almost

All I have learned from giving up smoking

so far - 8.5 months (Edits: year 7 of being smoke-free and almost having forgotten that I once was a heavy smoker.)

Taking a step and looking back at your steps are two very different perspectives. This report is a mix. Parts of the (former) unknown are known now. Some questions have answers. The worst fights are over. The process, however, is still ongoing.

I am describing my personal process of giving up smoking—the struggles and insights that appeared along the road. Each person's process is very individual. But here and there, they are the same. So I hope this can be of help for you.

0) Reasons why I want to quit smoking, in order of importance

I don't want to be dominated by the need to smoke. I don't want to feel the need to get up and smoke when I am stalling with my work, with writing (=escape). I don't want to use this excuse any longer and see what happens when I am able to remain seated. My skin - I want to look young and fresh. My lungs - my future me should not find herself in a hospital dying of lung cancer one day, so I feel I want to take care of this person. The dialogues with myself are getting on my nerves - I am a schizo who meditates in the morning and, while focussing on breathing, already thinks about the first cigarette. A man - my mother once picked me up at the airport. She was waiting next to her car; I was approaching her from afar, wearing a white dress. She felt proud of her beautiful daughter. She hugged me and then she said: what a disappointment. You look so beautiful from afar. Imagine: a man sees you as you enter the airplane, for example. He thinks how lucky he is that the two of you are seated next to each other - and then he smells you. I got angry because she was right. I don't want to smell, and I want a man who does not smell and smoke. My future daughter: I imagine finding out I am pregnant while still smoking. The withdrawal would bring so much stress to her precious system. She deserves to incarnate in a healthy environment. Money is a reason but not a real motivation. Well, if I transform the amount of money a package of cigarettes costs into the amount of time I have to work to earn it, it might be a motivation. I am investing time to shorten my lifetime, and this does not make sense at all - like many things (see above) that I am accepting right now. They are only justified by the power of addiction and my fear of quitting.

1) A preparation. They say it is not possible to reduce cigarettes. It is. I did it over the course of almost a year, changing from filter cigarettes to tobacco. I am not talented in rolling cigarettes. There was tobacco everywhere. I didn't mind in the beginning. I was proud that I smoked less. Between the need to smoke and the smoking itself, there was an effort now, an action. While rolling a cigarette, I also had time to think about what I was doing.
It was also not possible anymore to smoke cigarettes on the street. Smoking was not elegant or cool anymore, with an ugly self-rolled cigarette in my mouth and tobacco crumbs between my teeth. When it got cold outside, I stopped smoking in my apartment, where it was cozy and convenient. Maybe I tried to transform the act of smoking into a pure act of feeding my addiction. Every evening, I made stripes for the cigarettes I had smoked in a notebook. With around ten cigarettes per day, I got stuck. I cut them shorter with scissors. And got stuck again. I was not proud anymore. And afraid of the next step. Quitting.

2) The last cigarette. I didn't plan that exactly this cigarette would be my last cigarette. It was February; it was cold and already dark. I walked home from somewhere. And smoked the last cigarette that I had pre-rolled. There was no conscious goodbye. There was no deep inhaling for the last time. It was the last time without knowing it would be the last time. Maybe there was an idea of it. At least there was this thought: what if I don't buy new tobacco tomorrow? So this cigarette was simply the last cigarette of the day - and then it became the cigarette that was not followed by another one the next morning. And the next, and the next. Until today.

3) Giving up smoking was a decision, but it was not a decision that sounded like: "Now I give up smoking forever." It was more of an experiment, a game, a challenge, a quest: let's try and see what will happen next. Next = next minute/hour/day. How long can I stand not smoking? It started like this: what if I take a train to the seaside instead of buying new tobacco? The following day, I decided to take the train. (Of course, there was - and is - the idea, the hope of: forever.)

4) It helps to change the surrounding. It helps to be in nature. It helps to be somewhere where nobody can hear you scream. I feel like screaming. The withdrawal is torture and physical. All over. Attacks - unexpected and permanent. You never know what you will feel next. But:

5) More painful is the feeling, the fear, the certainty that this state of torture will last forever. You don't know when it will end. No matter what you read on the internet - of super-hero-people who have managed to quit smoking: your pain must be worse. And right now, it feels infinite.

