Rethinking Quitting
I’ve been really agitated recently. I’m taking the PMP next weekend and I pray I pass so I can stop talking about it and stop thinking about it and move on with my life.
But I’m also trying to quit smoking. I’ve smoked for 7-8 years I think.
Last year, the girl I was dating asked me how I started smoking.
I thought for a second and realized the point I started. It was my junior year of college. My PR professor who was the person I hoped would be writing me a recommendation for my job out of college always smoked after class. I had a class with him every semester from the spring of 2012 until the summer of 2013. Every time class ended, he would go outside and I would join him for a chat over a cigarette.
I graduated, started working an internship, we kind of talked here and there and I told him about my job situation every time I came to a new intersection. I remember calling him when I got my first marketing job. I remember calling him when I left my fellowship in DC and had to choose between a job as a chess teacher where the job offer was in hand or a PR job with an awesome firm that I really wanted to work for but was only 2 of 5 interviews in. I remember his answer was to go through with the PR interview unless if I really needed the money. I reached back out to him sometime last year when I moved back to Birmingham to see if he would be interested in meeting. He responded initially and then we never met. We haven’t talked or anything.
This isn’t some sob story. It’s just me going down that path. I have a hyper-memory. It happens. I can remember details about my past that most people can’t.
There was something I remembered on Monday. I sent out emails on Friday trying to reach out to people. I think my excited work habit on Friday has something to do with a last push before the weekend. Anyway, I usually send another email on Monday to the same person saying “I know I sent that email on Friday so I wanted to make sure it didn’t fall down your inbox!” They usually respond nicely.
When you’re a smoker, many things happen but to talk about a few:
1) You smoke around other smokers.
2) Any reason to smoke is a good one.
3) The moment you have a tough decision or deal with stress/anxiety, it’s an immediate trigger.
Telling someone to quit doesn’t start by telling them how to quit or that they need to quit. Smokers know. They know more ways to quit than you. They just don’t have the will because they’ve been crippled by the attachment to a cigarette. That every cigarette smoked will calm them down and help them get away from their problems if only for a moment.
The way to get someone to quit is hit them a few ways:
1) Money
a. Every time they don’t smoke a cigarette, they put a quarter in a jar. Every time they do, they lose all of the money in the jar and have to start over.
b. UAB charges me $50/month. The money coming out of my check means I have to budget for it, which I’d never had to do before because I was an impulsive buyer every time who thought the last cigarette in the pack was the last I would smoke. (They’ll stop taking my money after the 4th cessation session).
2) Ask them what led them to start smoking
3) Ask them if the cigarette they smoked actually helped them in the situation where they did smoke. Did their problem get solved? Did they actually feel better?
4) Tell them you want to be a part of their journey to quit.
a. This one in particular is the biggest thing that’s helped me. Having the support of my supervisor at work, my mom at home, and the two women in my support group has been paramount to my success. I don’t want to let them down. Most importantly, they’re always giving me positive reinforcement when I tell them how things are going. This makes me want to keep going so I can keep hearing nice things. I’m pretty tired of all the snarky shit people say to smokers.
Something that’s come over me recently is that a lot of the people of my past don’t actually give a shit about me. You have a lot of people you have casual ties to that you don’t actually care about, but you tell yourself you kind of do/have to. You think about them or you make an effort to care and they don’t reciprocate. It’s like Groundhog Day in how much you’re ok with bringing yourself down with this relationship.
Sure, my PR teacher was this teacher figure for me in college. Sure, he answered the phone a couple of times. But is he a part of my life now? No. Is anyone from that program a part of my life right now? No. Do I care? No. I am fine without them.
The reason I bring this up is that people aren’t typically dynamic thinkers. Or, they are, but it is really selfish of you to think that they should spend a lot of time thinking about the depths of you as a person. So most people end up taking you at face value. You are who you are when they met you. And the smallest of things that they might observe make an impact on how they perceive you. It’s all kind of bullshit, but you can control how you feel about yourself and how you present yourself.
I started thinking about people in my life who were projecting about me based on who I was before like 2017. I think I’m a much different person now with different wants and needs for my life. If I can cut people out of my life, I can easily cut smoking out of my life.
So why did I begin smoking in the first place? Was it even worth it?
With regards to problem solving, I’ve gotten much better about this as I’ve gotten older. I used to smoke a cigarette and then figure things out. In the last 10 days, I’ve kept a stress gel at hand to give my hands something to do and keep me at bay (the one day I didn’t was a nightmare). I write everything down on post it notes. I tackle them as much as I can to keep the notes to a minimum. I leave post its at my desk at work and at home. That way when I go home I only worry about the home tasks. This also helps leave work at work.
Basically, if I take the burden of stress off as much as possible, I am less inclined to smoke. Alternatively, if I am extremely busy, I am also less inclined to smoke. If I take myself out of situations where I’d likely smoke, it’ll be much easier to quit. If I make it easy to quit, I will be less stressed and my body will appreciate it in many ways.
Now that I’m trying to quit and cope in other ways, I notice the smallest of thing triggering my urges. For example, going back to the Friday emails, I would probably smoke before or after that. Then, you can get into overthinking about things that don’t really exist. Like, if someone doesn’t respond to your email, you will probably create some fake scenario in your head of why they didn’t. More often than not they probably just didn’t see it, or they did and forgot to respond. People are people after all. But you’re a smoker so everything is a reason to smoke. Writing this email and hitting submit is a reason to smoke.
I notice myself meandering and this post getting too long. I’ll just say one more thing and stop because this is a topic I can talk about for a long time.
The biggest thing to me was hearing from the other two women in my group the same things I’d been telling myself. Something like… I don’t actually have cravings and can quit whenever. I’m hardheaded and also a dissenter, so to hear my words coming out of someone else’s mouth, my initial reaction was to tell them they were wrong. And then I realized I was wrong.
I realized I smoked because I wanted an excuse to get out of a tough conversation or feel better after one. I wanted to be isolated sometimes because I was scared of saying something stupid because I feel I say something stupid every time I open my mouth or type something out. I wanted to meet more people over a cigarette. Etc. etc.
I realized I was wrong because I don’t need to smoke to do any of these things. Those situations will continue to exist, but I can live the rest of my life with one less habit and problem.