We all know that quitting smoking is both chemical and behavioral. On the one hand, our bodies are addicted to nicotine and the countless other chemicals cigarettes contain. On the other hand, we smoke in routinized and predictable way. Smoking makes us feel things because we've taught ourselves to feel them as we smoke. The combination of chemical addiction and behavioural habit makes quitting smoking hard; deal with both of them or you're in trouble.
I might have titled this post "Sometimes you get lucky II" because again, dumb luck set me up for some good success on the behavioral front. Here's what I mean.
For a long time I thought I might just gradually quit smoking. I'd cut down slowly until eventually the habit and the addiction would just fade away and I'd never smoke again. And by gradually, I mean gradually. You have no idea how deeply patient I am. This was not a week-by-week plan. It was not even a month-by-month plan. My idea of quitting gradually was implemented over something of an 8-year span. Yes, you read that right: 8 years. The plan seemed logical to me, except that by the time I got down to a half a pack a day I hit my final plateau and couldn't continue on that slow, steady decline. I still think this method might have worked eventually, but after 8 years even my patience had run thin.
But there were other things I did on the gradual slope that actually created new habits and new behaviours that really helped when I did finally quit.
Somewhere around 10 years ago, I decided that I would I would only smoke in my study, not in any of the other rooms in the house. About 6 years ago, I decided I wouldn't smoke in the house any more at all. A variety of other factors (non-smoking friends, city bylaws, etc.) meant that smoking had become a completely outdoor activity. And along with it becoming an outdoor activity, it became a solitary one. 99% of time, I smoked alone. There was nothing social left about smoking for me. I had to stop what I was doing, bundle up if it was winter, go outside, and smoke. This also means that I didn't do anything else while I smoked. I didn't smoke and watch TV. I didn't smoke and talk on the phone. I didn't smoke and write.
I smoked. Full stop. It was an activity of its own, fully detached from anything else in my life.
I didn't imagine how helpful that 6-year habit would be until I quit. My behavioural associations with smoking are significantly fewer than many people's. Where I do have them, they are sequential not simultaneous. I don't need to smoke with my morning coffee, so my morning coffee has not become a site of almost irresistible temptation. I may want to smoke before my coffee, or after it, but the thing itself has not been poisoned for me. I don't pine for cold rainy fall days on the back porch, shivering while had a quick smoke. In fact, because smoking was such a detached and solitary activity for me, the worst cravings arise when I really want to be alone, when I want to escape from the demands of the world and just be left to myself. I'm figuring out how to manage that one, but I think it's easier than managing coffee, or friendship, as triggers.
I didn't realize at the time how smart it was to slowly isolate smoking from the rest of my life, or how habituated I would become to that. Sure, it took 8 years. That's okay. I'm a very patient woman.
