The Quit
A short story about giving up smoking with the Berkshire Smoke Free Life program.
This is a story about the second time in my life when I quit smoking.
I quit three months ago and each new day I awake the easier it becomes to resist the temptation of a cigarette.
Even the word ‘cigarette’. The way it looks. The way those three syllables roll off the tongue.
It’s funny when you think about it. That the addiction is so strong, even the word itself can be a trigger.
The goal of this story is to document the motivation and stressors within my life at the time I decided to quit to prove that there really is not a perfect place nor time to quit — that if I quit, when I did, you can too.
The greater purpose along these words is to help smokers like you decide to escape the addiction and never look back. And it’s going to be hard. Very hard. But as the days go on, especially after the first two weeks of hell, you’re going to realize how much time was wasted while smoking. And how stupid the entire habit ‘was’ in the first place. But this is not going to occur to you while you are smoking.
Because you’re going to subconsciously fool yourself into thinking that it is cool and normal because you are used to it. And in fact, your body seriously craves it and psychologically needs it. That is the hardest part about quitting. The habit becomes an extension of your daily life and in every moment of every day, your body demands nicotine.
Throughout the story I’ll touch on the things that triggered me to smoke, what motivated me to quit and the strategy I used to overcome.
I started smoking when I was 17. My first successful ‘quit’ was when I was 22, but it lasted a mere six months, after using the Chantix medication.
I relocated to Romania when I was 23, and 6 months prior to moving to Romania, I was a nonsmoker, but I instantly started to smoke when I arrived. You could smoke indoors. At restaurants. In shopping malls. In hotels. There was smoke coming out of people’s ears. It was 2013, and my first time traveling outside of North America. The culture shock was high and the tobacco prices were low. I started smoking again…my girlfriend was also smoking, which had an influence. That was five years inside of a poisonous cycle of nicotine addiction. The thought of quitting never crossed my mind, even though my non-smoking friends would encourage it from time to time.
In 2015 I embarked on the long road of entrepreneurship. I was chain smoking my way through business plans and rolling up 10–20 cigarettes a day. Once, while preparing to exhibit at a major technology conference, I jotted down a reminder to purchase Swedish snuff to hold me over while on the sales floor. I didn’t want to waste any precious time smoking, while I could be meeting customers. That was my logic.
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I brought the snuff, along with smokes, but I continued to smoke — my nerves were on edge throughout the entire event. It was my first time exhibiting and my business hosted the largest sponsored space at the conference, which added to the pressure.
I’m the type of person who functions under pressure. Who is driven by the pressure to perform. But the pressure must come from within and not be dictated by a superior. I always imagined the cigarette as a guiding device that helped me to cope with this so-called deficiency. It was something I could control, at the flick of a lighter, under any circumstance wherever smoking was permitted. And where it wasn’t, I was huffing a vaporizer. I never smoked as a result of social influence. I smoked to escape the unknown. I smoked to cover up thoughts. To feel good. To reward myself for a job well done or hit the overdrive button in my brain in times of doubt. And as an entrepreneur, every day is jam packed with the unknown. It just felt right to smoke.
But to quit, you have to understand why you smoke. The addiction is one dimension. I believe there is an underlying reason that goes deeper than the addiction itself. Here are a few reasons why I smoked, for example;
It made me feel good.
It gave me a purpose. Something to do. Something to interact with.
It was fun.
Flash forward to 2018. I relocated to the United Kingdom for business, and was smoking like a chimney. I bought two cartons of Camel Lights at the duty free and smoked them in the first weeks of arriving. I then switched to rolling tobacco, which turned into approximately 20 cigarettes a day. The willpower to relocate countries and grow the business was apparent, but I hadn’t the slightest desire to quit.
One evening, while chain smoking in my new garden it occurred to me that growing a business is like a marathon and that I had only barely finished the first part of the race. So much longer to go. So much more work to finish. A million more emails to send and receive. The future was anxious. At this moment, I never double guessed my decision to move to England. I simply realized that if my goal is to grow a business then I need to stop wasting money and time smoking. That I should be able to overcome the addiction, if I am ever going to achieve greatness. That I would never achieve anything if I wasn’t able to quit smoking.
I embraced a mindset, for the first time, that forced me to quit smoking. The mindset was not a decision, but an actual greater purpose to test my ability to guide my journey. It all boils down to one word: discipline.
The greater purpose to quit was driven by drawing up an association between the concept of quitting and the desire to succeed in business: if I’m not going to quit smoking, then I will never make it in the business world. At this time, my carbon monoxide levels were at 17. I was constantly coughing up phlegm and waking up with unbearable headaches.
On Friday July 20th, 2018 I approached the Smoke Free Life Berkshire Service supported by Solutions for Health. The following Monday, I started the 12-week program with the patch (25mg) and 2mg nicotine lozenges. By Wednesday, all of the lozenges were gone, so I purchased another pack at the pharmacy and continued to chew them for the first month of quitting.
The withdrawal side effects caused me to over react in a few situations throughout the last 12 weeks. Punching my desk numerous times, and slamming a pen against the wall were a couple of the significant outbreaks. But I haven’t had a single cigarette since the Monday that I started the patch and met my smoking coach. I no longer have headaches and my CO levels have consistently been at 2 for the last two months.
I feel mentally stronger. Calmer. More confident in my ability to overcome. And trust me. If you can quit smoking. You can do anything you put your mind to. The Smoke Free Life program with Oliver gave me the perspective, structure and guidance to understand my addiction to nicotine and live a life without it. Sometimes, discipline is not enough, and the feedback, insights and coaching you will receive throughout the 12 weeks are priceless. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt when I learned my CO levels dropped from 17 to 8 in one week.
