I quit smoking a month ago today. I will skip all the talk about feeling great and get straight to how I did it.
me, smoking
Drugs
Nicotine is a powerful drug, and as such you’ll need to fight fire with fire. I took Zyban (Wellbutrin) for three weeks—one week prior and two weeks in.
Even though it was suggested to take it for 15 weeks this wasn’t necessary for me and probably won’t be for you either if you really do want to quit. The side effects of Zyban were strong enough that I slowly tested to see if i’d be ok without it to avoid enduring more side effects. I would simply live through the day and see how I felt, if I started to feel weak or tempted to smoke i’d pop a Zyban. After about 10 days of quitting I realized I hadn’t thought of smoking in 5 days. Now I surprise myself when I realize I haven’t thought about smoking in a few days.
Zyban will mess up your sleep schedule and your ability to digest food. If you’re overdosing you’ll hear ringing in your ears and will feel crazier than an outhouse rat. If this happens, lower your dose yourself. I took 150mg per day at the start and then switched to 75mg per day after a week or so. My body is sensitive to medicine of all kinds so YMMV.
You will still feel terrible the first 1-3 days so I suggest quitting on a Friday night so you can sleep it off but it will be nowhere as bad as the Jason Patric from the movie Rush detox you will endure going cold turkey.
Brain Washing
Nicotine use can brainwash you over the years. You will think that you are a smoker. That you were just born that way. You weren’t. After you quit you’ll feel pretty stupid about smoking for all of those years. You’ll also think that you need cigarettes for certain situations or that you’ll never be quite as happy without cigarettes. This is all bullshit that the drug makes you think so that you’ll keep smoking. All of this said, you will need to learn how to cope with sadness, frustration, boredom, and even happiness again. The first times you’ll really need a cigarette. After awhile you’ll just ride it out, or even better, actually address it.
To understand why you are reliant on cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or anything else you have to first agree that you don’t have an addictive personality, you just have a weak mental state. You are always looking to something external to solve or supplement things in your life rather than dealing with it internally.
I’ve known drug addicts who will have a drink, a cigarette, be high on drugs and go to light another cigarette— they’re never quite satisfied.
Read Allen Carr’s book “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking”. The very basic takeaway from the book is: cigarettes don’t relieve your need for nicotine, they cause it. The last cigarette you smoke is what makes you want the next one. If you simply don’t smoke another one that last cigarette becomes weaker and weaker and sooner or later you will be free. The Zyban mentioned above will really help you believe Allen Carr’s words whereas without it I’ve always just felt it was hopeless after awhile.
Some other stuff
I’ve started working out a lot. I’ve been pretty lazy from my year in China and lack of activity. I think to stop smoking you’ll really need to work out and the weird thing is you’ll start to need to work out the way you used to need to smoke.
At night time I will sometimes get weird headaches that I think are related to my body cleaning out all the smoking residue.