Almost TWO years ago and it seems like yesterday. In December 2016 my life changed (for the better). I then became what I will always be ever since: an ex-smoker. I did it like that almost without thinking. It is true that she had been thinking about it for a long time. She had been with the vice for almost 15 years and knew that sooner or later it had to end. I had searched the internet for advice, plans, calendars that I could adapt to my personal situation€My partner, a doctor by profession, began to talk to me about the cancers he had seen in recent days. They had nothing to do with tobacco, but little by little the idea crept into my head that if you buy a lot of tickets, you’ll end up playing something at roulette. And the idea of leaving him was taking shape in my head.
I tried first to reduce consumption. I went from one pack a day to four cigarettes a day. But I soon realized that this was fooling myself. I wasn’t going to get it like that. In the end . He gave the most varied excuses: it’s that today I’m out partying, it’s that I’m working today and I deserve it, it’s that I’ve had a very hard day, it’s just that it’s been a very good day and we have to celebrate€ In the end that strategy was doomed to fail. Until I plucked up my courage and decided, smoking a cigarette, that this was going to be the last. At first I even downloaded an app that told me how much I had saved on cigarettes and money. Today I still have it on my mobile. The phone is so smart that it already tells me that it’s been almost a year since I opened it. Everything happens.
I was having dinner with several co-workers at a friend’s house. There were only two smokers in a group of seven but we packed in like five of us. The smell, the feeling of dependency that prevented me from being happy or calm without having that product in my bag… The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had to leave it. And when I left my friend’s house I said to myself: “This has been my last cigarette.” And so far (almost) I have succeeded at all. I explain.
I had always been very afraid of leaving him. “It’s very bad,” they told me. I didn’t want to have a hard time with anxiety or gain weight. Let’s say that I achieved the first before the second. But I was surprised to quit. It’s not as difficult as I thought. Not much less. I had a bad time, yes. But they were three days counted on the fingers. The worst moments? When I left work and came home. It was then that I discovered that after those three days of physical dependence, there is another even worse one: psychological dependence. I learned that by talking to an expert. Until then I had not considered it. My body was no longer asking me for nicotine, but it was asking me to respect the tradition that it had maintained for the last 15 years and that forced me to light a cigarette on the way home from work.
I did not write down a wish list on a piece of paper, I did not give myself “whims” for having quit smoking. I did not even communicate the decision to my environment. I had quit smoking because I wanted to, it was my decision but I wasn’t sure if I could achieve it. That’s why I thought it would be better not to “raise the hare”. I kept quiet until one day a colleague noticed that he no longer went down to smoke. “I’ve quit a week ago,” I confessed. It was then that the psychological dependency began to be forgotten (he would go to work by bike, for example, so as not to face the way back on foot). But the big question is: did I not smoke again? Of course I did.
It was at a wedding. The situation sounds like a cliché but if I have proposed to tell the truth I tell it. I lit a cigarette with the support of those bastard friends from the university because of those who had started smoking in their day. I thought nothing was wrong and, indeed, I was lucky that it didn’t: I choked and had a terrible time. A year had passed and I had even forgotten how to swallow smoke.
Days later I learned that what had happened to me was called “false security.” It is a feeling that apparently seizes the smoker when he has not tried tobacco for a long time. And it is very dangerous. It’s when you think you’re over it but you’re not.
A double saving
Quitting smoking has meant great economic and health savings: I no longer drown when going up stairs, I can play sports whenever I want and a Sunday lying on the sofa becomes a great day in which I don’t have to leave the house to fulfill my vice. In addition, and thanks to current legislation, every day I feel more integrated: smoking is no longer in fashion. And that, whether you want it or not, is appreciated.
Everyone has their reasons for quitting. Those were mine. Yours will be different but I am sure that at least I have managed to make you think about it. For that alone it will have been worth it.