QUIT TIP
“Motivation to quit and readiness to quit are important, but not as important as believing that you can quit and following through with a plan.”
— Michael Martin, Quit Coach
4 http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4439
• Why you still smoke: letting your “little devil” speak
• Quitting for yourself, not for your family or doctor
• Exploring the values you hold dearest
• Your devil versus your angel: the final showdown
One morning Cheryl Procter-Rogers phoned a girlfriend, and a gravelly male voice answered. Startled, Procter-Rogers said, “Sorry, I have the wrong number.”
“Hey, girl, this is me!” the voice replied.
After clearing her throat, Procter-Rogers’s friend, a longtime smoker, sounded like herself again. But in that moment, Procter-Rogers, a 25-year, pack-a-day smoker, decided to quit.
“The sound of her voice shook me to my core,” recalls Procter-Rogers, a Chicago public-relations professional who was 38 at the time. “It was like someone on a ventilator.” Her decision wasn’t easy — she loved the minty flavor of menthol on her tongue and enjoyed smoke breaks with her friends at work and church. But it was final. “I thought, I’m not going out like that. I’m done.”
On your journey to becoming tobacco-free, nothing will serve you better than simply making up your mind that you will never smoke again. Medication will help. Planning is critical. Encouragement from friends will go a long way. But what will steel you through temptation, what will stop you from caving when a buddy offers you “just one,” is being able to say, with conviction, I’m done. Your decision to quit is your paddle in a canoe. It’s what will propel you forward and give you something to hang on to when the waters get rough.
What if you don’t feel ready to commit? What if, instead of I’m done, you’re thinking, I know I should quit, but darn, I love my cigarettes. Or I want to quit, but it’s too hard. That’s okay. Really! You can decide to quit even if you still enjoy cigarettes or fear failure or can’t yet imagine yourself as a nonsmoker. Commitment is only a first step, but it’s the crucial one that sets the course for all the steps to follow. It’s possible — in fact, it’s human — to take a vow while still harboring doubts. The strength of your commitment is sure to build with time, as you show yourself that you can keep it.
In this chapter, we help you sort out your feelings about cigarettes—what you love, what you hate—and gauge whether your reasons for smoking withstand your own scrutiny. If you’re already excited about quitting, this chapter will boost your resolve. If you’re feeling ambivalent or pressured, we will help you make an authentic decision to quit.
Why You Still Smoke: Letting Your “Little Devil” Speak
The way Burke describes it, before her restroom episode in the Atlanta, airport she had “a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.” Her devil would say, “Hey, I’m stressed. I deserve a smoke.” Her angel would shoot back with, “No, this stuff is killing me,” only to have her devil reply, “But what’s one cigarette?” As any smoker knows, that little devil is sneaky and persistent, especially when you’re around other smokers or feeling anxious. How can you silence him for good? As you venture toward a decision to quit, explore your internal conflicts about smoking. Give your devil his due — and then outfox him. Here’s a rundown of the smoking devil’s best shots.
“But I enjoy smoking.” For some folks, there’s nothing quite like holding a filter between your fingers or filling your mouth with smoke. “That first drag just sets off a little thrill in your brain like nothing else can,” says Nancy Kruh of Nashville, Tennessee, who smoked a pack a day for fifteen years. “It’s like a little jolt of wonderfulness.”
Kruh’s enthusiasm began to fade after a heart-to-heart talk with a lifelong friend. “She got serious on me and said, ‘I’m really worried about your health.’ If it had come from one of my holier-than-thou friends, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ But our friendship had always been supportive, not judgmental.” For Kruh the final straw was watching Lucie Arnaz interviewed on TV after her father, Desi Arnaz, who played Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, had died of lung cancer. “Lucie was literally outside the hospital, probably having just watched her father drown in the fluid of his own lungs, and some hideous reporter stuck a microphone in her face. All Lucie could choke out were two words, ‘Don’t smoke.’ ”
Kruh, now 58, had grown up watching I Love Lucy and had a deep nostalgic connection to Desi. “Knowing what a lifetime of tobacco abuse had done to him and witnessing his daughter’s raw emotion— it just hit me up the side of the head like a two-by-four.” Kruh quit smoking a month later.
Let’s consider exactly what it is you enjoy about smoking. Besides that “jolt of wonderfulness,” what gives you pleasure? Is it possible that what you enjoy is relief from the discomfort of withdrawal? Yes, you feel better when you light up, but as we explain in Chapter 1, that’s largely because you’re addicted to nicotine. When you take a smoke break at work, could you be enjoying the break from your work even more than the cigarette? Might you find other break activities that deliver the same sense of relief? Maybe you’d enjoy chatting with a coworker, walking around the block, or checking the online game you’re playing with a friend. In Chapter 8, Conquering Your Urges to Smoke, we help you find worthy substitutes for cigarettes.
If you feel certain the momentary pleasure you get from smoking cannot be duplicated by another activity, ask yourself: Could life as a nonsmoker be more enjoyable than life as a smoker? We’ll explore that answer in the Chapter 4 section titled “Five Amazing Ways Your Life Is About to Change.”
“But I deserve a smoke.” For years Faye Reese suffered in a marriage to a man she felt was trying to control her. She considered smoking a reward for putting up with the rest of her life. “Smoking was my little corner of freedom in the world, where no one told me what to do or how to fix my hair or what to wear,” says Reese, 55, of Little Rock, Arkansas, who smoked up to two packs a day. “I thought it