I realized I’ve been talking about this on Zuckerberg-owned social media, but not on my own website that I (technically) control:
I quit smoking on July 23, 2024. At the time I’m writing this, that’s about 13 weeks ago, or a little over three months.
Three months tends to be the point where I either fall off and start smoking again, or can quit completely. The longest I’ve gone is three years, until a serious illness in the family had me stress-smoking again around 2019.
None of the usual methods have ever worked for me. The only success I’ve had is from Chantix/Varenicline, which is like magic in terms of getting rid of my compulsion to smoke, but has some pretty lousy side effects. The nausea and stomach cramping are the most obvious ones, and the ones I remember most vividly. I’m not used to eating breakfast in the morning, and if you take it on an empty stomach, you’ll be wrecked.
More subtle, at least from my perspective, is it gives me low-grade depression, or possibly just makes my pre-existing depression worse. It killed any desire to do anything whatsoever, even stuff that I knew was urgent. That would cause building anxiety and then spirals of feeling worthless. I’ve been off the drug for well over a month now, and I’m only just now getting my motivation back.
Still worth it overall, but I think on the whole I’d recommend just not getting addicted to cigarettes in the first place.
One of the many gross things about smoking is the tobacco would stain my mustache a gross brown, forcing me to shave it off every time I quit. This time, the mustache survived with only a little bit of strategic trimming. I’m taking that as a sign it was meant to be.
A dramatic development: last week during Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, I spent the entire night feeling like I’d been smoking. I’m assuming it was due to all the smoke effects and walking through other park guests’ vape clouds. Whatever the cause, it triggered a weird compulsion like a days-long knot in my chest. I had to have a cigarette.
After hours of talking myself out of it, I finally broke down and bought a pack at a gas station. I went out to the sidewalk and smoked exactly one from the pack, which made me violently nauseated. Nothing pleasurable about it in the slightest. I threw the rest of the pack away, and I haven’t missed it. Have I survived one last temptation, proving that I’m done for good? Or am I cursed to keep doing that every few months until I completely fall off the wagon again? It’s too early to tell, but at least for now I’m not concerned.
On top of all the obvious problems with smoking, there’s a whole host of less important things that make life so much better without it. Going on long flights was a nightmare — getting anxious on the flight itself, and having to go in and out of security just to find a smoking area. Long road trips, days at a theme park or a beach, all of it so much better without the constant distraction. And if you’re addicted like I was, it was a drag having it take up so much of your mental space. Waking up in the morning and deciding to sleep in is so, so much better than having to get up and get dressed immediately just so you can get outside for a smoke as soon as possible.
I’ll never be one of those people who can just have a cigarette on occasion and then forget about it. I know from experience that I either have to avoid it completely, or else I’ll be smoking half a pack a day. In the past, it’s often felt like I was denying myself something, so it’s really nice to realize that I’m so much better off without it, and I don’t miss it at all.
I’m similarly built that I don’t think I could smoke intermittently, or socially. I was a pack a day or not at all, and happy to have picked the latter. Congrats on hitting and passing the three month hump.