Quitting Smoking
This post is for people who want to quit smoking, or know somebody that wants to quit. Everybody else, you can read it too, but its not for you. So there.
Lets see. I guess its about 6 years now that I haven’t smoked? Seems long, but not really. Maybe 7, actually. I remember day #1 quite well. We had a gig that night (www.dieselamerica.net). The band still exists, so I would guess it has to be closer to 6 than 7 years, but I could be wrong. I think it was 11/22, so it’ll be 7 years next month, but I digress.
We had a gig. Super late. Got done at like 3am. Went to our local bar to have a couple drinks. We know they owners, so they let us lock the door and stay late. Since it was my last night smoking ever, I stayed quite late. Sunrise-ish.
The next day I had been set up on a semi-blind date (never met, but I’d seen her. She was cute). My friend said part of the reason for the set up was that we both smoked. I mentioned I planned on quitting, but you know how that goes. I think EVERY smoker is planning on quitting.
Meet for date. I imagine I look like hot garbage, considering the night I’d had. I tell my date all about this, pretty sure my chances for date #2 are fairly low anyway. She suggests a book. Allen Carr, The Easy Way to Quit Smoking. Link to amazon. I’m thinking, “Yeah, OK. Sounds like a cheesy scam”, but I say I’ll check it out. Date ends pretty early.
Allow me to take a step back. I’d been trying to quit for a long, long time. In order of percieved painfulness and/or ineffectiveness, the methods of quitting smoking:
- Cold turkey. Even sounds horrible.
- Step down gradually. Sounds like the least “painful”, but the most difficult to actually continue. Every smoker thinks this is a reasonable plan, and (almost) every one fails.
- Hypnosis. Sounded cool, but I’m not really good at “going under”. Have tried this, although not for smoking. Never felt like I did anything except rest my eyes. Jedi tricks only work on the feeble minded (or relaxed people, which I’m kind of not).
- The patch. This always seemed weird and chemically to me.
- The gum. This was my preferred method. Also my go-to when I had to be places I couldn’t smoke.
- Locked in a room. Painful? Maybe, but it’ll work. Right?
To quit smoking, I’d tried 1, 2, and 5, and assumed 3 and 4 to be similarly poor. #6 seemed like the only thing that would “work”, although obviously not practical.
Worse, every smoker lives under certain beliefs which sort of ruin any attempt to quit. Specifically, that even if they make it, they won’t be able to keep it up. All smokers have heard that, years later, people who quit still really want a cigarette. That kind of thing. This belief, for me, was sort of in the background, but came SCREAMING out whenever I actually tried to quit. So, say I’d made it a few days cold turkey. That thought would wear me down, as would any excuse to light up again (work, family, girlfriend, etc). The mind does a great job convincing you to switch gears in a quit attempt.
The nicotine gum is really funny. Before that stuff, I’d had a really hard time being in places I couldn’t smoke, and I refused to smoke in front of my family, so any family time was difficult. When the gum came along, wow! I bought it to “quit gradually”, but in reality, it was like my scuba tank for when I had to go without smokes. Not quite as good, but it would certainly get you through.
Every few weeks, I’d get some more gum, and pick a day to give it another go. Usually a Monday. Some attempts I’d actually make it a few days, but eventually those attempts ended.
After a while, you start to think its not going to happen. I kept trying, but the energy was gone. Then my roommate quit. His personal addictions made me look like a vegan monk. He had stopped drinking the year prior, and was a “first thing in the morning/last thing at night” smoker. I was not quite that myself. I was shocked that he was able to keep it up. What did he do?
He just quit. No gum. No “step down”. He wasn’t even locked in a room somewhere.
At first I thought this was the biggest feat of willpower I’d ever seen in a human. I’d judged his urge to smoke (and drink, and anything else) had to be at least twice as bad as mine, so the fact that he just stopped seemed huge to me. He explained that quitting cold turkey was actually the easiest way to do it. I thought he was a huge idiot, but I took mental notes.
I started looking/asking around. I’d heard of a lot of people who’d “quit” smoking with the patch/gum, but if you really dig in, most of that is bullshit. I met a woman in Vegas about 6 months after I quit. By the way, if you make it 6 months, you’ll find that you talk about it with EVERYBODY, as its still the biggest thing you did in the last 6 months. I don’t much talk about it now. Anyway. I said the same thing about cold turkey being easier, and she gave me “Oh, that’s not true. They have studies backing up the replacement methods. I used gum to quit”. Oh. OK. Some people are successful on those things.
About 30 minutes later, she pulls out some nicotine gum. She says, “Oh, well, I still indulge here and there”. Ah. Right.
For the most part, but with some notable exceptions, everybody who quit AND stuck it out, had done so cold turkey. Most of the people who’d “quit” with other methods hadn’t fully quit using Nicotine. The basic concept of the patch or gum is to stop the smoking “habit”, and then step you down gradually. The reality is people rarely get off them completely. Lets explore this.
The “habit” aspect (holding, lighting, inhaling, etc) exists, but I think its a lot less than people think it is. The idea that you “break” that habit first is to me, in retrospect, ridiculous. If there was anything you could worry about second, it would be the physical act of holding something and inhaling off it. If this was REALLY a big deal, people would suck straws with paper in them and nobody would be smoking anymore (or, more fun, everybody would smoke pot to quit. In general, this doesn’t work. Just FYI). Obviously, if you believe the habit aspect is a big deal, my little observations aren’t going to change your mind, but its my humble belief that this part of quitting smoking was blown up by the replacement people.
Now, the “gradual reduction” idea. Allen Carr’s book brought this fantasy out for me. In simple terms, you can’t *reduce* your level of addiction. At least to Nicotine. Once you are a certain level of addict, you remain at that level. Two simple pieces of evidence support this:
- If “gradual reduction” worked, “cutting down” would be relatively successful. Any long time smoker, who is honest with themselves, knows that its not. If it were, there would be far fewer smokers.