6) On the island, where I found a little hotel, there are two villages connected by a track along the cliffs. I start walking. I have time and no idea how long this walk will take, what the path will look like, who I will meet, and what I will see. The trail is stunning. The sea is very rough in February. Sometimes I am open to seeing this, the sea, the wood, the plants, the people. But more often, I feel like screaming. Or punching, biting, spitting - doing something to fight off the attacks. The distance is much longer than I had expected. But at a certain point, turning around and walking back makes no sense. Also, one would see the same things again. And so finally I arrive at the second village and take a bus back. All I do right now is: pass the time to reach the first critical 48 hours. They say the nicotine has left the body by then.

7) It helps to be in a place that is not connected to cigarettes. Like a steam bath. A plane. A train. A swimming pool. The spa of my hotel. But: suddenly, I start thinking of a cigarette in the steam bath. I have never obsessed over a cigarette in a steam bath. The difference: until now, I (my body) knew that the next cigarette would come soon.

8) Soon. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. A day. Time, the measurement of time, is getting something very useless. Relative. It is 36 hours now. They say in 12 hours, the worst part is over. I stare at the sky. I drink a lot of red wine, hoping to fall asleep soon. The next morning I wake up covered in sweat. This is to be expected, they say. They = my new friends. The people who write about their withdrawal online, in forums. I am their secret reader. I am grateful they write about their experiences.

9) A train ride (or a flight) has no real ending anymore. There is no welcome. No one is waiting for you. You leave the train or the plane. And that's it. You get a taxi or public transport which brings you home or to the place you need to go. You open the door. You put your bag on the floor. And. And. ___________________ . Nothing.

10) It is not that I feel good now. Not at all. It is just this: I have managed more than 48 hours, have been full of tension, tears, aggression, anger, fear, hate. I have felt like a baby that screams for help, and there was no help. No Relief. Not an immediate one. So I have had all this shit. I can end it immediately by smoking a cigarette. But: then I remember the other kind of shit. The shit of smoking and feeling guilty, of coughing, of smelling, of judging yourself, the shit of being addicted, dominated, hidden behind your wall of smoke. So right now, at 48+, you have the choice between: shit and shit. Decide to stick with the new shit. Consider your old shit as a motivation.

11) You hope there will be a day when it will become easier when the craving is gone or at least less painful. The only way to learn this (if this day exists) is to push through the pangs. Withdrawal is still physical. They say it is the psyche. But my body hurts. A million strings are pulling inside of me. Restless, merciless, a black hole - a black hole trying to swallow itself. But as it doesn't swallow itself and remains where it is, there is this fucking tension. I want to cut all these millions of strings that feel like needles and knives. It is not possible to cut them. It is neither possible to ignore nor deny their existence. So there is no choice but: to stand them - and this strange black hole.

12) You think you should feel like "never again." You will never ever smoke a cigarette again. It's not true. It's putting useless pressure upon yourself. You do not have to be 100% sure or super-certain that you will never smoke again. There are doubts, and this is normal. "Never" is like "forever": frightening. Trust that certainty appears during the process. Trust that you will learn to trust yourself.

13) With a great amount of guilt and shame, you took the cigarette of somebody and inhaled. Deeply. You had a kick of enjoyment. And now you worry that all your efforts, the days of pain and struggle, have been in vain. Well. It is not that you have done it. It is more about how you handle it now, how you treat yourself now. Somebody wrote online: consider it as an incident, not a fallback. And he is right: this is it, an incident. It helps to be nice to yourself. Talk to yourself like you were your own kid:
"It is hard; it happened. We will take care now that it does not happen again. I can understand that you are afraid that you will start smoking again. But there is no rule that says: one puff and you are a smoker again. What you have to do is feel the physical withdrawal again. Feel it. It is good; it is a reminder that you do not want to go through all of it again."
Tell yourself something like this.

14) There are rules. There are no rules. You must know them, and you must forget about them. You must now forget this rule: one puff, and you are back to smoking. Try to handle it like this: an existing rule (invented or written down by somebody other than you) is applied when needed. It is never general. It can change - as you change. Whatever works. Whenever it works.

15) Other people give up smoking, too. I hate them. They say: it is so easy. It is unfair. I still suffer. A little voice says: maybe it is good to suffer that hard. The harder you suffer, the longer-lasting will be the intense memory of it. The greater will be the hindrance to going back to smoking again. (Edit from the future: this little voice will be right. The people for whom it was the easiest to stop started the most quickly again. And it is logical: if it seems easy to stop, you feel like you can do it anytime again. And if you can easily stop anytime, you can start smoking again anytime. But if it is hard, fucking hard, you are not willing to do this again.)

16) In the black hole: tiny little ideas of proudness, of freedom. They pop up like glowworms. Impossible to catch. Too soon, they are gone. But you know now that they exist.

