I hope you find this helpful if you're hooked on something unhealthy. Perhaps sharing what I went through a several decades ago might of use in areas in your life less obvious than the title suggests.

One of the many reasons I once again relocated to California, LaLaLand, El Lay, Los Angeles, et al is the non-smoking policy in public places and businesses across the board in the rest of the West (and they're getting tougher/saner). Second-hand smoke, the stuff that comes out the burning end, is MORE lethal to those who breath it because it's filtered by neither the fibre thing stuck on the other end, or the lungs which spew it back into the environment and other people's lungs.

I kicked nicotine addiction au naturel long before the helpers: patches, gums and pills. How I did it might be endemic to other substance use problems and useful to you or someone you care about.

Around 1980, fully aware that cigarette smoking was just about the dumbest thing a so-called bodybuilder could possibly do to himself ... I still smoked. While I was training, or jogging or disco boogieing I could think about was the next drag. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

So I put my analytical mind to work, researched the common knowledge to date and the printed factoids. This was the beginning of all-new, all-vital empowerment for me then and even today. I kept a journal noting my mental and emotional state when I really needed a fix, the time, the place, the situation, my mood, what piqued the urge. Often it was my stupid job, my ass of a boss, the noisy shit next door, the cab that splashed my good pants, being short-changed ... you know what I mean. 

The journal verified that I needed a nicotine fix before and after everything, anything: before morning coffee, with morning coffee, after morning coffee, before breakfast, after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before and after snacks, instead of snacks, around both sides of dinner, sex, work, play, study, reading, drinking, doing nothing, sleeping.... not at all selective. Obviously I was dealing with addiction, pure and simple. Damn!

Stopping cold turkey was hell on wheels, you really know how hooked you are how powerful the addiction is. Tobacco addiction is as hard to kick as heroin, they say. Fucking HEROIN, man! No wonder it's so tough to surmount.

I tried parsing out the day's coffin nails, scheduling them like medicine, cutting back a few, staving off the urge as long as possible while NOT keeping a stash of extra packs hidden from myself, purposely inconveniencing myself to go out to buy another, trashing the cute lighters and ashtrays, eliminating my chimney 'friends', getting out of bed in the dead of night to go to the corner for yet another sad pack of smokes. I'd snub the fuckers out half-way burned, I just smoked twice as many half-cigarettes. More expense, more denial. Switching to low-tar brands was bull, again I just smoked more of 'em. Smoking pot just exacerbated the deal. Eating was no substitute. Shit, this was fuckin' nuts.

I put a dollar in an envelope for every pack I bought, raising the cost of my habit two-fold or more. That slowed me down only slightly.

Maybe acupuncture would have helped, or hypnosis. At least I was taking steps forward to get a handle on it, admitting a problem is half the solution. That much felt great and right-on. But there was NO magic bullet.

After 'quitting' AGAIN for a day or two, a week or three, several months over and over again too many times I fell back to many sticks per day, easy to go back to a pack or two.... Each time I 'quit' I announced proudly "It's been 2 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes since my last cigarette". What I was doing wasn't enough, not hitting the core, the source of the problem.

I tried aversion therapy, sniffing butts and ashes from a covered jar before and ideally instead of lighting up. Yuck! But my two best buds smoked, most of NYC did then. They were huge factors weighting the mix.

I wasn't digger deep enough, needed to go deeper, much much deeper. Even a chemical addiction was monitored by some function of the brain, right? It could be turned off or activated volunatarily, cognitively, right? Couldn't it be re-programmed or nullified altogether? ........

 

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