The story of how I quit smoking
I hope it helps, or inspires others to do the same.
Giving up smoking, every smoker has tried it at least once, and if you are like me you've tried many times. This is the story of how and why I managed to give up. I do hope you find it helpful in your fight to give up.
So, on with the story.......
Like most smokers I had tried to give up many, many times and failed. I'd failed so many times that I'd given up giving up. Most of the time I failed due to giving in to temptation after having a few drinks. Especially in a pub where my friends were smoking.
So I became a dedicated smoker with no thoughts of giving up. Then the world changed, well the attitudes to smoking in the UK changed and I began to notice a change in my smoking habits.
Smoking was banned just about everywhere, the bus to and from work, pubs, restaurants, work. Even the barber had banned smoking in his shop years before the ban on smoking in the work place, and he is a smoker!
So instead of smoking when and where I wanted to, because I wanted to smoke, I was now smoking when ever I got the chance,
I had become an opportunist smoker, smoking when ever circumstances allowed me, whether I wanted to smoke or not. I just never missed an opportunity to have a smoke.
One day I took a good hard look at my smoking and found that most of the time I was smoking just because the opportunity arose, not because I wanted to.
I'd make sure I had a smoke before getting on the bus to work. The journey in only seven minutes, with a 100 yard walk after getting off the bus, but I would always have a smoke walking that 100 yards. Well, it was the last chance to have a smoke before going into work.
At work, if someone from another building rang me up I would always say "I'll come over and see you". Even when I could have given them what they wanted over the phone, or put it in an email. I always tried to go and see them in person, so I could have a smoke on the way. I seemed to spend more and more of the day finishing a cigarette outside a building.
The office cleaning lady loved me. She'd come round with two black bags collecting the waste paper. When they were full I would take them off her, saying "They are too heavy for you to carry to the recycling skip, I'll do it for you." And there I'd be, walking across the car park with two black bags in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
I gradually began to realise that smoking wasn't ruling my life, but looking for the opportunity to have a smoke was!
To make matters worse I realised that I was almost chain smoking at home in the evening. I was smoking a lot at home simply because I could. There was no smoking ban in my home, it was the only place I could smoke freely, so I took full advantage of it. It seemed the more I smoked at home, the more I wanted to. Or should that be the more nicotine I sucked into my lungs, the more they wanted.
Anyway, I decided it had to stop. This time I was going to stop smoking even if it killed me. Because carrying on smoking was going to kill me anyway, so if I was going to die I'd go down fighting!
So, once I decided to quit I spent a lot of time thinking about the other times I'd tried to quit, and failed. I decided that quitting "Cold Turkey" wouldn't work, I'd failed with that many times in the past. Cutting down gradually seemed the best option. I'd also failed with that in the past, but that was in the days when you could smoke anywhere. Now it was different, and so was the reason why I was smoking so much. Apart from that, even if I only cut down by one cigarette per day I would have suceeded, well sort of.
So I came up with a new quit smoking plan. Different to any other plan I'd had, and different reasons for giving up.
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