17) The only thing that can give you peace (or relief) is the thing you are withdrawing from. There is no substitute for it. NO fucking substitute. Nothing can replace it. Nothing. There is nothing to fill this black hole that you are still facing: no alcohol, no caffeine, no sex.

18) You can go back. Like going back to a threatening lover. To find peace in his arms. To find relief in the arms of the person that was involved in your pain. It is insane and completely logical. But you know that you will feel worse afterward. You remind yourself that this relationship was not good for you. There was a reason why you quit. You have to decide to stay away. Your lover will always be there, welcoming you back. Remind yourself of the shit, the old shit (see 10)) and stay away.

19) You try to find reasons why it could work again. You negotiate with yourself if there might be a more suitable (easier) time for quitting smoking. After starting again right now. The pain is unbearable at the moment.

20) Pain is caused by momentary feelings multiplied in the future (=eternity).

21) Breathe as deeply as you had done when you inhaled the smoke. Somebody told me that we never breathe as deeply as we do with our cigarettes and that a significant part of the relief we feel when smoking comes from this deep breathing. I do this without the cigarette. It really helps.

22) Sometimes I imagine a cigarette in my hand while breathing deeply. And then I mix the feelings of guilt and shame into this image, the memory of the mornings when I meditated and thought about a cigarette, the memory when I stood up with tension from my working table and lost the thought I had. I think of all the thoughts I used to think about destroying my lungs and my throat. And then I think about how happy or grateful I can be that these thoughts are gone. They don't have a reason any longer.

23) You think of the glowworms again. As tiny and ephemeral as they have been, you can feel their power, their light. Still, it is not easy to be smoke-free, and maybe (you don't know) it will never be. Perhaps you are waiting in vain for a state of being that doesn't exist. But you remind yourself of the days you have already managed without a cigarette. That it is becoming easier, you can be proud.

24) There is something you can do while wondering if there will ever come a really easy day: you can learn to find pleasure in the fighting zone. This: bring-it-on-and-I-fight-you-kind-of-pleasure. Because a) the pain is there; you can't remove or deny it. But you can accept and face it. b) And you can grow, you can learn, you can change your entire way of thinking.

25) If you decide this: "There will be no cigarette again. A cigarette is not an option for finding relief " - arguments in your head shift. When you feel tension or craving, the question shifts from: "Should I smoke or not?" to: "What can I do to make this bearable?" or "What can I learn in this process?"

26) You become aware that the black hole is still there. It is not only there, but it seems to be growing. It feels so black and so endless and so unknown (and at the same time so familiar). It feels as if it is about to swallow you. And you are afraid of that. The truth is: you are already in it. The only thing to do for now is: stand this black hole. Just stand it. Don't fight it.

27) Fighting something is always worse than just standing it. We are afraid of standing and facing things. I think it is because a) they hurt and b) we are afraid that standing and accepting things means we invite them to remain. This is not true. Accepting doesn't mean we accept what is forever. But before we fight (or: transform or release) what is, we should know what exactly we are about to fight or release, what exactly it is that we don't want (to feel). Therefore it is necessary to stand and face these things for a while. To get an idea of them. Just fighting without accepting before is blind action. It wastes energy. Energy we need.

28) The pain is there. When you are in (blind) action, you just don't really feel it. Pain, they say, needs to be felt before it can dissolve. You can't control the pain of withdrawal. And you can't push away the other feelings that come together with the pain.
But you can observe them. That is your only job: to observe the feelings and not to smoke.

29) There is a fear of situations. Trigger situations. Moments, places linked to a cigarette. Mine: the first time in a Parisian café on the terrace. After landing by plane in a summer holiday place. After a stressful meeting. I had detached cigarettes from morning coffees before I stopped smoking. There are plenty of trigger situations left.

30) Once, I was left by a man. There was nothing I could do about that (contrary to the story in 18)). There was no way back to him. He had lost his interest in us. I had to stand the pain. I had to deal with this loss. It feels like this now, after I decided that a cigarette would not be an option again. You could say a cigarette is not a loss, not a person. I would disagree. It was good for something. It gave me company. Distraction. The fact that there is a black hole now proves that a cigarette is a loss. If you remove something, (black) holes appear. I think it is helpful to accept the value cigarettes once had. And not to blindly condemn them and pretend you are happy now or have to be happy or feel so very relieved because these devils are gone.

31) Black holes are a calling for things you have never tried before (or forgotten about). You have to try something new (forgotten) because:
It can't be the sense of your life to face, accept, and stand black holes for the rest of your days. It simply can't be. So there must be something else to it.

