Quitting smoking hard, rewarding road to travel

Today I’m ten days into a journey that, five years ago, I didn’t think I would find myself in the midst of. Five years ago, I was just a 15-year-old kid with my whole life ahead of me and nothing prompting me to actually acknowledge that fact. In short, I might have been old enough to know better, but I was certainly young enough not to care. So I started smoking.

Little did I know how hard it would be to quit. Well, at the very least I didn’t put any real thought into it, or I surely wouldn’t have started in the first place. Suddenly, I found myself in college, still smoking. Alternatively, though, I started to realize that it wasn’t as harmless as I had originally thought.

The real clincher, though, came at the moment when I realized that smoking simply wouldn’t fit into my life plans. Even as a smoker, once I reached adulthood I was never unaware of the negative impact that smoking was likely to have on my health. But it was concern for the children I’ll someday have that ultimately clinched my decision. I firmly believe that if my parents hadn’t smoked, I would have been less likely to ever pick up that first cigarette.

So, when I got engaged in February, I knew that it was time to stop making excuses and start making a plan. One by one, I cut out the habitual aspects of smoking before attempting to break my nicotine addiction. First, I stopped going outside for smoke breaks after arriving home for the evening. Then, I stopped smoking between classes, after which I eliminated smoking at work and finally in the car. I took each of these steps for two weeks at a time, until I pretty much ran out of locations in which smoking was not prohibited.

At that point, I decided that it was time to put down the cigarettes for good. So, March 31 at 5 p.m., I put out my very last cigarette. And thus began the most unpredictable roller coaster of my life.

The rest of Sunday evening wasn’t too bad, mostly beacuse I generally wasn’t feeling well that day. Monday was also bearable, presumably due to the fact that I had only been nicotine free for 24 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday, however, may have been the closest thing to hell that I have ever experienced in the 20 years that I’ve been alive.

Suddenly I felt as though I had lost control over almost every aspect of my life. The strangest part was how emotionally impacted I was by the withdrawal of nicotine from my system. It was as if someone had taken out every part of my brain that is responsible for the most basic operations in everyday life. My appetite became much more specific, my reaction time was slower, and I found myself incredibly exhausted at almost all points of the day. Additionally, I felt surprisingly alone despite the support of those around me. At certain times, it was as if I wasn’t even the same person anymore.

In those moments I realized how much my smoking habit had been dictating my life. Essentially, I was never the one in control. I told myself that I could quit anytime I wanted to, but I didn’t know how difficult it would actually be. I also realized that had I not really wanted to quit, it would have gotten me all over again.

The last few days have found me feeling much more like myself. It has taken a lot of pride-swallowing to admit that so many people were right when they told me that smoking was a decision that I would someday regret.

However, there is one thing that hasn’t changed in the last week and a half: people have the right to smoke if they so choose. Even as a newly-non-smoker enduring the random puffs of smoke floating through the air around campus, I’m “sticking to my guns” when it comes to the rights of others to make their own decisions, however self-destructive they may be. I refuse to become a self-righteous, cigarette crushing ex-smoker simply because I’ve made a lifestyle change.

Above all else, I know that quitting smoking doesn’t happen out of sensitivity to the criticism of others or concern for the opinions of any collective society. It comes only from a personal choice, conviction and dedication to quitting, and only the smoker can make that choice.