Quitting Smoking Again – Week 16: Am I There Yet?

Posted on February 15, 2008
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking |

Just a brief update for those following along with me on this stopping smoking journey. It’s been 4 months without a cigarette and I remain certain I’ll continue to be a non-smoker. I can honestly say that not only don’t I want to smoke, but I no longer feel the need.

Surprising perhaps, at least to me, is I haven’t used this space to vent during the process, but I can’t say there have been any really, really bad days. There have been a few that were very hard, but nowhere near insurmountable. Change of venue often helped – i.e. I would just do something other than whatever I happened to be doing at the time.

quit smoking journey No doubt success in quitting this time is partly due to the learning experiences of all my previous failures. One of the classic ruses a smoker will use to give themselves permission to start smoking again, is to get someone to tell them to. That way they don’t “fail” at quitting.

Lots of times smokers don’t even realize they’re doing this. The way it works is we (the one trying to quit smoking), being a bit edgy or anxious anyway, start getting short with people, begin provoking arguments, and finally become confrontational over something silly.

That process will eventually get all the participants worked up into a good “mad” generating all sorts of emotional and verbal hostility. With that combination of short tempers, and frayed nerves, sooner or later someone will say something along the lines of, “I liked you better when you were smoking, I wish you’d go have a cigarette”.

Bingo! We’ve been forced into smoking again, because even quitting smoking isn’t worth the price of damaged relationships. This is especially true when it’s friends and family were sparring with.

The rationale taking place in the mind of the smoker is that they didn’t give in, but rather circumstances conspired against him or her and for the “good” of all concerned, they had to smoke.

Things like this no doubt sound absurd to anyone who hasn’t tried to quit, or been close to someone who has. But it’s a real trap the “quitting” smoker can fall into, and just one of a zillion reasons folks who desperately want to stop smoking will fail.

But simply being aware of these sort of traps and other obstacles, can really make a difference when you’re the one trying to circumvent them. In this journey when I’ve recognized the start of something like I describe here, I know it for what is, and simply walk away.

It’s hard to believe, and I’d be skeptical had I not been the one doing it, but I must admit in looking back over these past 4 months, that quitting did seem to be “easy” this time.

Some credit for that should probably go to a book I’ve mentioned in previous posts. It’s called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. I’m probably more of a skeptic than most, but there’s some good stuff in there, so if you’re really serious about quitting, this is a resource that helped me.

Previous quit smoking post: Week 10

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Quitting Smoking Again – Week 16: Am I There Yet?

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