- When people fall off the wagon, they don’t have the same pattern as they did when the first started. If they were a pack a day before, they’re AT LEAST a half pack within a couple days. Full pack by the end of the week. You need to damage your body enough to handle that much smoking again without coughing, etc.
I know a guy who smoked like crazy. 2 packs/day. He was a database guy. ”Lucky” for him, he worked right near the back door of the office, so getting out for his smokes was pretty easy. He shocked me once. He said he’d quit for 12 years. 12 YEARS!!! He quit when his daughter was born. When she was 12, the family was all on vacation. He was on the boardwalk. Beautiful night. He decided he wanted a cigarette. 12 years no smoking, he’d have a few and that was it. He said he was back to 2 packs/day within the week. I can’t imagine how his family reacted. I also don’t understand how his brain doesn’t remember how easy it was to be a ex-smoker. He’d done it for 12 years! He wasn’t “overcome” with a desire for a cigarette. He just thought he could do it without problems.
When I knew him, it had been several years since then. Its sad to think that he probably knocked several years off his life, and significantly reduced his quality of life, and for nothing. (I assume he’s still alive, BTW. Don’t want you think he died ;)
So, forget “cutting down”.
The nicotine replacement thing is a scam. Cold turkey gets such a bad wrap because it does suck in the short term, and there’s no money in it. There’s A LOT of money in Nicotine replacement. There wouldn’t be as much if it worked well, but that’s the trick. It works like crap. Is it safer? Probably. If you simply *couldn’t quit*, I’d say get hooked on the gum. Much MUCH better. If you’re trying to quit, would not recommend.
Why? Again, read the book. The reason why my friend went from 0 to 2 packs/day is because you can’t reduce your addition. You know what happens when you cut down? You keep *some* Nicotine in your body. This keeps that strong addicted urge alive, but feeds it less. You know what that means? That long protracted period where you “cut down” involves a long protracted withdrawal. FAR longer than you’d need if you just quit. In fact, if you wanted to design a method of quitting that would virtually guarantee failure, and teach you that quitting smoking was all but impossible, I’d bet you’d get the EXACT SAME PRODUCT. Seriously. There is no MORE painful way to quit than cutting down gradually, and the longer the time period, the worse it is.
Imagine a “pain graph”. Well, don’t. I drew them. I’m REALLY wasting some time now, so I hope you appreciate it, people!
Here’s what people think cold turkey is like. And guess what? It pretty much is.
On the left is your smoking level. Horizontal is time in weeks. Since you stop smoking immediately, the yellow/black area represents your pain over time after you quit (I now realize my labeling is bad, but stick with me).
Here is what people think “cutting down” is like, and what the gum/patch people want you to think:
Hey! Spread that pain out (and you get to enjoy your fix for a little while longer). Boy! What a nice solution! The problem. You can’t “reduce” your level of addiction. You need to remove the substance from your body completely. The cruel fact is that, the less Nicotine you have in your system, the stronger withdrawal is. However, ANY amount of Nicotine means you’ll still be at full-blown addiction level. Net result? You prolong and gradually INCREASE your pain. See reality graph below:
Then you still get that trailing off pain you’d get after a cold turkey quit, but it drags on past the graph.
I may not have convinced you that cold turkey is best, but this is what I believe, and its what I experienced myself.
My quit.
I took a week off of work. I made sure I had to do NOTHING except not smoke. I did not worry about what I ate, etc. Just don’t smoke. It is not “easy”, but when you have the tools, in retrospect, it really wasn’t that bad.
You need to learn that you want it less than you think you do.
You need to understand that the actual pain of quitting, and the fear of that pain, are far worse than reality.
The “you’ll want to smoke forever” thing is garbage. At least for me. The concept of smoking a cigarette is completely foreign to me right now. The smell of smoke on people’s clothes actually distracts me. In a bad way. Think homeless guy in the hot subway car in August.
The “enjoyment” of smoking is actually just the relief from withdrawal. Very few people “enjoy” their first cigarette. Most cough. Some vomit.
It is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do, and once you’ve done it, you’ll realize it actually wasn’t as hard as you’d thought.
I can talk about this much better in person, especially after a few drinks, so if our paths happen to cross, lets chat.
In the meantime, get that damn book. He tells you right away, don’t quit until you read it. The reason is, if you think you need to quit first, or while you’re reading it, you won’t read it. Just buy the book and read. Think its crap? I’ll buy you the book. If you actually quit, I’ll expect that $10 back.
I could go on (and on and on). There are subtle benefits to quitting. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. The understanding that you actually pay to ruin your health and kill yourself early had quite a damaging effect on how I viewed myself. The equation goes something like, “Well, if I’m doing this to myself, I must not be that great of a guy”. Its not a conscious thing, but it’ll eat away at you over time. Then, of course, the usual. You’ll feel better physically, you’ll never have to admit to a new girl/boyfriend that you smoke, save some money, not feel like the group outcast, etc.
Shit, just fucking do it already. Its over before you know it.
*Update!!!*
To the people who have quit with replacement. In my research, you are more the exception rather than the rule. My graph is a little misleading, but that pain curve has much more volume for the step-down than the cold turkey. You are truly the stronger of us ex-smokers, because I couldn’t handle the way you did it.
*Update 2*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_cessation
“Up to three-quarters of ex-smokers have quit without assistance (“cold turkey” or cut down then quit), and unaided cessation is by far the most common method used by most successful ex-smokers”
“In three studies, it was the quitting method used by 76%,[13] 85%,[10] or 88%[14] of long-term successful quitters”
