Journey to Quit Smoking

It’s dirty, smell bad, pains my throat, it destroys my taste buds, it decays and tints my teeth, it gives me smelly breath, it disturbs my respiration, it wrinkles my skin, it age me faster, it chokes my lungs, it wastes my time, money, will shorten my life. . . I knew all these stuff at the age of 15, but also I continued smoking for nine long years. Note my words; it won’t take long for habits to become an addiction and ultimately develop as need.

Today marks a year since I quit smoking cigarette. I succeed in the seventh attempt. Then I had been trying to quit smoking for three years. Until before last December, I used to fail every day; sometimes my resistance would not last even for hours. Every failed effort keeps on adding more hopelessness, self-loathing, and shame on myself. Somehow I managed to try once more and rid myself of this crazy addiction after much suffering.

I was a perfect smoker because I started young -after my fifteenth birthday. For many years, cigarette was the first and last thing I did every single day. Excluding some exceptional days.

During my pick days of addiction, that was when I joined college, I smoked about 20 cigarettes a day. In calculation, I had inhaled more than 50,000 cigarettes; 3.75 kilometers of tobacco have trailed through my neck pipe, spend more than six lakhs rupees from my father’s saving and may have contributed some amount of air pollution in Kathmandu. If I were to be given fancy title for my personality like Spiderman, Superman, most probably my friend would have named me a ‘Cigarette man’. I was known for always having a cigarette, and some friends of mine never used to buy one during gathering because they knew I always carry some. Also, I was intensely devoted to one specific brand “Surya,” I did try to diversify the taste, but others never felt like real smoking. To put short, I loved smoking than anything else, and I was a verified smoker.

In my late-teens I realized that the physical tendency for tobacco was growing. I blamed my age, smokers around me, modern lifestyle but not myself. I regretted for that day a lot when I had tried first cigarette with my friends. Sometimes a delusion hunts me ‘if I hadn’t tried that day I would have never smoked’. Peer pressure has deep impact over vulnerable teenagers, only some sturdy and self-determined teens can overcome it. I was neither, and so the circumstance invades me, internally destroyed my juvenile phase. I realized very late that the only one to blame here is ‘Just Me’ not my friends or the environment I grow in. All the consequences and dangers of cigarettes were known to me but I turned blind in attempt to fit myself among the crowd. Once the habit snick in, it grew like virus. I began to correlate everything with cigarettes; early morning jogging, tea breaks, dealing with stress, evening walk, friend gathering and even the metabolism process. I began to feel like only cigarette can push down my clogged shit. Everything became excuse or justification for smoking.

Once you are onto it, it’s very hard to break-up with this tiny devil. Most of us are aware about physical threats of smoking but what about its mental consequences? With every puff of a cigarette, in just six seconds the nicotine streams through your blood to the brain. The content of nicotine would make your brain thinks something great has happened and it immediately emits brain chemical called dopamine — a neurotransmitter which tells your brain ‘that was great; do it again. Nicotine also contributes to release endorphins- a natural painkiller that relaxes you for some moment. One of the reasons that cigarettes are so addictive is because they tap into our behavioral neural network. And because this is so natural to brain that it mostly occurs subconsciously. This’s why, despite our intention, hopes and determination, efforts to quit smoking often fail.

If you claim yourself as health conscious, google the effects of carbon monoxide or some 7000 other chemicals you can find in each piece of cigarette, including at least 70 verified chemicals to cause cancer. The “soothing effect” of smoking is actually your addiction for momentary pleasure. Just get it right, what that means is: you think smoking is calming because you’re addicted to its nicotine content. Once you outgrow the need for nicotine, you no longer need cigarette to relax. Anyway, who said smoking relaxes you? Nobody. Do the research. Your body has all the mechanism to relax itself without feeding any dose of nicotine.

Changing habits is hard, in particular, those that have already matured as addiction. I tried to quit many times, and every attempt was tiresome struggle. I planned to cut down, mark the limit, and to stop smoking gradually. I went through all those tormenting withdrawal symptoms, irritability, physical discomfort, obsessive thinking, and sleeplessness. Quit smoking means quitting your habit, resisting against the need, not feeding your body what it intensely desires. I also joined a meditation class, and that was when it hits my scorpion brain. It was not about quitting smoking; rather it was about changing myself, to grow as an improved version of me. Smoking was engraved in my identity. I was known for it. It defined who I was — a bloody smoker. My friend knew me as a smoker. I knew myself as a smoker. After this realization, I get on the process to change my identity.

The only hard thing about quitting any habit is determining to do so. The process is really easy. Whenever smoking-related thought aroused inside my cerebrum, I let it be there and developed a thought that it had no relevance to me. When any thoughts related to smoking found no identity to hook into, they quickly disappeared. I also changed my daily routine, abandoned all those habits that I had created as an excuse to continue smoking. Like early morning walk, late-night gathering, daytime tea in café, toilet habit, and I even maintained distance with my smoking buddies.

I never really was a smoker. It would not be wrong to claim that I was a non-smoker who smoked. It came as an epiphany to me. For instance, every time I hold a cigarette between my fingers, I used to make quick promise to quit smoking before lighting it. I have always regretted this habit. It’s just that I never could believe or say to myself, “Oh, yes! I can quit smoking”.

The time between you are determined to quit cigarette, and the point when addiction would become a matter of choice is, at most three months. At that point, your body doesn’t restlessly demand cigarette. Cigarette would be like KFC’s burger, you would still love to have it, but unlike before, you could easily resist the craving for it. And after that, if you manage to live without having it for nine months, I guarantee the addiction of cigarette would completely wipe down from your system.

Life got simpler after I quitted the cigret. Now I need not worry about hiding cigarettes or need no mouth freshener. I could now utilize my cigarette savings for self-grooming, upgrading internet package, and frequently go to movies with my better half. It felt like long-awaited redemption.

A year without cigarette made me discover something about myself that I always had the ability to change, yet I never believe in myself because of past failures. Just like the ‘Elephant in chain’ who never try to break the thin rope. And most shockingly, I am still surprised about how ease the journey to be non-smoker was. On this day, a year ago, I became a non-smoker. That’s more than 7300 cigarettes not smoked, and Rs 109,500 saved a year. I will never smoke again because I’m already a non-smoker. And non-smokers don’t smoke. So please don’t ask me ‘would you like one?’