I admit it - I'm a bit of a tool. I love talking about smoking and smoking culture, moreso now that I've quit (one year smoke-free in May - and that's almost 100% except the few half-cigs I had on New Year's Eve) than I ever did as a smoker. It's interesting, I think, the way we build up cigarettes when we need them, the way they help make anything and everything just a little bit better. Or so we tell ourselves. I used to think those cancer sticks had their own kind of magic, the way they could pick you up out of a stressful day or start your morning off right, the way it automatically gave you a talking point with other smokers, huddled outside in the cold weather. It was easy to make a cute girl's eyes light up if I had cigs when she didn't, and just as easily the other way around.
Still, I always knew on some level that my future-self, the grown-up, mature me that I'd evolve into sooner or later wasn't a smoker, and that person wouldn't exist until I actively tried to mold her. I'm still a ways off from perfection but quitting was the first step, and that first step was full of sidesteps, trips, and falls. For about a year before I quit smoking, I often wavered between "semi-quitting" (quitting for now, not buying cigs for a while, only smoking while drinking, cutting back, etc) and not even bothering to quit. One of the biggest hindrances I found, unfortunately, was that many of my friends were smokers and it was easy to fall back into habits around them. This doesn't mean you should throw your smoker friends out the door, but yes, if you're making positive change for you and yours, it's within reason to ask them not to offer you cigs or to smoke outside when you're indoors. And don't forget to incorporate your non-smoker friends as those days are easier when peer pressure is taken out of the equation.
The BIGGEST thing I did for myself was counting. I'd tried ecigs briefly but noticed that my addiction weighed heavily on the psychological side rather than physical. I could always go a day or two without cigarettes (even during my roughly pack-a-day habit), and did occasionally during the "semi-quits," and after a few bouts of those I found that going cold-turkey was my best scenario. Each day I was smoke-free I marked on the calendar. One day slowly turned into three, seven, and twenty, which morphs quicker into a month or three or six. And the higher the number got, the less likely I knew I was to ever break it. It's worth mentioning that on some level I did feel strongly that this time that I quit would be for good, although as I mentioned, the other times usually ended after only a week or two, which I want to mention is OKAY. Not quitting on the first try does not equate to failure, and it's said that it takes six months before you've fully formed a new habit.
And let's be honest: if I can do it, anyone can. Happy breathing friends.
