Smoking or Life

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

These two familiar quotes from Mark Twain state very clearly why its so hard to give up smoking. In fact, I have a theory that the fact that those quotes are so well known is a great deal of the problem. We’ve all heard and come to believe that to quit smoking is one of the most difficult things in the world.

I’ve been smoking for fifty years, but decided to pack in the butts about six weeks ago. Total success has eluded me so far, but I feel entitled to make a few observations about the whole process.

There are lots of ways to quit smoking and lots of stop smoking aids. After poring over all the material supposed be a help to stop smoking I’ve come to a conclusion: its all hypnosis.

My inlaws were able to give up smoking by hypnosis. They paid $10 bucks each to sit in a theater with a bunch of other people and let Raveen hypnotize them. They both claim to have stopped smoking immediately and that they never even had a craving for a cigarette after the one session. That isn’t the kind of hypnosis I mean, though.

The thing is, as long as we have been smoking we have defined ourselves as smokers, and almost every aspect of our self-image is tied together with smoking. Now, suddenly, we have to redefine ourselves. And we know its going to be really, really hard because that’s what we’ve been told all our lives. We never heard anything else. In order to create that kind of change in our self-image we need a ritual. The particular ritual we choose depends on how we see ourselves and what kinds of things count as magical in our worlds.

For some people it takes being zapped by a stop smoking laser. Believers in medicine can get a stop smoking shot. The more mystically inclined can go for acupuncture. Some hardy souls will go cold-turkey and simply stop putting burning things in their mouths.

How long it takes you to quit smoking for good is also dependent on your beliefs. For those who believe lasting change can happen instantly, that is what will happen, perhaps through an hypnosis session. Those who believe change can only be achieved through hard struggle will have to struggle really hard to give up smoking. No matter how you slice it, though, its all a mental game.

I’m not belittling how hard it is by saying that. Just think about it. If you use a patch or nicotine gum you are getting just as much or more nicotine as you were getting from the smokes. If you are using champix or commit lozenges your body isn’t absorbing nicotine from the cigarettes and all trace of it has left your system in a couple of days. That certainly doesn’t mean the cravings are over. Far from it.

I’m a retired computer geek and I spend a couple of hours a day walking our dog. I have a constantly refreshing google map in my head, complete with the little push-pins that mark special locations of interest. No matter where I am I can tell you where the nearest store that sells cigarettes is located and the fastest way to get there. My point is that this is all mentally generated and has no physical cause.

My wife and I quit smoking together. It didn’t seem to be realistic for one of us to quit without the other. We used champix, also known as chantix. We have been struggling, but the one thing we haven’t had to go through is the tear-your-head-off irritability that is supposed to go along with smoking. I attribute that to the fact that the drug blocks the nicotine absorbtion even as you smoke. So after a few days we had passed through the nicotine withdrawal without even noticing it. That was pretty cool when we realized it.

The task now is to connect all the things in our lives that used to be tied to smoking to something else and to change our self-concept from smokers trying to quit to non-smokers. That is the big task now and one that needs a special post in its own right.

Let’s wrap this up with a final quote from Mark Twain:

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.