’s another story. Apparently, my smoke monster armor-shield spell included ingesting chocolate, but no-one’s perfect — good thing I NOW have all that non-smoker extra lung capacity to do cardio for hours at the gym. I feel great, and I’m healthier, It was worth the pain. Six months from now, I’ll be a non-smoker with a great body like any other typical warrioress queen who travels the world.

Supportive self-talk is the secret key to the crown.

Isn’t it time you take your crown back? 👑

Katherine T. Hoppe is an author, artist, intuitive, and Founder/CEO of Sacred Hologram INC., SuperSuccess4U.com (and countless other niche websites), is the editor of White Rabbit Blogging Secrets, and Remote Viewing Community Magazine: Explore the woo. She received a few degrees after studying journalism, art, business, and law, and is a part-time Hollywood actress.

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