The story of how I quit smoking
Page 7
Okay, so I had reached the point where I didn’t smoke my first cigarette, Monday to Friday, until I got home from work around 4.20 pm. To say I was happy about this would be the understatement of the century, I was ecstatic. I wasn’t getting any cravings, or even pangs, for cigarettes, I didn’t even think about smoking. Well I did, but I didn’t think about having a smoke, I thought how good it was that I didn’t have one.
I still smoked in the evening, and smoked far too much to be honest. My smoking in the evening had gradually increased since I began working for a company that had a no smoking policy, and probably increased even more when they introduced the no smoking in public buildings law. I also knew many people who had also said they smoke far more at home in the evening since the smoking bans came into place.
However, I decided not to try cutting down in the evening a just yet, mainly because I wanted to cut down at the weekend and I had already made a start.
One Saturday I popped out to the corner shop for something, probably a pint of milk. Immediately I closed the door to my flat I reached for my cigarettes and lit one up. I thought to myself “You light up a cigarette every time you go out the door, it’s just a habit and you have to break it”.
It was true, all my smoking life I had lit up a cigarette whenever I went out. The only time I didn’t light up a cigarette when leaving home was when I left to go to work in the morning during the last three or four years before I quit smoking. At that time I lived in a flat opposite the bus station. My bus used to leave the station, go round town and come back ten minutes later and I would get on it when it came back. If I went out and the bus wasn’t in the station I didn’t bother to light up a cigarette, as I knew the bus could come at any minute. But if the bus was still in the station I knew I would have time for a smoke before it went round town, so I would light up.
Apart from then, I lit up a cigarette every time I left home.
I think it stems from when I stated smoking at the age of thirteen. Obviously, I couldn’t smoke in front of my parents, or even let them know I smoked. I couldn’t smoke at home, so when I went out I would light up as soon as I was outside out of sight of my parents. It must have become a habit that stuck with me for over 35 years. The reason why I lit those cigarettes was one of the reasons I smoked now, and one of the reasons I decided to quit. I was only lighting up a cigarette because I had gone from a place where I couldn’t smoke to a one where I could.
So I decide to stop lighting up a cigarette every time I left home, and it was so easy. I just went out the next time, pulled my pack of cigarettes from my pock and said to myself “don’t” and put them back into my pocket. From that moment the habit was broken, gone forever.
I just stopped lighting a cigarette every time I went out without any thought or effort at all.
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