“This one’s the last one”

“This one’s the last one” is a sentence I said way too many times at this point. I’m addicted to nicotine and it sucks a lot actually. Not only is smoking expensive but it also is very unhealthy for your body… and everyone around you. Naturally, I try not to smoke near people and for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to limit it to a set number (more or less successfully)… and well, yesterday, I had my last cigarette – hopefully, forever. I’m trying to quit now. For good. Hopefully, it works… but that’s not all I wanted to write about today. I actually wanted to write this post with the goal of explaining why I personally find it so hard to quit, why exactly I am quitting right now and how I’m trying to do it. But because not everyone is me, I can’t do that in a “how to quit smoking” post or whatever… What works for me, isn’t gonna work the same for someone else. Roger over at ContainsModeratePeril wrote about that back in 2019 and then also had to cut down on alcohol and food furthermore this year. And he also said in his post from 2019 that what helps him doesn’t necessarily work for others. Definitely check out his posts.

For me, the biggest issue is that I don’t even know why I started. I guess it was “cool” to hang out with the cooler people in the upper classes and eventually I had my first cigarette leading to the first pack and eventually I had my first proper problem. When my parents found out, I was fucked and quit immediately. They were glad that I would stop. My parents are both heavy smokers, so I guess that kind of lead to me also being around the smoke often (though with headaches) and then eventually getting to the point of becoming curious… but I don’t want to blame them. Some studies say that children of smokers are more likely to become smokers themselves but it’s not their fault that I’m stupid, right? Either way, after I graduated from high school and after I got my A-levels, I enrolled at our university here three years ago and eventually, I gave in after buying groceries and always walking past that cigarette shelf. Suddenly, I started smoking… and I continued it for quite a while until I eventually decided that I wanted to quit. I mean, I’d always be out of cigarettes and I kept it secret from my parents and on top of it all, it stinks and your partner doesn’t want to kiss you and that sort of stuff. It weighs on you a little and I personally really didn’t want to be the guy that needs to step out every few hours to get smoke or anything.

Hence, I quit cold-turkey and got back into it again after a few days, then I quit again after a pack, and picked it up again after a few weeks… again, and I managed to go through it for three months and well, now I’d like to stay nicotine-free forever, if possible. Hence, I’m trying to quit cold turkey again but I may actually resort to nicotine patches. I’ve got a vape here (I hate that thing) that is filled with nicotine-free liquids that will essentially replace that “ritual” of mine where I go for a smoke when I’m experiencing stress or when I need fresh air or when I’m outside of the house. It’s stupid but the “oral satisfaction” (don’t lewd this post!) is a big part of why a lot of people can’t quit. From what I’ve heard, plenty of people chew on pencils when they’re quitting, so… since I don’t wanna ruin my pens (especially my fountain pen), I’ll try the vape… and if I really have cravings for nicotine, I may really try out the patches but I kind of don’t want to… and whenever I feel like I’m lethargic and like I can’t do anything (because, yes, I’m that addicted to it), I’ll try some snacks, Soda, cake, sweets, or this jar of liquorice I have here to keep myself occupied. It’s an issue that it has actually come to this but in the end, paying ten bucks per pack is more expensive than getting a whole lot of snacks, especially as I may need to gain a bit more weight with this lich body of mine.

The reason I wanna quit right now, btw, is mostly that I feel bad whenever I do it. It’s this weird sense of feeling satisfied when you do it but you also hate yourself in the meantime and it gets quite taxing on my mental health. At the same time, I’m already noticing the effects of it in terms of my stamina and stuff. I’m trying to build it up again before it really is too late and I wanna work out more to be healthier but in the end, my lungs hate me already for starting to run and so on… It’s annoying.

Either way, I’ll try to quit from today onwards and hopefully, I’ll be smoke-free forever. As always, uh… Mark Twain would have said: “To quit smoking is easy, I did it a hundred times.” Applies to me as well, I guess.

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!