32) Time is your friend if you don't count it. What I am learning right now is: to live and go forward without an idea of the finish line. Many things I have done in my life so far were measurable by their results (finish line).
The result here is not only: not to smoke - which has already happened - it is also: to not smoke and consider this normal. But nobody can tell if and when this state of being will appear.
I have to learn: to go ahead without any idea of arriving somewhere. I can't even predict the following days - if they will be hard or not.
The only time I can count is the one that is behind me—the days without cigarettes.

33) 6 weeks down the road, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere: the deepest, darkest hole I have ever been in. It feels like the first day I stopped smoking. The felt memory is back. It is a fucking loop. This will last forever. There is no light anymore. The glowworms are all dead. They never existed; they were an illusion. I am tired. Of fighting, of standing. I can't stand this anymore. When does this end? Does it end? The sense of my life is: recovering from an addiction I have created myself. Wow, great. Crawling back to a neutral zone. This completely occupies me, my thoughts, everything; there is nothing else I can focus on; it is ridiculous. My life is senseless. I am senseless. Was it so bad with the cigarettes? I hated it. But now I am a wreck. I wanted to be in life, alive, wholly, without this fog. But now, the fog that used to surround me has moved inside of me, and it is not only a fog anymore: it is soup, black and dense and heavy. I stare at the knives in the kitchen. I switch my phone off. I want to call somebody and insult, blame, and hurt this person. I want to hurt myself. I cry. I take a knife and have a good look at it.

34) The last time I quit smoking, I started again at this point, week six. Around week six, there seems to be a threshold. And everybody on the internet seems to feel the same. This time I am prepared better. I read what they write. I am not the only one. I wait. I try to find pleasure in this. I want to know what lies beyond—this time, I want to experience the next level. I suffered too much during the past weeks. The hope is: that there is a next level.

35) Sometimes, when a craving appears, and the black hole opens up, I imagine myself being a jokey on a horse. I press my thighs and calves and say: hold! Or I imagine the black hole being my dog, and I say: sit! Sometimes I speak it out loud. And sometimes I win. Sometimes I kill the beast. It has a million lives.
Sometimes I am afraid to get used to suffering. To find pleasure in suffering itself. Pleasure in the sense that suffering is proof that I am changing something. But in the end, I remain on this level, the pleasure-in-suffering level. And I am afraid I will never be able to go to the next level: the pleasure-in-feeling-good-in-feeling-free-level.

36) I guess the following is true: the black hole has always been there. I just have mixed it up with the need for nicotine. After a certain time, you can feel that this need is gone. But from time to time, you get into a mood that is very similar to the need for a cigarette:
There is tension; you get nervous, and there is the need for - something. This something is not nicotine. When I still used to smoke, the nicotine did its relieving work in moments like these. The black hole seemed to be gone then. This is not true. It was still there, just less present.
I realize that the greatest motivation for quitting smoking is this: to not mistake the need for nicotine with the need for something else any longer.
To recognize and face the black hole in a very pure way.

37) A black hole wants to be filled. It is a calling. Until now, my perspective was wrong. The approach. I threw things inside of it: cigarettes, also alcohol, the internet, chatter, magazines, gossip, shopping, guys, daydreams. All of this does not work very well. The black hole swallows all these things very quickly. You can not be fast enough to throw things into the hole to keep it filled.
— But what if the black hole can fill itself— if you let it? What if it is a spring rather than a downward vortex? What if you could let the downward vortex change its direction upwards? What if the things that can fill or satisfy the black hole come out of its very center?
This is a question without an answer because I have none. Right now, I just have a feeling that this might be true. (Edit: it is true.)

38) There will come days when practically all situations you had ever been in with a cigarette in your hand - like sitting in your favorite café in Paris, arriving somewhere special,… - exist now also without a cigarette. You have overwritten all of those moments. It is normal now to have a coffee without the thought of a cigarette. A glass of wine in the evening. A pause from work. And, at the end of one random day, it will happen: you realize that you have not thought of a cigarette for the whole day.
Again, this experience is similar to the feelings after a breakup. One random day, you realized that you had not thought about the other person for a day (or hours). From experience, you know the periods of not thinking about this person became bigger and bigger. And eventually, you did not think about them anymore at all. And if you did, there was no longing involved any longer. The thoughts had become a neutral kind of memory. One that is not felt. One that is just words. And this is how you knew you had reached the next level.
So it goes with cigarettes.

