If you’re anything like me, you used to use smoking to cover up a lot of stuff. What I mean by that is, as a smoker, there were a lot of issues I never really dealt with, because I’d always just “smoke them away” (in other words, instead of dealing with them, I would just “stuff” them and go have a smoke).

I Don’t Know About You

Obviously, we’re all different, so I have no way of knowing what those issues might be for you, but here’s one of mine: I used to hate to deal with relationship conflicts. If I had an argument with my girlfriend, I would almost always get to a point where I would walk away and smoke a cigarette to “calm down”. In reality, I was stuffing my anger (or other “negative” emotion) behind the smokescreen instead of dealing with it in the moment.

In the early days of my quit, I used to write about how I was “digging deep”; actively looking for those things that I used to cover up by smoking so I could take them out and look at them in the cold light of day and deal with them before they had a chance to sabotage my quit. I used to encourage other quitters to do the same.

But I Urge You To Do It Too

I encourage you to dig deep, too: go looking for those things you used to cover up by smoking, take them out and look at them objectively, and decide how you’re going to deal with them now that you don’t smoke any more, before they have a chance to sabotage your quit.

It seems to me that at a month into the quit, we’re in the perfect spot for issues like this to start surfacing; we’re far enough along in our quit that the unpleasant physical aspects of quitting are mostly behind us, and we’ve already run into many of the triggers that used to send us looking for a cigarette in the past and successfully dealt with them.

Why It’s a Good Idea

So now, our minds need something else to occupy them, and they start digging, all by themselves. Some of the stuff they dig up is not pretty. And some of the stuff they dig up subconsciously triggers the urge to smoke (because that’s been our coping mechanism for so long).

The good news is, now we don’t have to respond to those triggers by smoking any more: we can make different choices, if we remain vigilant; if we stay conscious of what’s going on for us in each moment.

How It Was for Me

Once again, we’re all different, so I have no way of knowing when you’ll stop having regular, frequent craves, or when you’ll stop continually thinking about smoking (or not smoking), but I can tell you how it was for me:

I stopped having regular cravings around three months into my quit, and by the end of my first year they had become extremely rare. At this point, it’s been many years since I recall having one. I also stopped thinking about smoking or not smoking constantly around three months in, and rarely thought about it at all after about 6 to 9 months. I’m pretty sure that, after I’d been quit a year, those “obsessive” thoughts about smoking were long gone.

Your Mileage May Vary

Of course, your mileage may vary, but you will stop having craves, and you will stop obsessing over smoking. As long as you keep choosing life.

I’ve got a clue for you: you were not born a nicotine addict. You are getting back to normal. But if you’re anything like me, it’s been a long time since not being a slave to your nicotine addiction was “normal” for you. Because, if you’re anything like me (and a lot of other smokers I know), you didn’t become a nicotine addict until you were in your teens (I smoked my first cigarette at 10, and was probably hooked by the time I was 12 or 13; how about you?).

The Nature of Freedom

For the first dozen years of your life or so, you never thought, “I wish I had a cigarette,” or, “I wish I could quit smoking.” For your first dozen years or so, you never had an “uncontrollable” urge to smoke (in fact, you never had an urge to smoke at all), you never ran out in the middle of the night to grab a pack, and you never had to stand outside in all kinds of weather just to feed your addiction.

You Were Free

You were free, but it was nothing special. It was nothing special because it was just how you were. You had no experience being enslaved by an addiction, so there was nothing to compare being free with. It was also nothing special because you didn’t have to do anything (or not do anything) to achieve it; it was just the way you were; you took it for granted.

Something Special

But at some point you started teaching yourself how to be a smoker and it was something special. It was special because it was new; it was special because it was forbidden (at least it was if, like me, you started when you were still a little kid); it was special because it was something you had to work at learning.

You had to push past the reaction from your body when you first started deliberately sucking in poisonous smoke (remember those first few cigarettes? The way you coughed and choked? How you felt sick and maybe thought, “how do the grownups do this?”).

You had to sneak around behind your parents’ backs to practice becoming a smoker because if they ever caught you smoking, they’d punish you (even though they were probably smokers themselves).

The Nature of Addiction

But over the course of years of practice, sucking in poisonous, cancer-causing smoke a couple of dozen times a day became “normal” for you. And by then, you were addicted to nicotine, and in serious denial about the risks of continuing to feed that addiction (like addicts everywhere).

