How I Quit Smoking in 4 Easy Steps

It's almost 1 year to the day that I had my last cigarette. Actually, it's almost 1 year to the day that I enjoyed my last cigarette.

I've been a smoker since college, never even taking a drag before I left home for that great adventure. So why did I start? Well, it was stress.

In my freshman year, one of the weed-out classes that EE majors had to take was Physics 1. My high school didn't have a great Physics program so I aced it, but it didn't prepare me for college Physics. I struggled through the homeworks, the 2 mid-terms, the final, and though I knew that I didn't do well, I thought that I had passed that gauntlet. Nothing prepared me for the big F in my report card. I was aghast so I went to see my professor. Thank god, it was only a mistake in the recording of my grades and I had in reality passed that class. With 3 other Physics classes to go, my nerves never quite recovered from the shock of that F. While waiting to take the first midterm for Physics 2, I sat on a bench across from the lecture hall, hands shaking uncontrollably, trying to settle down before walking in that hall, into my dread. A friend walking by saw me sitting there and asked the matter. I told him that my hands couldn't stop shaking. A lit cigarette between his fingers, he pulled out a pack of Marlboros and asked, "You wanna see if this helps?"

That was the beginning of an addiction that lasted almost 13 years, with a year and a half break somewhere in between.

The last time I stopped smoking was to impress a girl. That's a bad reason to quit. This time I quit for myself, my health, my wife, and the children I want to raise.

Step 1: Realization

I came to a point where I didn't want to smoke anymore, but like any bad habit, I kept smoking because it was something that I did, that defined me. Making the decision that I wanted to quit was the most important step in this whole process because it gave me a target.

Step 2: Reduction

My smoking buddies would laugh cause I smoked pretty light cigarettes as it was, but I cut back even more to the ultra-light cigarettes; basically they taste like taking a deep breath in a subway station as the train zooms by scant feet away from you. I wanted to reduce the amount of nicotine in my system to help wean me off. Took me a couple of weeks to get used to the lower nicotine levels. Once I stopped feeling that I needed to smoke 2 ultra-lights to make up for the nicotine, I moved to the next step.

Step 3: Routine

I started thinking about when I wanted a cigarette on a normal day and I found that I had a pattern of addiction. Here's how it went: 1 on the way to work; 1 before lunch; 1 after lunch; 2-3 in the afternoon depending on stress level at work; 1 on the way back home; 1 after dinner; 1, maybe 2, before bedtime. That was my pattern for a normal day. So I made it a schedule, a routine that I would follow. I made sure that when I wanted a smoke, I only smoked within this routine. In addition, I started rationing the number of cigarettes I would smoke during the day. I started with 10 cigarettes, half a pack, no more. No matter how stressful the day was, it was just 10. Whenever I felt like smoking, I told myself to wait another 10 minutes until I could have one.

Step 4: Revolution

This was mad dash to the end. Before I got too comfortable with 10 cigarettes a day, I started reducing the number of cigarettes I would smoke each day by 1. The target was to be done smoking in 10 days. I did this by arbitrarily removing a time of day that I would usually smoke to make do with 1 less cigarette. So I stopped having a cigarette before lunch. Then I stopped having a cigarette before going to bed. And so on and so forth, until the count ran down to zero.

The last cigarette I enjoyed was on August 11, 2005, around 10am, while driving to work on the 101, between the San Antonio and Embarcadero exits. The next 3 days I kept telling myself, "Hold out just a bit longer ... " After 3 days, I was done.

I said that that was the last cigarette that I enjoyed. To be honest, I bummed one from a guy off the street a couple of months later. Guess what? I hated it. I didn't enjoy the smoke or the smell or the nicotine feeling. That's when I knew I was done with smoking. 1 week till my one year anniversary. I can't wait.