Ending a Smoking Habit: Recognizing and Kicking Addiction

Have no doubt. Quitting the smoking habit can be difficult. I quit many times.

Today I no longer have the urge to smoke and I avoid people who smoke. ALL people who smoke want to quit smoking. Bar none! Even the ones who don't admit to it.

That first cig in the morning with the hot cup of Java is great. The second, not so great.. It goes down hill for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month.

So you want to quit smoking? How about right now? Are you willing to quit tomorrow morning? Are you willing to part with the perpetual bitter taste in your mouth and the emptying of ashtrays and the annoyed stares from strangers?

If you are, you can quit and I'll show you how. I'll show you how to do it with finality.

Quitting smoking is hard, but it is not the hardest thing. Quitting the smoking habit is harder if you are in denial about who and what you are and what effects smoking has on your existence and on other people around you...and how other people think and feel about you. If you believe that there is just one person who thinks you are more attractive as a smoker, or enjoys your company more because you're a smoker, you are seriously deluding yourself.

If smoking provides you with a greater sense of confidence, believe me, once you quit smoking your confidence level will quadruple over what it is today. If you think you smell good after a day of smoking, or your clothes, breath, hair and home smell good, think again.

What I will ask you to do shortly is simple. You will stop putting cigarettes into your body.

I am not speaking of putting "smoke" into your body. You may actually think that you are putting smoke in your body.

NO! You are putting the entire cigarette, including paper wrap, tobacco, filters, glues, and all burned byproducts of these materials into your veins, brain, lungs, and stomach. Smoking is alike mainlining the incinerator from the chimney.

It is common knowledge that women have a greater difficulty quitting smoking than men. This convention is a subject of derision, but rather, it should be an area for serious research. There is no evidence in other areas of human activity where it can be demonstrated that women have less self-control or self-respect than men when it comes to exerting self-discipline, and quitting smoking should be no exception.

Why is it so hard to quit the smoking habit?

Firstly, along the same thinking that society applies to alcohol abuse, smoking is a habit! Alike alcohol and most habit-forming drugs and even legal pharmaceuticals, tobacco is a drug. It is a very addictive drug. And those who habitually use addictive drugs are drug abusers. They are drug addicts.

Quitting the smoking habit, accordingly, must be seen and accepted by the motivated smoker as his/her quitting a very nasty and anti-social drug habit. It is a disease! But it is not society's abhorrence to smokers that should concern you.

If you will not admit right this moment to being a drug addict...and as a smoker you are just that...no need to read further. If, on the other hand, you are serious and believe you can make yourself ready to quit...AND REALLY WANT TO QUIT SMOKING...read on.

Secondly, think of the effect your smoking has on other people. As an ex-smoker having had a several decades-long habit and still have friends who smoke, now that I have quit, I cannot be near them. Why? Because they STINK!

I get into a friend's car and I get out. Stale tobacco odor is far worse than the stench from fresh tobacco. It builds upon itself in layers of stink, especially inside a sealed auto...and we do close our car's windows when the car is parked. The same goes for our clothes and hair, our carpets, curtains and upholstered furniture. All fabrics absorb the stench from our ashtrays and our homes stink. Actually, all of it will smell exactly like your ashtray.

The smoking habit is vile and offensive to people who don't smoke, and I won't cover second hand smoking issues here, for I simply don't have the facts with respect to the data from various conflicting studies. I know that I resented other people telling me to go outside to smoke or when they made comments about my habit. My attitude was what needed change, not the correct observations of people who were, not of their doing, encased in clouds of fumes from my selfish and stupid habit. Considering the well-documented self-destruction of smoker's health, sleep and eating, "stupid" is correct, for as observed by wise men, stupid is as stupid does.

Disregarding the political issues for or against the right to smoke, or to smoke in public. The bottom line is that a smoking addiction demonstrates one's lack of self-respect, grooming habits, and discipline.

In my book, and I am merely one man with a strong opinion, there is but one way to quit smoking. It is Cold Turkey. By Cold Turkey, I don't want you to flush your cigarettes down the toilet right now. I don't want you to do it tomorrow, unless you are determined that you will be ready to do it tomorrow, and if you are, Kudos to you!

What you will do is this:

Prepare yourself for the ordeal. A short ordeal compared with a long, ineffectual, drawn-out ordeal that will more likely fail.

You will take most if not all of your clothes to be cleaned. One large bunch to the dry cleaners, the other to the Chinese laundry.You will incur a hefty cleaning bill and you will pay it to get your clothes back. This expense is the first sign of your determination to quit smoking.

While your clothes are being cleaned, you will have your apartment or house thoroughly cleaned and deodorized. You will do the same with your auto. Have it detailed and deodorized. All these expenses represent a continuing commitment to your reformation as a non-smoker. It is a figurative cleansing of your life. A rebirth.

The night before you stop smoking you will remove all ashtrays and cigarettes from your home and car. Don't hide any!

You will instruct your friends, co-workers, relatives and family not to give you a cigarette NO MATTER HOW YOU BEG FOR "JUST ONE!" Even if you get on your knees. Ask them to physically stop you from buying a pack. No exceptions. No one is to give you a cigarette or smoke in your presence.

You will remove yourself from being in the company of smokers and activities where smoking is permitted. And yu will ask smokers not to go near you or offer you a smoke. The requirement to see no smoker, hear no smoker, and speak with no smoker is paramount.

In the interim, while your home and clothes and car are being cleaned, you will change into your "smoking clothes" for each cigarette you light up. You will go outside into the fresh air for each smoke. Take a deep breath of fresh air BEFORE you light up. The reason for this routine is that you no longer will pollute your home, car, your clean clothes, or the people around you with your disgusting habit.

This changing of clothes will be inconvenient, but that is the point. Make smoking excruciatingly inconvenient for yourself. And ask others to make it inconvenient for you. Tell everyone you're serious about this and ask them to help you. You can be ashamed of all this in the next life, but in this life you will become thoroughly disgusted with having to change all your clothes just to have a smoke.

You will start DAY ONE not on a workday where you may see others smoke and the temptation to smoke will become irresistible. What you will do, is to go away for the weekend to a country retreat, to the mountains, a lake shore, or the ocean beaches. Off-season it is not costly to rent a cottage. But if you cannot get away, then just make a day trip each weekend day to a place that makes you feel good but where there will be no smokers and no temptation to smoke. Take an aggressive non-smoker with you for moral support.

DAY ONE, you begin when you awaken. There will be no cigarettes available. You will drink water, whatever you like to drink, chew gum, and do whatever you need to do to keep your mouth active and your schedule busy. Have plenty of chewing gum in every place. At home, in the car, in your pockets. Take many deep breaths and airate your body with fresh air. Do a little jumping jacks or jog to awaken your damaged lungs. Keep doing things, and keep busy. Take frequent rests from your busy events.

And every day after the first, you will do the exactly the same.

The strongest urge to light up will be during the first four to six hours after you have awakened. The urges will diminish after the first few hours. There will be periods of urges, and periods when you'll be busy with other things. Keep chewing gum, drink refreshments and don't, EVER, go, near, another, cigarette!

If you fail, and light up in a moment of weakness, don't fret. Just snuff the cig out, go back to doing what you need to do. If you light up after a few days of not smoking you will notice that the cigarette tastes like crap. You'll want to smoke, you just won't like it as much. So snuff the cigarette out again and resume your schedule.

Ask yourself each time you reach for a cigarette: Who is stronger, me, or this small, stinkin' tube of tobacco?

I know the answer. You are!

Andrew G. Benjamin