You were now a slave to your addiction, but it was nothing special; it was just how you were. You didn’t have to work at it any more.

The Big Difference

But this time there was a big difference: This time, you had something to compare it to.

Part of you remembered being free; part of you remembered not having those urges; not having to run out in the middle of the night; not having to stand outside in all kinds of weather like an outcast, feeding your addiction.

And that part of you wanted freedom back. Now freedom was something special, because it was something you didn’t have any more, and part of you remembered how it was when you did.

You Can Get it Back

But you’re going to have to work to get it back. You’re going to have to teach your body how to deal with not feeding the addiction any more; you’re going to have teach your mind how to respond to those urges; you’re going to have to teach yourself how to handle stress, anger, loneliness, and all those messy emotions without having your drug of choice to mediate them.

But it’s doable, and if you keep working at it long enough and consistently enough, one day you’ll realize that you haven’t even thought about smoking in a couple of days.

Keep Working At It

If you keep working at it long enough and consistently enough, one day you’ll realize that you haven’t thought about smoking for a couple of months.

Keep working at it, and you’ll hit the point where you realize you haven’t thought about smoking in years.

And It’ll Be Nothing Special Again

Keep going long enough, and you’ll hit the point where you realize that, once again, being free is nothing special. It’ll be nothing special because it’ll just be how you are; you won’t have to work at it any more.

The big difference this time will be that you’ll have something to compare it to, and you’ll never want to go back to being a slave to your addiction.

And if you’re really smart, this time you won’t take it for granted.

Does your overeating feel like self-sabotage? (If you’re not sure about how to answer this question, have you found yourself thinking that it might be better to go back to smoking if you’re going to be overeating like this as a non-smoker? If you answered “Yes” — or even “maybe” — just now, then your overeating probably should feel like self-sabotage…)

You’re Not Alone

First of all, understand that you’re not alone; lots of quitters go through a phase like this. Some of them allow this issue to derail their quit; others learn to deal with it and stay free.

Regardless of what the cause of your overeating might be, how do you deal with it? Since this is such a common question, I’m going to offer some suggestions from members of a quit support community I started back in 2002:

Some Suggestions from Other Quitters

• Chew ice; it gives you something to do with your mouth, and there are no calories in ice. -tsjay49
• Try to control it by eating smaller meals with snacks in between. For snacks try celery sticks, carrot sticks or fruit with a 1 or 2 ounces of cheese. The protein in the cheese helps keep you from getting hungry as quickly. -ms_tapestry
• Maybe some 97% fat free popcorn could be munched at night. Orville Redenbacher makes a good tasting one. -SherryL
• When I first quit I used to chew cinnamon sticks to smithereens. No calories and lots of fiber! -Marvel
• Have you tried hard candy? That works well and you are limited in the number you can have, because they last so long. -dave1355
• On my first 2 weeks I used blow pops. They last awhile and you get the gum at the end. I think the key is finding the snacks that will last awhile to get you through the roughest spots, then concentrate on the weight thing when you are a bit more comfy with your quit. -bwick18
• I made a deal with myself this time. I would tolerate 10 pounds early in my quit, just to get past the horrible times. -Braveheart

Understanding It

If your overeating is feeling like self-sabotage, that’s exactly what it could be; the inner junkie knows us very well, so it can offer us “reasons” (excuses) to smoke again that appeal to our most intimate fears and desires. (Or, if you prefer a more scientific answer, as I’ve mentioned here before, it may be that you’re eating to satisfy an urge for nicotine, rather than to satisfy hunger.)

Dealing With It

Whichever way you think of the cause, I suggest that you keep a food journal: write down exactly what you’re eating, make note of when you’re eating it, and what your general mood is at the time you’re eating. Keeping a journal can be helpful if for no other reason than it brings the act of eating to your conscious awareness (if you’re really committed to journaling everything you eat, you won’t just eat at the drop of a hat; a lot of times you’ll probably look at your journal and think, “But I just finished dinner 90 minutes ago; I couldn’t possibly be this hungry already!”). Then whether you eat or not becomes a conscious decision rather than an automatic reaction.

And, just like with smoking, if you’re aware of what you’re doing, you can make the deliberate, conscious choice to eat or not.

Just Try It

Try it, and let me know how it’s working for you.

Personally, I think this is nonsense; I’ve never met a doctor yet who had anything useful to offer in terms of advice about how to quit smoking: most doctors have never been smokers (so they have no relevant personal experience to share), and most doctors get no real training in medical school on how to deal with addiction.