39) You can envy somebody and feel superior to this person simultaneously.
You see somebody smoking in one of "your "situations; let's say it is summer, there is a warm wind, the sun is about to go down, a street café, and a glass of cold wine. The person sits there and inhales. You watch this person, and you can't imagine anything more perfect than the moment this person is experiencing.
You have to become really slow now in your thinking and feeling. You have to separate all that is mixed into this cocktail of longing triggered by the image of the smoking person:
a) Your thoughts and your memory color this snapshot emotionally. b) You don't know if this person enjoys this moment; it is just your imagination. c) How long do you have to go back in your timeline as a smoker that moments like these were perfect? That they were not accompanied by feelings of guilt, by the voice in your head saying: if only you could enjoy this moment without a cigarette? Because this is the "last you," the last smoking version of you that existed before you stopped. d) You can never go back to the carefree smoking version you had been before. Never.
Then you wait a minute and deal with your cocktail of thoughts and feelings. And you may notice how you start to feel superior to the very same person: How this poor person needs to pick a cigarette any 15 minutes or so. How this poor person needs to hold onto a cigarette. These thoughts are not nice. But human. I do this to empower myself. One day, they will go away. One day I will just be grateful that I don't smoke anymore.
But for now, I have to remind myself actively: I was not happier when I smoked. What I remember now are only moments that were beautiful moments anyway. I remember moments from very long ago. I don't remember guilt and shame. It is like remembering all the beautiful moments of a relationship, its beginning - and forgetting about the end.

40) Everybody has their own process. There are similar feelings and experiences, and fears, though. You can compare your process and relate it to the process of others - and you can't. At all. You have to stop comparing yourself.

41) You will give up smoking when you are ready in one of these moments that are not ideal. None of them is. You always have to fight for some time. Using these fights for your personal transformation makes it easier. The process of letting cigarettes behind becomes much more interesting if you find side benefits (transformational goals) and make them your main benefits. Cigarettes become the vehicle.

42) You will become a fighter; it is not possible not to become one. The process reminds you of a You you once have been and have forgotten about. And you are thrilled to meet this person again.

43) You have to change your thinking. The process changes your thinking and your belief in yourself. If you can do this - you can do other things, too.

44) You have experienced now what has been said by others many times before: Freedom is only available if you push through the pain. If you become aware of and stand the black hole. You just couldn't believe or fully understand it until now. But now, you have undergone a process yourself. Now you know that the glowworms were no illusion. You know that they exist. And that, in fact, they are light. And you are piercing a veil.

45) However, this newly won, exciting freedom is not permanent. And also the energy increase or the boost in your confidence isn't. You will not permanently be your freedom-fighter-superhero-new-self. No. Don't set yourself under this pressure (I did). It is wiser not to assume this. You will avoid disappointment. And self-discouragement. Because there are lows, especially when the highs of your new non-smoking self are gone when it has become normal not to smoke. It can be tough to feel low when you know that you also exist in high.

46) When you realize that one month, half a year - benchmarks as these have passed, you think back at those first days, the first 48 hours. One month, half a year, seemed impossible, seemed out of reach—something for people on the internet.

47) Be proud of yourself. Even if you don't feel it 100%.

48) I start to accept my new non-smoking version as given. To not doubt it anymore. This is who I am now. This project is done. It is time to move on. Otherwise, I could get stuck being proud of being a non-smoker and keep counting the months without smoking, looking back permanently. Everything from now on lies behind me; everything is past. I am a person now that does not smoke. A person that has a life to live. From now on, in a future that is not countable, not measurable. It is time to let go of the smoking me.

49) Giving up smoking feels like becoming more of yourself. This is, in a way, strange because smoking doesn't seem to really change you as, for example, alcohol or other drugs do. But in fact, I had started smoking to be somebody else. Somebody cool. Somebody who belonged to the cool people. And most of all: I needed a reason to talk to the boy I was in love with. I didn't dare speak to him. But asking him for a lighter was easy. I could look him in the eyes. And every so often, when he gave me a light, his hand would touch mine.
After, the cigarette became my company. I was never alone in these moments when you really feel alone.
So yes, smoking does change you; it gives you security. Security you don't need now anymore. Now that you are able to be vulnerable.

50) I always thought: it is other people who manage to do this.
Well. It is me, too. And you.

(Edit: it is year 7.5 and I have forgotten that I have been a smoker. I stopped counting time a long time ago. Today I do. It is a moment I never thought was possible. To become truly free of smoking, free of the cigarettes and free of the struggle to not smoke.)