The story of how I quit smoking
Page 4
It was at this point that I began to think “This is too easy”. I'd tried to quit smoking man times in the past, so I was expecting nicotine withdrawal symptoms, cravings for nicotine etc. I was all psyched up to have a hard time during working hours, but it never happened.
At the time I saw it as proof my theory had been correct, I was only smoking because I could, not because I wanted to. Therefore when I cut out a particular cigarette I didn’t miss it because I had never wanted it in the first place.
Later I realised that it probably had more to do with the fact that my employer had had a no smoking policy for years, long before the legal ban on smoking in the work place came into force. So over the years I had been conditioned not to smoke during working hours, and I suppose I had learned not to think about smoking as it did me no good. There’s no point in thinking about smoking if you can’t smoke.
So the urge to smoke only appeared when the opportunity to smoke appeared. Resisting the urge, for the few minutes the opportunity was there, for long enough meant that eventually I stopped seeing that time as an opportunity to smoke. And when I stopped seeing certain times as opportunities to smoke, the urge to smoke at that time went away.
So I carried on with my plan. The next cigarette to cut out was the first 1.00 pm lunch break one. My lunch routine was always the same, 1.00 pm nip out for a smoke, come back grab a coffee and have lunch at my desk while surfing the news web sites. If I was interested in what I found on the web I’d continue reading and only nip out with just enough time to smoke one cigarette. If there was nothing interesting in the news I would nip out with enough time to smoke two cigarettes.
So I cut out the first cigarette using the same method, telling myself “Don’t go out for a smoke, it’s only five minutes, you aren’t quitting smoking just having lunch at your desk five minutes earlier instead of going out for a smoke”.
At this point I was so confident my system was working that I decided to cut out two cigarettes at the same time. I decided to always stay at my desk until there was only enough time left at the end of lunch for one cigarette, thus cutting out the extra cigarette I sometimes smoked because there was nothing in the news to interest me.
Again, it was easy and I was soon in the habit of thinking “Food” when the clock ticked round to 1.00 pm and not “Smoke”. Only smoking one cigarette at the end of lunch was easy too, if there was nothing in the news to interest me I simply played Solitaire instead. This helped me enormously when it came to cutting out the last cigarette of the lunch break, as I simply kept on reading the news, if it was interesting, and if not I kept on playing solitaire. Either way, I didn't go out for a smoke.
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