Take Two and Don’t Call Me in the Morning

So it’s virtually guaranteed that the extent of the “professional help” you’ll get from your doctor is a prescription for one of the new quit-smoking wonder drugs and their best wishes for your success. Unless they also advise you to use “nicotine replacement therapy” in combination with the wonder drug (or, if your medical plan won’t cover the wonder drug — which many won’t — they’ll probably just advise you to grab a box of nicotine patches from the drug store and send you on your way).

This is Almost Funny

(I saw an article just a couple of days ago on a well-regarded health-related blog that was co-authored by a famous TV doctor — I won’t mention his name, but there’s a famous movie about a wizard who lives in a land with the same last name. The article was titled, “How to Quit Smoking Tobacco – Use Nicotine Patch“, and had this description, “If you’re wondering how to quit smoking tobacco, use these five steps to help you steer clear of nicotine and start living healthier.”

Do these people have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Use a nicotine patch to help you steer clear of nicotine?!? Would they advise alcoholics to use alcohol injections to help them steer clear of drinking?

Now, to be fair, there was some sensible advice in the actual column, but the fact is that doctors — even famous TV doctors — are mostly just parroting the conventional wisdom with no useful, real-world idea of how to help anyone successfully quit smoking.)

Oh, Yeah, The Excerpt I Promised…

Here’s the excerpt from the article I mentioned at the top of this post:

American smokers want to kick the habit, but they do not seem to be getting the help they need from their health care professionals.

Most smokers want to quit smoking, and more than half have tried to quit in the prior year. But those who are trying to quit aren’t receiving the help and support they need.

According to a report in the November 11, 2011, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 68.8 percent of current cigarette smokers said they would like to stop smoking completely, and 52.4 percent had tried to quit smoking in the preceding year. But 68.3 percent of the smokers who tried to quit did so without using evidence-based cessation counseling or medications, and only 48.3 percent of those who had visited a health care professional in the prior year reported receiving advice on how to quit smoking.

My Two Cents

If you want my advice, steer clear of the conventional wisdom and take responsibility for your own choices and your own recovery. There are no magic bullets. And if you want support, look for help from somebody who’s been there, who’s come back to tell the tale, and who’s actually helped people quit and stay quit for the long haul.

For example, let’s say that you’re driving on the freeway; it’s rush hour, and you’re in the middle lane. Suddenly, somebody cuts in front of you from the next lane. You swerve to avoid a collision, and you think, “Idiot! Are you trying to kill me?!? Do you really think you’re going to get there any sooner than I am in this traffic? Jerk!”

(Maybe you even say this out loud. In an angry voice.)

Your Opinion

All that angry stuff you added to the situation (about the other driver being an idiot and trying to kill you) is only your opinion. The other driver may have been swerving to avoid hitting another car or an animal that ran out from the shoulder of the road. They may have been simply distracted or preoccupied. They may even have been having a stroke or a heart attack.

Of course, it’s possible that they were in fact being impatient and inconsiderate, but what they almost certainly were not trying to do was kill you. They may not even have been aware of you.

The Truth

But you don’t know any of that. All you know for sure is that a car cut in front of you and you had to swerve to avoid it. That’s the truth. All the rest is your opinion.

And your opinion did nothing to help you in that situation: by the time you formulated and expressed your opinion, the situation was already over and done with. The car cut in front of you, you reacted by swerving to avoid the collision, and that was the end of it.

Your Opinion Can Hurt You

In fact, your opinion in that situation could go well beyond merely not being helpful to being actively harmful; if you allow it to perpetuate itself, you may become increasingly angry, decide that “you’ll show them!” and start driving in an aggressive or reckless manner, putting yourself — and the other drivers out there with you — in danger.

Your Opinions About Quitting Can Hurt You, Too

It’s much the same with craves when we’re quitting smoking: the truth of the matter is that cravings are a normal part of recovery. They’re nothing special. And the truth is, when you get a crave, you only have two choices: feed it, or starve it. But we add our opinions to the mix, and all sorts of mischief begins.

We fear the craves before they arrive, thinking that they’ll be horrible and hard to resist, and the fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it adds to their power before they even arrive.

Or we try to avoid the craves (which of course we can’t; they’re a normal part of recovery) and the energy we put into trying to avoid them just adds to their power once they inevitably do arrive.

