My guide to quitting smoking!
wingnut wisdom from a former four-year smoker
At the tender age of 22, I became a smoker! Not just any type of smoker, a filthy, coughing, phlegm-ridden chainsmoker! As soon as I got out of bed in the morn, I’d pop a cigarette into my mouth, light it with the remnants of last night’s dumpster fire, inhale good vibes and exhale bad vibes. Smoking became an integral part of my life for four years: I used to plan in advance how I’d sneak away from social functions to smoke a cig when I felt overwhelmed; I’d check airports to see if any had smoking lounges (one actually did, but I’ll get to that later!); I’d always make sure I had enough money to buy a pack after guzzling through just about an entire one in a day, and if I didn’t, I would bum one or two off anyone I’d see who was smoking, even if all they had was menthol (disgusting, I know!). Despite how cool I felt and how seemingly soothing these sticks-o’-cancer were, there came a point where it wasn’t worth the money or wheezing, and eventually I quit, but before I successfully quit, I tried around four times to quit, but none worked until three months ago when I found the solution, which I will share with you! How generous of me!
The times I had tried to quit never worked because I didn’t want to quit! That’s right, I tried to quit smoking when I didn’t even want to give it up, and while this may sound painfully obvious and silly, you actually must want to quit in order to quit. If you try out a new hobby that you’re half-assing and don’t actually give two shits about, there’s a small chance you might get a hang of it and end up loving it! But let’s be real: That’s highly unlikely, so don’t even think of starting or committing yourself to something you aren’t fully invested in! Put that SCOBY down immediately! If you’re willing to quit smoking and deeply understand the mental anguish and physical cravings that come with quitting, then do it! Otherwise, light up another Virginia Slim and make sure to brush your teeth and wash your hands afterwards, please!
Once I realized I really did want to quit with all my might, it took two attempts for it to finally work. The first time didn’t go smoothly because after a week or two of not smoking, I caved just as the cravings began to worsen! Yes, nicotine cravings do pick up after a week or two once you’ve quit, at least in my experience! All you can think of is going to the store to get your favorite pack of cigarettes (American Spirit Sky) and light up three or more in a row at your favorite designated smoking spot (the porch) with your favorite ashtray (a tiny colorful jar with fairies on it). Rest assured, it gets much easier to quit after a month or five weeks. Within that timeframe, you will feel like a pubescent teenager all over again! Your withdrawal-induced moodiness will make even Edvard Munch seem sane! This is why it is so important to have a therapist and/or smoking-cessation support group handy! I’ve never been to a support group in general, but I imagine a smoking-cessation support group would be entertaining. I like to hear about why and how people began smoking. For me, a global pandemic of respiratory illness profoundly inspired me to start filling my lungs with smoke and tar, like a brand-spankin’-new highway! Having a therapist at the same time I quit, however, was an invaluable resource for many reasons, but also for successfully quitting!
After you have become inspired enough to feel you really do want to quit, it’s time to use your imagination, which, if you don’t regularly use your creativity, might be trickier than what I’m about to propose! I want you to vividly imagine yourself dying of lung cancer and/or emphysema. Relax your body as I whisper the following into your ear... You are on a hospital bed, and all you can taste is the wet plastic from your ventilator tube shoving oxygen down into your lungs because your lungs can’t work on their own due to decades upon decades of smoking. All you can hear are the sound of oxygen getting pumped into your rancid body, the sound of your heartbeat on the EKG monitor slowing down ever so slightly every day and the sound of your friends and family crying and wailing as they mourn your imminent death. All you can see is… well, unfortunately the cancer has led to a development of thick, irremovable cataracts over both your eyes, so you can’t see anything besides the vague presence of light peeking through a fleshy wall of bluish gray. All you can smell is your rotting flesh beginning to spoil like moldy bread. You cannot move and can hardly see. All you can think about is the sweet release of death, but you will never get there! Instead, a spiteful ex of yours has cast a spell on you that keeps you alive forever but never cures you of your affliction! You will be stuck in this state for eternity! However, every symptom I just described will change slightly every day and worsen and improve sporadically, so you will never get used to this horrific predicament your smoking has caused for you! Mwahahahaha!
If you are a bit creatively disabled, maybe ask a friend or confidant to read the previous paragraph aloud to you as you sleep to subliminally penetrate the confines of your thick skull! I can also send a voice recording of me reading it with spooky sound effects (coughing, maniacal laughter, an EKG monitor, a machine pumping oxygen, people crying, people moaning, thunder, the sound of applause for someone plagiarizing your brilliant idea, any “song” by Imagine Dragons). Let me know either way!
