Are You Still Smoking?

Here’s how I quit.

I am aware that many of us who smoked at one point in our lives have quit and have managed to stay non smokers. Bravo to you if you are in this group. I have friends and relatives that still smoke and I realize that maybe if I share how I quit and stayed away from cigarettes it may help. First a little history.

Tobacco sent my dad to college. My grandfather was a tobacco, peanut and soybean farmer in North Carolina. My cousins worked the tobacco fields every summer when they were out of school. We, my siblings and I, would visit from up north, but we never had to pick or dry the tobacco. We’d go to the tobacco barn with our grandfather when he’d check on things, and maybe to the auctions when he sold his tobacco.

Tobacco was part of our lives. My dad smoked cigarettes and pipes. Growing up it was not unusual for him to receive a special pipe tobacco as a gift. I remember him giving 8 or 9 year old me a puff on his cigarette once when I asked if I could taste it. And millennials will think it’s crazy, but we had candy cigarettes. Tobacco companies were priming kids for life as adult smokers in my generation with candy cigarettes.

As teenagers, both my older brothers smoked, my older sister smoked, I tried smoking for a week at age 12 and got the worst sore throat I’d ever had in my life and didn’t pick up a cigarette again until I was 15. I smoked from age 15 to age 23. The first time I quit, I just stopped cold turkey.

During that time I would have frequent dreams that I was smoking and after that first exhale, feeling the nicotine fix relief in my dream, I’d be disappointed that I’d managed to keep away from smoking for so long and now I’d ruined it. Fast forward 9 years. I was getting divorced, and I had taken a second job waiting tables at the legendary Ortlieb’s Jazz Haus in Philly.

People were smoking in clubs back them. I was taking in a lot of second hand smoke three nights a week. One night the cigarette smoke smelled really good to me and I bummed a cigarette off of the bartender. Just like that, I started smoking again. I smoked about a half pack a day for 8 years give or take, then I decided to get serious about quitting. But I wanted to do it permanently this time. That was 21 years ago and this is how I did it.

Zyban was a big thing for smokers who wanted to quit back then. It’s the same thing as Wellbutrin, generic name Bupropion. It’s an antidepressant that acts on dopamine in the brain. My doctor put me on 150 mg twice a day. I didn’t stop cold turkey this time, and I came up with this plan on my own. I would gradually decrease the number of cigarettes I smoked daily over a 6 month period.

I began by becoming aware of times of day and situations when I would thoughtlessly reach for a smoke. After eating, getting in the car after leaving work, when I was bored, when I was out drinking with friends, right before bedtime etc. What was great about Bupropion was that it controlled the cravings. So if found myself bored and the impulse to reach for a cigarette came over me, I’d be able to stop myself and resist. What I needed to dismantle was the mental and emotional aspect of my addiction.

I’d work on one situation at a time. Cutting out just that one cigarette that I would habitually go for at a particular time of day, and holding that pattern for a couple weeks before working on the next smoking situation. So the next one I tackled was when I would come out of work and get in the car.

Smokers know that one. We can’t smoke inside at work and the nicotine withdrawal would be peak by the time I came out of the building. One day I just didn’t light one up when I got in the car. I drove home with the windows open and taking very deep breaths, but after a couple weeks of this I was fine.

I’d still go out to the smoking gazebo midday at work because I enjoyed the social scene out there. The conversation and the camaraderie were, in a way, a ritualized part of the addiction, I didn’t give that up right away. I liked that crowd, they were my smoking buddies. And I still smoked when I was out with friends at this point, who also smoked.

The funny part is, also at this time in my life, I was living with a guy who was a very heavy smoker and an alcoholic. He worked in the restaurant biz so he would be up late at night when he wasn’t working just chain-smoking and would kill a couple six packs at the very least every day. His smoking and drinking was beginning to get on my nerves and I was determined to quit. I refrained from encouraging him to do what I was doing. I’m not a nag, I’m very live and let live in relationships. But I digress.

During this gradual cutting out one cigarette process, when I did have a cigarette, I would question myself every single time.

Why does this feel so good when I know it’s so bad for me?

What am I associating this toxic smoke with, in my head, that makes me think it’s something I need?

My body doesn’t need this. It’s not food. It’s not nourishment.

It’s doing harm to my lungs and my body.

It’s going to kill me.

How can I enjoy a thing that is doing harm to me?

I eventually worked my way down from 10 cigarettes a day to 3 and I stayed at 3 for a good while. One midday at the gazebo, one after dinner, and one before bed. I would allow myself one extra cigarette when out drinking with friends. But just the one.

I can’t say it enough, the Bupropion really made this possible by controlling the cravings. When I was pretty comfortable with 3 a day I cut down to 2 and then just one before bed. At this point, I switched to a brand I didn’t like. I stayed at one for while and when I was pretty comfortable with the one cigarette a day, I stopped.

I stayed on the bupropion for maybe a year after quitting and it was amazing compared to the first time I quit. No smoking dreams. I could sit at a bar, drink wine with my friends blowing smoke in my face and everyone around me smoking and I would not crave a cigarette. I wasn’t biting people’s head’s off, or eating excessively either. For weeks after I stopped, I would still go out to the gazebo and sit and chat with my old smoking buddies and have no cravings.

Eventually my boyfriend came to resent my new non smoking self and he moved out. I was no longer prone to the same habits I had when we first got together. It was okay, he had problems he wasn’t dealing with. I was better without him hanging around. The relationship would have died anyway when I stopped drinking some years later.

I highly recommend this process. Especially questioning what you think you’re actually getting from a cigarette when you smoke it. It’s not food, it’s not nourishment or candy, it’s poison. That, on top of the Bupropion, was key in controlling the cravings and helping me stay a non smoker. I’m positive it also helped with the mood swings and eating that follow when you quit smoking. I was a very calm and happy ex-smoker and I only went up one dress size. Hope this helps.

Photo Credit: Conrad Louis-Charles