Working on Addictions

How I quit cigarettes.

4 min readOct 3, 2021

This text describes my way of quitting smoking. Have in mind, I am not a professional or a therapist. This is a very broad topic. Everybody is different and in a different stage of addiction.

My background for smoking:

I was an on and off smoker, since I started at 18 years old. In my heart I always hated cigarettes, but unfortunately I was addicted to them. I tried to quit countless times. I quit for 6 month, for 1 year and for 4 years. In between there were countless smaller streaks. I never thought it was possible to smoke again after 4 years, but it was. It crept back in my life and I was addicted .

There I was again, with a nicotine addiction, trying to get it out of my life. It was a draining feeling, but I just couldn’t accept being dependent on cigarettes.

Here is what helped me quit:

Read a lot: I red all I could find about this addiction.

( What is the substance? How does it work? How long does it stay in your body? )

The reading helped to understand the substance and the addiction better. It is also very eye opening if you read about all the toxins. We all like to downplay this part or laugh about it. I don’t want to draw horror pictures, but it is dead serious.

Watch a ton of Youtube Videos on that topic

I consumed a lot of videos on that topic. From quitting experts to scientific videos about tobacco.

Learning about the tobacco industry

Learning about the nasty tricks of this industry, helped me to fuel my hate for cigarettes. It also awakened my rebellious side. I just don’t want to be a well trained doggy for them. Always coming back for a treat.

Looking critically at tobacco advertisement.

How do they market their product? The ways, in which the cancer sticks are presented are looking ridiculous.

Journal about my addiction.

That may be the one that helped the most. I had a journal for this addiction.

I wrote down: Why do I smoke ? What do I love about cigarettes ? What do I hate about them ? How would life be without this addiction ?

What helped immensely, was identifying my triggers for smoking.

For example: A coffee triggers you to smoke. Is it possible to replace this behavior with a different one? What does coffee actually has to do with a cigarette? Exactly, nothing! A learned behavior can be unlearned. If you can replace one trigger, you can replace them all.

I felt like a weirdo from time to time writing all that stuff down and reflecting. Sometimes I thought, I am the strange one, everybody else can handle it easily. Maybe they just stay addicted, without overthinking the whole thing. That’s what I thought. People also noticed my never ending attempts to quit. A lot of people (especially the smokers) were doubting me. That is undeniably a great feeling, when people were doubting you, and you somehow do it.

I even took days off, to work on my addiction. See it like that: Lets say you take a whole week off to treat that addiction. How big are the benefits if you make it? The benefits can stay for the rest of your life. They accumulate exponentially for you.

Again, this is the way I quit. In retrospect I would have done some things differently. I would join a group or get help a lot faster. Having a mindset of “I can do this alone” is not helping anybody.

All that little steps and actions accumulated and made me quit. I would love to give you the magic trick, but there was no magic trick or life hack. It was a lot of work, lots of failed attempts and uncomfortable feelings. At the end it is worth every minute of your time and energy trying to quit.

I hope you could take something away from this and give it a try.

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