How I quit smoking

A while ago I saw an article with the exact same title as this one. At the time I was still smoking, so that was a few years ago, and I had no intention to quit then, but I still liked reading about it. The problem with that article is that the author talked everything about smoking and how bad it is and how beneficial it was for them to quit and said nothing, absolutely nothing about the how. It pissed me off. So dear author, if you ever come across this post, you suck, that was literally clickbait and, if you missed it the first time, you suck. 

Fun fact: it takes about six weeks for your body to get used to the missing nicotine.

Fun fact²: it takes about nine months for the lungs to recover after quitting smoking. 

Fun fact³: after quitting depends on you if you consider yourself as an ex-smoker or not.

Well then, now that I got that covered, shall we? 

 How and why I started smoking? 

Like most people I started smoking as an act of rebellion. Growing up my relationship with my dad was kinda rocky and I started smoking to piss him off. I'm not sure how I thought that was a good idea because I was obviously not about to go to him waving a lit cig and say ha! guess what. 

I was about 15 when I started smoking. At first I was only smoking if someone was offering me cigs, then I started smoking with a colleague at school and some older friends of that colleague taught me how to smoke because, of course, at first I wasn't actually smoking, only puffing the cigs. But the thing is, even after I learned how to properly do it, I didn't dislike it. 

Later, after I got to college, I started smoking more, there was a time I was smoking about two packs a day.

 First few times of quitting 

Us smokers have this thing we like to say after a while of smoking and it goes like this: I can quit anytime I want. I did that. There were times I quit for a couple of weeks, or months when I went home on summer breaks, but once I got back to college, the first thing I did was get a new pack. One time I quit for a whole month just because, but then I started again. I don't really remember if I quit on my birthday and didn't smoke for a month or if I quit before my birthday and stated again on my birthday. I think I was around 20-21 then. 

But yeah, lots of breaks from smoking went on and when I would get my hands on a cig afterwards, the first always tasted awful, but that didn't stop me. I'd bought a whole pack, of course I would smoke it. I was also only smoking menthol cigs, I didn't like the regular ones and I would only smoke them if I was drunk because I couldn't feel the taste. I smoked slims at some point, but after a while those were too weak for me so I went for stronger ones. 

 Why and how I actually quit smoking 

I decided I was not going to quit. I liked smoking, I had no reason to quit, didn't want to, whatever. And there were people telling me hey, smoking is bad, you should quit and they kinda pissed me off especially since most of these people were smokers themselves. Like, don't tell me to quit while you are holding a lit cigarette, you soggy piece of bread! So of course I would not listen to them. I would also not tell anyone to quit, that's silly. Even now I don't tell that to anyone, not even you who are reading this. If you are smoking, cheers, I'm not going to start some don't smoke speech bullshit, you do you. 

So anyway. There was this coworker, didn't drink, didn't smoke, pretty fun guy, nice guy, decent, and we had a few conversation on the topic of smoking. He would ask me why I am smoking and I would tell him because I want to. I really didn't have an answer better than that, but it usually got the point across. Then he would tell me why he didn't think smoking is good, or something along the lines, I don't actually remember all he said, but what I do remember is the way he said it. He wasn't being a prick, he only said his point of view and he seemed genuinely concerned for me specifically. I ignored it for a while, but something about how he said it stuck with me. 

At the time I was smoking a pack per day, and thinking about it I though well, what if I do quit smoking? What if I just don't smoke? I had bought a new pack the day before to have cigs at work, I looked at it and thought this is the last pack. I got back home from work, 12h shift, I still had a few cigs left so I smoked them all. This wasn't unusual, when I got back home from work I usually went to the kitchen, sit at the table on my phone and smoke cig after cig. So I did that, left the pack on the fridge and went to bed. The next morning I meant to throw away the pack, but there was still something in it. I didn't see one cig. I pulled it out, lit it, smoked it and that was it. I said it was going to be my last pack, I didn't say when. 

From then on my only goal was to not buy another pack of cigs no matter what. 

 How did quitting go? 

Yes, I quit cold turkey. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it, for some reason I didn't want people to know until I had at least three months or so of not smoking. I dislike it so much when people congratulate other people for trying to quit. That induces a sense of gratification, like, yeah, I'm quitting, I did it and that can quickly lead to since I did it, I can treat myself to a cig which is the opposite of what you're trying to do. I also never saw it as a big deal. Woah, you quit smoking, good fucking job, want a cookie now? It's not something to be praised in my opinion. It's just something people do, there's nothing special to it. 

The first few days went fine, I didn't feel like smoking, it was fantastic. Then, about two or three weeks in it, I was having the worse cig cravings. I kept thinking about smoking, I really wanted a cigarette, but I stuck to my goal, not buying another pack of cigs no matter what. I was about 24 at the time, a month shy of 25 so I have been smoking for about 10 years and quit for about two.

 Did I ever smoke after I quit? 

Actually yes. I think about a month or so into quitting I went out for a beer with a friend. This friend was a smoker and I asked them if I can bum a smoke. They didn't agree at first, but I insisted and they said yes. I took a drag and it was the worse ever. It tasted like I had just licked the ashtray, it was that bad. I think this actually helped to stick to the not smoking part. 

A while later, while I was hanging out at another friend's place, they were smoking and offered me a cig. It was a slim one and I took it. The thing is, the craving comes back once in a while. Even now, as I am writing this; I felt like wanting to smoke for a while now. Probably because I stay inside so much and it's just me and the laptop, there's not much to distract me. I went as far as to check how much a pack is, but when I saw the price I said nope, I'm good. 

So yes, I would occasionally smoke a cig if there's someone to offer, I might go as far as to ask for one myself, but I won't do it unless it's been a really long while of thinking about it. I sometimes crave certain foods and my stomach would start to almost hurt and nothing can satiate me if I don't eat that dish or something similar tasting, it's like that, but instead of stomach acting up I can't stop thinking about it unless I satiate it. Because of all this, I still consider myself to be a smoker, only I'm one that more often than not chooses to not smoke.

 Did anything change after quitting? 

Yes, it did. My sense of smell started getting more acute. I am the kind of smoker that releases the smoke then drags it back in through the nose, so besides smoking in general fucking up the sense of smell, it was no wonder it affected me so much. However, this was not fun at all on public transportation. In addition to that, my friend told me my voice got clearer, crispier, which I think it's pretty neat for some reason, and I also stopped getting tired so fast. All good changes.

 If I could go back, would I still do it? 

I mean... I don't know for sure, but probably yes, I totally would. I know myself, if I want to try something I will do it no matter what that something is and I won't give up on it until I see how it is. This would be perfect if it would work on things that would help me in the long run, lol, but by our nature we are more attracted to the 'bad' things.

This is it. I don't know if anyone is interested in this, I have no piece of advice, I just wrote it because I was thinking about it and I'm a bit petty of that clickbait article I mentioned before.