I quit cold turkey after about 9 years of ~1 pack/day smoking. I don’t recommend the method, but I got very ill almost two years ago and literally couldn’t get out of bed to go smoke and couldn’t breathe well enough to smoke anyway. I spent 3-4 days like this and by the time I was better, I figured… why stop quitting now?
I’d also seen a poster in my doctors office with cartoon representations of all of the things that we do which put us at risk for heart disease and I was horrified to see that I did nearly all of them (smoke, eat poorly, not exercise, stress, etc.). I decided that something needed to go and since I was hungry and too sick to exercise, I picked smoking.
Right around the same time I found some sage advice on these boards which went something like this. “The key to quitting smoking is simply to never put another cigarette in your mouth.” And you know, it’s such a weird concept but it’s true. If I can keep an 8mm diameter filter from physically touching my lips, I’m golden. So that’s what I did. That’s where all of my focus went. I still brought my pack and my lighter everywhere because being without them made me jumpy. But I knew that, no matter what else happened, all I had to control was that little filter’s distance from my lips.
I went through a separation, change in living arrangement, my best friend getting married to a woman I despise (which ended abruptly 6 days later), discovery of my teenager cutting himself and writing suicide notes and loss of a family pet all within 6-8 weeks of my decision to quit smoking.
So yes, I wanted a cigarette. I wanted a cigarette more than I wanted to be alive at times. But I remembered how bad the first few days were and the more space I put between me and my last cigarette, the more I realized that starting over would be SO much harder than just keeping that filter out of my mouth right now, for this moment, so I just kept doing that. Sometimes I’d put a pen in my mouth, sometimes a piece of gum. Often I’d sing or do my makeup/paint my nails/sew a button/etc. just to keep myself busy. Other times I was just so very grateful that I could exercise control over *something *in my life, since everything else in my life seemed so huge and unfixable.
Sometimes I’d dream about smoking. Sometimes, months after I finally threw away my cigarettes, I’d reach for them in my purse before realizing that I didn’t smoke anymore.
But it did get easier and now I’m almost two years smoke free and completely annoyed when my boyfriend cannot WAIT to get done eating or pauses a DVD in the middle to go have a cigarette.
I’ve also known people who have had great success with E-cigarettes like this, but I discovered them after I was already about 6 months past quitting so it seemed silly to re-start in order to enjoy vanilla flavored tobacco steam on the way to work.
I do hope you find something that works for you.
The freedom that you feel when it doesn’t matter if you’re visiting a non-smoking establishment (which is now essentially anywhere in my state), knowing you can take long car rides without freezing with the window down because you needed a fix, etc. is truly immeasurable.
I can play racquetball and go for long walks without getting too winded (the fat ass still plays a part in windedness, unfortunately), my family is proud, my friends are a bit envious at times I think, my son is grateful and I’m ready to focus on improving other aspects of my life (like minimizing the aforementioned ass) now that I know I can successfully change my behavior. I feel accomplished.
A drag on the first cigarette in the morning was good, but it could never match that. 