Are you still quit? If so, congratulations! Most quitters would probably agree that the first 3 days are the hardest to get through. And the last time I went through them I would have agreed: I remember going through some serious withdrawal symptoms in those first 3 days.
Whether you had it hard or easy, though, if you’re still free on January 3rd, you’re doing great! Every day should get a little easier from here on; every day, you should feel a little more “normal” as a non-smoker, a little more comfortable in your new role.
Being a Non-Smoker is Your Natural State
Because it isn’t really a new role, it’s an old role: none of us was born smoking, and most of us didn’t start smoking until we’d been around quite a few years. So our earliest memories of our lives are of ourselves as non-smokers, and the longer you go now without smoking, the more normal it will feel again.
But what if you started smoking again already? Are you a hopeless addict? Are you doomed to failure? That depends on how you handle this relapse: you can blame someone or something outside of yourself, or you can take responsibility for the choice you made and deal with the consequences.
Truth and Consequences
What you decide now will have a huge effect on what you end up doing for the rest of your life, so you’ll want to choose carefully…
A lot of smokers who quit and then relapse in a day or two decide that someone or something outside of themselves was responsible for their choice to start smoking again. You know the drill: “My [husband, wife, son, daughter, father, mother, whoever] did something to [stress me out, piss me off, whatever] and that made me smoke.” Or maybe it was the famous (yet mythical) “irresistible urge” that made you smoke.
Get Real
Whatever it was, if you’re blaming anything outside of yourself, you need to get honest with yourself or you’re only going to keep shooting yourself in the foot. If you’re smoking, it’s because you chose to reach for a cigarette, apply flame to one end of it, and suck on the other. Those 3 acts were all the result of deliberate, conscious choices you made (there were probably a number of other decision points along the way, but those 3 should be enough to convince you).
Don’t try to pretend that you’re some innocent bystander here; take responsibility for your own choices and you’ll be a lot closer to getting free. Maybe your husband did do something that really pissed you off, but whatever it was didn’t make you smoke; you chose to smoke in response to it. Take responsibility for that choice.
It’s Always Your Choice
Next, admit that it’s always your responsibility when you choose to smoke, and that you have to take responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Right now, the consequences are pretty easy to deal with; you may be disappointed in yourself at the moment because you chose to smoke again, but you can pretty easily counteract that disappointment and start feeling good about yourself again by choosing not to smoke the next time you get the urge.
On the other hand, if you continue to choose to smoke, the consequences will eventually not be so easy to deal with; there’s no amount of feeling good about yourself that will counteract emphysema, congestive heart failure, or cancer. Ultimately, whether you choose to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices you make or not, you will have to deal with those consequences.
Learn from My Mistakes
I started smoking at a very young age. I also started quitting smoking at a fairly young age. But I always allowed myself to rationalize my deliberate, conscious choices to start smoking again after every time I quit. I didn’t take responsibility for the choices I made.
But eventually, I had to deal with the consequences of those choices: I was diagnosed with emphysema in November of 2001, and that disease put an end to my career as a professional musician (I was a professional trombonist and singer, and the emphysema destroyed my ability to perform in either capacity on a professional level any more).
Music was everything to me. I threw away the only career that mattered to me because I refused to take responsibility for the choices I made. But in the end I couldn’t avoid the consequences of those choices, and in the end, you won’t be able to, either.
Time for Confession
If you quit and then chose to start smoking again, leave a comment below: tell us what your rationalization to start smoking again was, and then tell us what the truth of the matter actually is. Because, as the old saying goes, the truth will set you free.