Worse still, we try to fight the craves when they arrive (but of course, as we’ve discussed before, resistance is futile) and the energy we put into fighting them just gives them more power.

The Truth Will Set You Free

If we’d just accept the truth, and deal with it appropriately without adding our opinions to it, we’d have a much easier time recovering.

How do you do that? Simple: when you get a crave, acknowledge it (“Oh; having a crave.”) without adding your opinion (in other words, it’s not “OMG! I’M HAVING A CRAVE!!!“, it’s like you’re saying, “Oh; the sun came up in the east this morning.” No big deal, no surprise, and no drama; you’re just stating a fact), decide what to do about it (feed it, or starve it), and then just do whatever you need to do next without thinking about it again.

Is it easy to do this? No, not at first, but it gets easier the more you practice it. Eventually, you’ll get to the point where you won’t have any opinions about your craves at all, and they’ll come and go without disturbing you a bit.

Try It

And then come back and let me know how it’s working for you.

In my opinion, the number one most important attribute needed to be a successful quitter is patience. You need patience to wait for the inner junkie to give up; to lie down and go to sleep. Because the junkie will eventually give up if you keep saying, “No. Not right now.”

Don’t Try to Do Too Much at Once

You don’t have to know or predict what you’ll do tomorrow, or even later today; as long as right now, in this moment, the answer is always, “No. I’m not going to smoke right now,” you’ll be fine.

At first, you have to tell the inner junkie “No” a lot. But as time goes by, you’ll have to do it less and less. Eventually, you almost never have to do it at all. Because the junkie, like a willful child, will eventually get tired of whining and lie down and go to sleep.

Take It One Moment at a Time

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve quit and then gone back to smoking; heck, I can’t even count the number of times I quit and relapsed over my 30-plus years of being an on again/off again (mostly “on”) smoker. But I figured something out early in this quit: I realized that, every single time I relapsed, it was because I made the deliberate, conscious choice to take that first puff that led me back into slavery to my addiction. And I made a firm commitment that, this time, I wasn’t going to take that first puff.

How Did I Do It?

I didn’t do it by vowing never to smoke again, or even by promising that I wouldn’t smoke tomorrow. I did it by choosing not to smoke “right now”. What do I mean by choosing not to smoke “right now”? I mean that, in the moment I was having a crave, when my inner junkie was hammering at me to feed him, I would tell him, “No. Not right now.”

And that’s all I’ve ever had to do to stay free since November of 2001: simply say, “No. Not right now,” in response to my craves.

Don’t Overestimate the Challenge

The thing is, even at their most intense (in the first few days of a quit), the vast majority of craves last less than 5 minutes (if you’re still smoking, it’s easy to prove this to yourself: the next time you get a crave, set up a timer for 5 minutes, and choose not to smoke before the timer goes off. Chances are that, by the time the timer goes off, you won’t remember you were even having a crave 5 minutes earlier).

Based on this observation, I came up with my patented, never-been-known-to-fail,

2-Step Quit Plan^™

1. Make a commitment to yourself that you’ll always wait at least 5 minutes before caving in to a crave and lighting up a cigarette.
2. If a crave lasts for more than 5 minutes, see step 1.

Consistency is the Key

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. It boils down to simply choosing not to smoke right now. And even though I’ve been choosing not to smoke “right now” for over 10 years at this point, I still make no claims about tomorrow (or even later today); all I can tell you for sure is that if I happen to have a crave (and I can’t even remember the last time I had anything that could remotely be described as a crave,) I’ll choose not to smoke right now when it happens.

That’s all I’ve ever needed to do.

It’s all you’ll ever need to do, too.

Some of my earliest and fondest memories revolve around music:

• Coloring the keys on the old upright piano on our front porch with crayons so I could visualize how to play songs that I’d heard (I somehow figured out that all the “C”s were basically the same note — probably the repeating pattern of white and black keys — and colored the “C” in every octave blue, then picked a color for each of the other 6 “white notes” and made them that color in every octave); I was maybe 6 years old at the time…
• Literally begging my parents to let me stay up and watch the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show (Ed Sullivan came on at 8:00PM, which was past my bedtime, but I got them to let me stay up); I was around 8 years old…
• My Nana (that’s what we called mom’s mom) making my aunt leave the car running until the song I was listening to (the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride”) finished playing on the radio; I was 8 or 9 years old…
• Joining my first drum corps and learning to play the bugle (I would be involved in drum corps — as a marching member and later as music instructor, arranger, and music director — into my mid-30s); I was 11 years old…
• Going to college to study music and spending the next 10 years working towards my Master’s degree (which I earned from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati in 1992)…

Life Was Good

For the 6 years following my graduation from CCM, I worked as a professional musician (performing on trombone, piano, and voice; composing and arranging music for drum corps, marching bands and stage bands; acting as a location recording/mixing engineer and later producer; in short, doing anything musical I could to make a living). It was dicey (especially for the first few years), but I loved what I was doing, and I didn’t need anything more than that. Life was good.

