UKCasual

Hope you don’t mind me chiming in from the US… I’m approaching 2 years without smoking. I can’t really say if there was any one thing that helped me quit, but I had smoked about a pack a day for the last 20 years.

When I decided to quit (I’ve stopped for months at a time in the past, but never seriously) I made the decision that I wouldn’t smoke again and quit cold turkey. I kept the same routines though: having a beer with friends after work, going outside with them when they smoked, and going outside at work when my colleagues smoked. I enjoyed the smell of the secondhand smoke, but I enjoyed the socializing and camaraderie more and it didn’t really tempt me all that much. It was more about the commitment that I made in my head when I decided to quit smoking that kept me from lighting up. The cravings sucked at first, but it is somewhat like mourning a dead loved one. Always horrible, you’ll forever miss it, and eventually it sucks a little less.

I did miss smoking the most when travelling for work. There is a bit of a language barrier where I go most often, and I hadn’t realized how much I used smoking as a crutch when I needed to get away and feel comfortable. It still just came down to me not wanting to disappoint the inner me, however.

I don’t know if that makes sense, and I don’t know how to really explain it better. I hope something in that jumble of words helps though.