Quit by Choice

On the first day of my quit, November 19th, 2001, there were moments when I wondered if I could make it through the next 10 minutes without a cigarette. I’m sure it never occurred to me that there would come a day when I could say I’d made it through 10 days without one, let alone 10 years.

And yet, here I am, more than 10 years later, still smoke-free.

How did I do it? Simple: by choosing not to feed my addiction to nicotine, every time I was given the opportunity to make that choice. Whenever I felt the urge to smoke, whether it was because I was stressed, or angry, or lonely, or bored, or tired — in other words, whenever I felt the urge to smoke, no matter why — I’d choose not to smoke in response to it.

Because one of the core truths about quitting smoking is that the urges will go away whether you feed them or not.

There’s No Such Thing As An Irresistible Urge

Another of the core truths about quitting smoking is that there’s no such thing as an irresistible urge: even heavy smokers can resist the urge to smoke if they choose to do so.

We’ve all experienced this for ourselves: that endless staff meeting, that cross-country flight, that extended stay in the hospital… If there really was such a thing as an irresistible urge, we would have smoked in all of those situations, in spite of the rules; we couldn’t have resisted.

But we didn’t. Maybe it was because the social pressures against smoking in those situations was stronger than our urge to smoke. Maybe it was because we were afraid to “break the rules”. Whatever the reason, what happened to the urge to smoke every single time we chose not to smoke in response to it?

That’s right: it went away. All by itself.

The Urge Will Stop Whether You Smoke Or Not

When you quit smoking, the exact same thing will happen. Admit to yourself right now that there’s no such thing as an irresistible urge to smoke, and that will eliminate one of the most common excuses for relapse (“I couldn’t help it; I had an irresistible urge to smoke”).

You have to take responsibility for the choices you make. And knowing that the urge will go away anyway — whether you choose to feed it or not — makes the choice pretty simple: choose to smoke and feed the addiction, making its grip on you that much stronger, or choose not to smoke and starve the addiction, making its hold over you that much weaker.

Accept Responsibility For The Choices You Make

In the early days of my quit, one of my favorite mantras was, “The urge will stop whether I light up or not.” Accepting this core truth (that there is no such thing as an irresistible urge to smoke) and accepting responsibility for all the choices I make — good, bad, or indifferent — have been the keys to my successful long-term quit.

Like a lot of things in life, how you react to your urges to smoke depends on how you look at them: if you look at them as something negative, something to be avoided, something to be resisted, or, at best, endured, you’ll be missing a golden opportunity: the opportunity to practice your freedom by making the deliberate, conscious choice not to smoke in response to them.

Embrace your urges; they give you the opportunity to practice choosing life. And, like everything else in life, making that choice gets easier every time you do it.