Until it Wasn’t

Then disaster struck: I was diagnosed with an advanced case of emphysema, which I gave myself by choosing to feed my addiction to nicotine for 35 years. I robbed myself of the ability to play or sing at a professional level (it’s impossible to play the trombone or sing on a professional level when you’ve wrecked your lungs) and getting paid to play or sing had been the realization of a life-long dream; when I killed that, a huge part of myself died. I was so discouraged that I gave up music completely, even listening to it…

A Word to the Wise

If you’re still smoking, and you’re putting off getting started on this quit, or you’ve been quit for a while and are starting to get tired of the struggle and you’re entertaining thoughts of “just this one”, think about what you’ve got to lose: so many quits are thrown away (or not even attempted) because addicts like us tend to focus on the immediate gratification of that next fix and be in denial about the consequences of continuing to feed our addictions.

Just get started. Or just keep going. The long-term benefits of quitting far outweigh the temporary discomfort of making the adjustment, and it really does get easier the longer you stay free.

As long as you hang in there.

As long as you choose life.

Maybe it will help you to realize that everybody who ever quit smoking had to face the challenges of life every day, too; just like you. Obviously not the same challenges you’re facing, but every bit as challenging to them as yours are to you. Some of them stayed quit, some of them went back to feeding the addiction.

What About You?

The ones who stayed quit had to make a mental shift: when they found themselves thinking that there were a lot of reasons to go back to smoking, they realized that these thoughts were coming from their inner junkie, and they understood that the junkie could only offer excuses for feeding it again, not reasons.

Big difference. Get your head straight on this point: there are lots of good reasons to stay free, even if it’s tough right now, but no good reasons to give up and go back to smoking. Only excuses.

Because, no matter what challenges you’re facing right now, I can guarantee you that smoking will not help you deal with them; it will only make you an active, practicing addict again. And tomorrow, you’ll have a new set of challenges to face. That’s life. Nothing’s permanent, for better or worse.

All Things Must Pass.

Including your craves. Remember: the craving will stop whether you light up or not. You know this; you’ve experienced it for yourself hundreds (if not thousands) of times. That being the case, the choice boils down to this: feed your addiction, knowing that you’re only guaranteeing that the next crave will come quicker and be stronger, or starve your addiction, knowing that if you do, the next crave will take longer to arrive and be weaker when it gets there.

The bottom line is, you have to choose, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, whether you’re going to feed your addiction or not. Just like everybody who ever quit. (And just like everybody who continues to smoke.) Choosing not to feed your addiction can be tough in the early going, but it gets easier the more you do it. (Just like choosing to smoke.)

The biggest difference is in the outcomes: one choice leads to freedom, health, and life; the other one leads to slavery, disease, and, ultimately, death.

Choose wisely.

An escape hatch is simply an excuse that you set up before you quit to allow yourself to escape from your commitment to quitting under certain circumstances. For instance, your escape hatch may be, “I’ll stop smoking as long as I don’t get too crabby,” or, “I’ll quit as long as I don’t have to deal with any super stressful situations,” or, “I’ll stay off the cigarettes as long as I don’t gain weight.”

Whatever it is, you have to recognize that it’s a form of self-sabotage.

Why Do We Do This?

If you read my earlier post about defusing excuses, you may have already spent some time thinking about the excuses you’ve used to relapse in the past and/or the excuses you can see yourself using to relapse in the future.

Presumably, if you did the exercises I suggested in that post, you’ve got a pretty good idea, not only of what your potential excuses for relapse are, but also how you might counteract them if and when they crop up after you quit.

Do You See the Common Thread?

Lots of smokers build their escape hatches around the same excuses that they’ve used before to justify relapse (or the excuses they can see themselves using to justify relapse in the future), and this is no coincidence; the inner junkie puts a lot of time and effort into suggesting these escape hatches, because it knows that they’re the ones most likely to work.