With a little bit of self-inflicted CBT (no, not that kind… or maybe yes, that kind?) out of the way, it’s time to address the elephant in your lungs: Those sweet, evil physical cravings! You’re gonna need something to suck on, honey! After all, one of my favorite famous perverts Sigmund “Cocaine-in-his-cig, mon!” Freud did say something or another about oral fixations unresolved in childhood leading to cigarette smoking! I admit, I did like to put things in my mouth a lot as a kid; my mom tells me she had to get a refrigerator magnet with Poison Control’s number on it because I kept eating poisonous chemicals! This was before speed dial, children! People had to put all the important numbers on the fridge or in a peculiar object known as a Rolodex. Although I grew out of my taste for chemicals, I eventually revisited my penchant for oral in my early 20s, when I became a social smoker ("social smoking" has never really made sense to me as a concept, but what do I know?) and then a Real Bonafide Smoker (RBS). So, your brain likes it when you put things in your mouth, and I don’t blame it! I’d recommend putting anything else in your mouth besides something you have to light on fire! And alcohol probably… maybe? I bought sugar-free suckers (or lollipops if you’re not from the Midwest), mint-flavored toothpicks and nicotine lozenges. This terrific trifecta helped me like no other! Nicotine patches never worked for me, but maybe they’ll work for you, bitch! Nicotine gum never worked for me either, but I found out recently that I had been chewing on it incorrectly! Apparently, you’re only supposed to let it stay in your mouth for a few minutes before actually chewing on it, or something. It doesn’t matter, just read the instructions or google it or whatever. I also downloaded an app that tracks how many days I’ve quit and how much money I’ve saved! It also tracks how my health has improved since quitting. For instance, in a month and six days, my lung and immune system function should “be improved.” I loathe the vagueness but anticipate the results!
I remember my first-ever airport smoking lounge experience. I was devastatingly let down, however. This smoking “lounge” (oh, how I hate that just about anyplace with chairs can be designated as a “lounge”! This was definitely not the prototype of a lounge I have in my head!) looked like what I can only describe as akin to a back-alley doctor’s office waiting room full of weirdos chain-smoking altogether with the looming, slightly hypnotic hum of a vent sucking all the halitosis-infused cigarette smoke out of this hellscape of a room. The ceiling had cardboard tiles, the chairs looked straight out of an Amtrak station, the floors were filthy linoleum like a public-school hallway, the “ashtrays” were metal trash bins with bowls of dirt on the top for butts, but the people? Straight out of the FBI’s Most Wanted List! I did not wanna go where these freaks were going, or maybe I subconsciously did! After all, I was one of the smoking freaks at Dulles International Airport on a weekday afternoon in July! Everyone looked miserable, like they were all awaiting trial for the same crime, and I didn’t dare make eye contact with any one of them! I thought smokers were supposed to show solidarity with one another, like Subaru drivers or niche fetishists! Not these smokers! Although I was in the throes of nicotine addiction, I stayed for one quick cig and returned to my gate. They should rename it the smoking gulag! “Lounge”? Niet! There weren’t any comfy armchairs nor built-in-to-the-wall bookshelves nor glasses of whisky served on fancy silver platters like at a cocktail party nor a pool table! Utterly misleading and grossly disappointing!
My ideal smoking lounge? Thank you for asking! A room made entirely of wood, sort of like a sauna, but the exact opposite: freezing! The kind of coldness where you can see your breath and any skin exposed to the elements would get frostbitten! When I was a smoker, smoking when it was really hot or really cold was my ideal smoking weather. Anything below 50° or above 80° was the best time to go outside to smoke. It felt riskier, more dangerous, edgier! Like my addiction was so intense and so debilitating that no extreme weather conditions could deter me from going outside to puff! No tornado, hurricane, cyclone, typhoon, earthquake or blizzard could stop me. I remember smoking out of my first apartment window in Brooklyn during a hurricane, or the remnants of one at least; while my windowsill may have been drenched, my nicotine itch was quenched! My ideal smoking lounge would be equipped with medieval torture devices that would include wooden benches with built-in metal pokers that slightly jab the sitting smoker’s butt in such a subtle way that the smoker would think they had hemorrhoids and would get self-conscious and start to shift their weight on the bench, only to worsen the pain and resort to standing up and smoking. Then, while standing, there would be a neurotoxin released into the room, causing the smoker to suffer from a dizzy spell. Ideally this would all happen before they had a chance to take a puff. Finally, if the smoker successfully loses consciousness, they would be taken into a nearby room whose entrance is a secret passageway opened by tickling a taxidermized bison’s nose. In this room, there will be a series of doors leading into various rooms, each consisting of various tortures that would quell the smoker’s addiction, such as hypnotism (not so much torturous as unethical and rude) and a room where the smoker is forced to chain-smoke until vomiting. Once complete, the smoker would leave with a goody bag full of sugar-free suckers, mint-flavored toothpicks, nicotine lozenges, gum and patches and a business card with my number on it so whenever they crave a cigarette, they can call me, and I can talk them down from picking a cig up!
As much as I do admittedly crave a cigarette here and there, I don’t ever get the urge to smoke one. The cravings have changed into thoughts like, “Wow, I used to love smoking after dinner,” or, “This glass of wine tastes good! I’d love to smoke a fag right about now!” or, “My lungs feel too good; maybe I oughta destroy them again!” While quitting may sound like hell, just know that it is probably much worse than hell! Once you get past all the icky withdrawal symptoms, I guarantee you will look back at your former smoking self and think, “I’m so happy I quit! Now I’m not dependent on a substance and I’ve saved so much money and I won’t die on a hospital bed of lung cancer!” Well, the last part might not be true: You could still get lung cancer even after you quit, apparently! I guess you can remind yourself that you were strong enough to curb the world’s most addictive drug, but you weren’t strong enough to curb the US’s second-leading cause of death! There are some things you just can’t control… but others you fully can.
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