How I Quit Smoking

6 Ways Tried And Tested

From the second I realised I couldn’t just stop whenever I wanted, I wanted out. I hated every cigarette. I especially hated how much money it took from me and with the Irish Government thinking the only way to get people to quit is to cripple them with the price of a packet it was becoming harder and harder to keep up.

An overly controlling boyfriend who regularly told me he didn’t find me attractive when I smoked and threw the word disgusting out one too many times also didn’t help.

I say this merely to let you know that I get it. I understand wanting desperately to stop I know it’s no longer a choice and if I could I would punish every person who tells you that it’s a terrible habit like you don’t already know, I would.

So today I want to go through the myriad options I tried and tested to quit so you can see if they might be an option for you and let you know where I am in my journey.

Cold Poultry

10 pm was always my cutoff point. The last cigarette from the last box I would ever smoke. The temptation the next morning wouldn’t exist because there would be no hidden cigarettes in the back of the cupboard for me to dig out.

It was never my brain that would cave. My brain logically tried to calm my body that would inevitably start a rampant longing. A distressed dog wouldn’t go amiss as a description of how I felt. Stressed, nervous, unable to settle. Angry, annoyed, sad, frustrated, until I would eventually give up and storm to the nearest garage with a fistful of coins, defeated.

No matter how determined I was. No matter how hard I made it for myself, my brain would find a way around it and soon enough I would be clasping the box in shame, a cigarette already lit and inhaled in one go.

Substitutes

There is no shortage of substitutes touting millions of quitters. Every time you put out a cigarette you’ve quit. It’s more about how long those people have quit for and I’d wager not long.

Patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers — all the Nicorette paraphernalia. There’s no smoke, you don’t feel it in your lungs. It’s not just the nicotine we want but the whole sexy routine. Pulling the little plastic strip slowly around the box. Opening the top, pulling out the cigarette and lighting it up followed by the release that can only be described as an addict getting their hit.

It’s connected to everything — waking up, relaxing, drinking, eating, arriving leaving, socialising. Gum and patches just don’t fill that need. The inhaler isn’t much better either. It kind of feels like you’re inhaling fresh air through a party blower.

Allen Carr’s Book

In fairness to Allen, his book made good points. I’d say I got 2–3 days before I went back smoking. He really brings to light how cigarettes create the need and each additional cigarette continues the addiction. He put’s it in really simple terms that don’t seem condescending and overall when I closed the book I genuinely felt I could kick it.

I read the book four or 5 times after my first successful quit session but the information never hit the same as it did the first time.

Interlude

Around this stage, I started dating a smoker, so it was just part of our lives. We both wanted to quit but as long as the other person was still smoking we didn’t really have to put much thought into it.

Prescription Drugs

I’m all for modern advancements but when you can order a drug that binds to receptors in your brain from a qualified doctor, who has never met you, through the power of the internet for less than €200 questions have to be asked.

When you’re desperate to quit smoking — you don’t ask those questions.

Two weeks in, smoking definitely started to feel as pointless as it actually is. My desire decreased but eventually, I quit the prescription. While I was starting to see moderate improvements I really just couldn’t live with the fact that I was using chemicals to alter how my brain works. Whacky, extremely vivid dreams just further reinforced my disdain at what the drugs were actually doing.

So technically a fail but not on the prescriptions side, really.

Hypnotism

Mental suggestion, NLP, and hypnotism all fall into a bucket that I’m skeptical of but not fully ready to dismiss. And let’s face it, at this point after so many different methods I would have plucked the feathers off a flamingo if I thought it would make me quit.

So, I gave as much due diligence as one can when seeking out a professional that doesn’t have a baseline educational requirement. I chose a man with many good reviews who in his estimation would have no issues in bending my brain to work differently. He even offered free follow up sessions in the unlikely event that it didn’t work.

After planting the seed that I would walk out of his office a non-smoker, he performed a few tests to show me how hypnotism worked. To this day, I can’t tell you if I couldn’t pull my hands apart, wanted it to work so bad that I kept them together, or felt like he’d be embarrassed if I did.

So I lay on his couch covered in a blanket and the prick tried to guilt me through meditation. “Imagine you’re lying on your death bed and your family are all standing around you”. Jokes on you mister, my family smoke so they’d be dead already and I don’t speak to them anyway so I wouldn’t tell them.

I blew out of his office as I had just burst through the gates of hell to come back. Never mind a woman scorned, Hell hath no fury like the nerve he had just stood on. I hadn’t even got on the train home and I was smoking. I had spent so much money to literally crave a cigarette as soon as I walked out the door.

Vaping

It’s so hipster, isn’t it? Or at least that’s what I thought when it first came about. Like mini-disk walkmen and the Tamagotchi, I thought it was a fad.

But a friend called in with one and I thought fuck it why not?

For a few days, I played with both. Cigarettes when I needed one and vaping at all other stages. At one point while my partner of the time was away on a trip I surmised he was cheating. I blew out the back door of work with my vape in one hand and my cigarettes in the other and all I could think was “how dare he”, “I am so much better than that”. I looked at the choices in front of me and thought — just like it said all those years ago in Allen Carr's book — Another cigarette would only elongate the addiction. So I vaped. That weekend we broke up.

Not smoking gave me some form of indignation. You may have her but you also have that filthy smoking addiction, I would think.

Maybe 2 weeks without smoking and my colleagues were asking me to smoke again, I had too much energy, I was too happy. For them, it was weird to not have me dragging myself around the place angry, moody, and ready for a cigarette.

Where am I now

I’d like to say that was the last day I smoked but one night, maybe 2 years later, my vape died. After 2 years of bringing myself slowly down the strengths from 24mg to 6mg (all I had left were 3mg and 0mg and I was done). I drank too much and lit a cigarette and another and another. I hated the sensations, I hated the taste, I felt ill all the next day. But it became a habit after work I would light a cigarette and have a few drinks.

Now I smoke when I drink. I went back up the strength of vape to get that cigarette-like hit and stop me from craving cigarettes. But from that day to this, whenever I drink, I smoke. I’m slowly weeding it out and weening myself back down the strengths I’m back at 6 again (woohoo). Come back to me in a year and see if I’ve quit for good.

So there’s the story of the last decade of my life in attempts to quit smoking. Hopefully, you will find some use in it on your quitting journey and 100% I truly hope you get to where you want.