Notes on quitting smoking

Two years ago, perhaps a decade after the above photo was taken by my stepsister, I was convinced to give quitting tobacco a go - and I'm finally ready to talk about the experience.

There are two chief categories of ex-smoker that I encountered while bartending:

1. Those who secretly still love smoking - who will blag rollies off you when they are drunk and without their partner.
2. Those who apparently never really liked smoking in the first place and become vehement campaigners in the anti-tobacco lobby.

I think I am destined to be a category one ex-smoker. But here are my notes on quitting in case they are useful to anyone else thinking of sucking their final menthol tip.

The physical experience of quitting

Overcoming the physical addiction to nicotine has been made much easier by the invention of vaping. In the early days of quitting smoking, I was able to ease my cravings by vaping. Luckily, vaping is a thoroughly unpleasant experience and therefore much easier to stop.

When the battery was fully charged, the experience of vaping was like being at an amateur dramatics production of Macbeth when an over-eager stagehand gives the dry-ice machine full throttle. When the battery was low, the model I adopted was liable to malfunction and deposit a thin dribble of acidic vaping liquid into the mouth. 

I was able to give up vaping within a week (compare that to the smooth taste of delicious Golden Virginia, that had me hooked for a quarter century).

Some people seem to love vaping, so maybe I wasn't doing it right? Perhaps I lack the willpower to experiment with flavours and equipment to make it a proper habit. If so I might be the first person to give up nicotine through a lack of willpower?

The mental experience of quitting

I found it helpful to imagine there is a little compartment somewhere in the mind where you can put thoughts to ignore them. By definition, minds are mental phenomena, where the imaginary is real - so imagining like this is a feature that your mind possesses is sufficient to make it a feature that your mind possesses. Believing in your imaginary ignored memory compartment makes it real enough for our purposes.

Thus equipped, when your mind occasionally nudges: “Time for a lovely cigarette!”, you have a compartment ready to file away the thought. And you don't just have to use it for cigarette cravings - why not store your nagging regrets, resentments and anxieties in it too? Just make sure you seal it up really tight - don't want that lot leaking out on a random rainy Thursday hangover.

As you can see from this before and after, quitting smoking enables you to grow a fulsome moustache as you won't be setting fire to it trying to relight half-inch long rollies that have gone out.