And how long have you been a non-smoker?
For me, at the time it was the realization that I cannot continue to smoke and continue to play the trumpet. My lung volume and strength really suffered. But instead of stopping to smoke, for many months I played less and less trumpet.
What put me through the phase of actually smoking the last cigarette and becoming a non-smoker again, was one of the books of Allen Carr, I don’t remember the exact title. Looking back, it was awfully written, and I had to will my way through believing the narrative, but it worked. That was 27 years ago, and I didn’t have one cigarette since, no cravings and no replacement either.
I struggled with quitting for about 5 years, I felt my stamina get destroyed and realized how much it was costing me financially, so I tried several times. I got panic attacks, something I never dealt with before, the last couple of times I tried. Finally about 3 or 4 years ago I smoked my last cigarette, somehow I didn’t get a panic attack. I don’t remember the day because in my mind, to not smoke I can’t be too serious about the importance of all of it, smoking is a ritual and if I allow myself to think about dates and anniversaries around quitting it will just drive me to it again. Smoking has to be something I don’t think about at all.
I still use nicotine. I’ll have a cigar every now and then, I vape a little, but man there’s something else going on with cigarettes. Quitting nicotine by itself is easy, even having some tobacco every now and then doesn’t cause me to crave anything. I can go hours after waking up without vaping and feel nothing, whereas with cigarettes, I planned my entire day around smoking them and how many I had left. If I smoked a single one right now I’d be smoking a pack a day for who knows how long before I succeed again, I can’t have a single drag off a cigarette for the rest of my life. Quitting cigarettes, even with nicotine to sate me, was hard as fucking hell. I don’t know what they do to those things but they’re addictive in some way beyond nicotine and it’s a motherfucker.