Nicotine

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/nicotine.html

Recording this so I can post it any time someone on social media talks about their struggle with nicotine. Please feel free to copy or link to this whenever you come across anyone struggling with nicotine addiction.

I started smoking at the age of 17*. I'm 68 at the time of writing this (2017), but I have been clear of all forms of nicotine for more than eight years now. I had tried to stop several times but found it impossible. A stressful job that demanded high levels of concentration was my excuse for giving up giving up.

Then I took early retirement. Even though my lifestyle didn't make such demands on me as before, it took me several years to get round to seriously trying again. It was different this time.

1) My wife decided to stop. She was never as addicted as I was, but that was a great help.
2) Some close friends decided to stop also.
3) I asked my wife to go away to visit her sister, as I knew I would be grumpy as hell for a while.
4) If I was still smoking when she came back, I knew that there would be hell to pay. I couldn't let her and our friends down.
5) I destroyed all the ashtrays in the house and all other smoking-related paraphernalia that might trigger a desire to smoke.
6) I went on furious country walks with my dogs, and kept busy in other ways.
7) I sucked on the cap of a ball-point pen, stuffed with tissue paper to simulate the feeling of drawing on a cigarette.
8) I had read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. (https://www.wikihow.com/Quit-Smoking-by-Using-an-Allen-Carr-Book) I was very sceptical of this at first, but in the end, it convinced me that I really was able to stop. I had never really believed this before.
9) I wrote a set of cards, each one describing the various negative aspects of smoking, or the positive aspects of quitting. Notes to myself too, not to be an idiot and go back.
10) I kept a diary, noting how many days I had been clean, and the cumulative total of the money I had saved.

After quitting, it took maybe ten weeks before any desire to smoke diminished to nothing. I have no desire to take a drag now, and would never dare to. I've heard from others that just one fix gets them back on the drug.

*I started when I was on a cross-channel ferry between Britain and France. My companion was already a smoker. In those days, booze and fags (Brit slang for cigarettes) were "duty-free". No tax. Cheap. The crossing was a bit choppy. What with the cheap booze and the heave-ho of the choppy waters, when I did take a drag of one of his cigarettes, I didn't notice any additional nausea. During our stay in France, I would smoke one, two, three or more cigarettes, thinking, "what's the problem?" Gradually, on returning to Britain, the one, two, three or more cigarettes became a thirty-a-day habit that lasted for decades. We didn't really appreciate the problems in those days, and the tobacco industry was vigorously trying to deny any health-related problems. (Thanks, Mike Pence.) Now I live back in France, I notice with sadness just how popular smoking is among the young people here.