What are Your Escape Hatches?

Spend some serious time thinking about this question. Write your escape hatches down in your journal and think about how you might counteract them with positive statements of your intent to succeed, rather than letting them stand and giving you built-in excuses to fail.

Is It Gaining Weight?

For example, if one of your escape hatches is, “I’ll stay off the cigarettes as long as I don’t gain weight,” you might counteract it by reminding yourself that quitting smoking does not cause weight gain, and telling yourself, “I can quit smoking and maintain my weight,” or even, “I can quit smoking and lose weight at the same time.” (No, really; one of the women I worked with quit smoking and lost over 100 pounds in her first year of being quit. She’s been quit for over 7 years now, and hasn’t gained any of that weight back.)

Is It Dealing with Stress?

Or, if one of your escape hatches is, “I’ll quit smoking as long as I don’t have to deal with any super stressful situations,” you might counteract that by reminding yourself that the only stress smoking relieves is the stress that smoking creates in the first place, and telling yourself, “I can quit smoking and deal with stress in positive ways.” The fact is, everybody has to deal with stress, but only smokers try to deal with it by smoking.

Let’s Talk About It

I think you get the idea. After you spend some time with this, why don’t you come back here and leave a comment telling us one of your escape hatches and how you plan to close it? And if you find one that you can’t think of any way of closing, post that in the comments, too; one of us may be able to suggest something that will work.

Then I grew up a little and stopped thinking all those unkind things about people who made that suggestion; they were probably only trying to help (and besides, one of them was my mother). I started to wonder why the fact that smoking was bad for my health had never seemed to be a strong enough reason to actually quit smoking, and I decided that, until I was diagnosed with an advanced case of emphysema in November of 2001, the fact that smoking was bad for my health never seemed quite “real” to me.

Why It Doesn’t Work

Even though I saw how my mother’s health deteriorated from smoking (even after she quit), even though I watched my father struggle with smoking almost until the day he died of cancer, it still wasn’t happening to me (I know that sounds pretty cold, but it’s absolutely true; until I found out that I had emphysema, it wasn’t real for me, because it wasn’t happening to me personally).

And even though being diagnosed with emphysema, not being able to take a deep breath without choking, and listening to the “death rattle” in my lungs every time I tried to lie down on my back scared the hell out of me, there was this little voice inside me (that I now recognize as the “inner junkie”) saying, “Hey, lots of people live with emphysema; maybe if you just cut down a little…”

The Inner Junkie Wants to Keep You In Denial

Of course, my rational side realized — even as the little voice was saying it — that it was just another cop-out; another way to avoid the pain of withdrawal by continuing to let my addiction control my life. And I knew that I had to find a way to drown out the voice of the junkie…

One of the ways that I used to drown out the voice of the junkie was to think of as many reasons as I could that resonated with my emotional side (e.g.; reasons like, “If I quit smoking, I’ll be more attractive”, or, “If I quit smoking, I’ll feel better about myself”, or, “If I quit smoking, I won’t be a social outcast”, etc.) and write them down where I could look at them and add to them.

Get Honest With Yourself

It’s kinda funny: way back when I was a freshman in college, I had a friend whose father had an advanced case of emphysema (this guy had to drag an oxygen tank with him everywhere he went and wear one of those rubber tubes up his nose). The first time I met this friend’s father was when he came to campus to see our departmental recital, and during intermission, I was astounded to see him drag his oxygen tank out to the lobby, turn off the oxygen, take the tube out of his nose, and light a cigarette.

I clearly remember thinking, “What an idiot! He can’t even breathe any more without dragging that oxygen tank around with him, and yet, here he is, smoking like a stack!” (Of course, the irony of my having this thought as I stood there, puffing away on my own cigarette, was lost on me at the time; as the old saying goes, “Youth is wasted on the young…”)

Dig Deep! Get Emotional About It!

Bottom line here is that, yes, smoking is bad for your health, but that’s way too abstract a reason to motivate you to act, and you need to act if you’re going to save your life. Dig deep, find reasons that resonate with you emotionally, and write them down. Then take your list out regularly, go over those reasons, feel the emotion that they create in you, and add as many more reasons as you can think of to it.

What Are Your Reasons?

I’d love to hear what some of your reasons are; why don’t you go ahead and leave one or two (or a whole list) in the comments?