Confessions of a man-cigarette – Post as he is

Jul 12, 2019-

I had only 15 years old when I got used to it. For nine long years, it was the first and last thing I did every day – and I was not happy.

Only when I was 22 did I realize that I was addicted to smoking. After each cigarette, I hated the harsh odor of my own breath and every time I coughed, I remembered the danger I was putting myself in. I knew everything. I knew that smoking smothered my lungs, wasting my money and time, and that it would eventually shorten my life, but I could not stop smoking.

I smoked 20 cigarettes a day – which I started doing after college. Now that I looked back, in those nine years, I inhaled more than 50,000 cigarettes, that is 3.75 kilos of tobacco dragged in my trachea, I spent more than six hundred thousand rupees money from my father and I may have paid some amount of air pollution to Kathmandu.

If I were given a fancy title for my personality, something like Spiderman and Superman, my friends would probably have named me Cigarette Man.

I mostly blamed my young age for falling into the habit and having friends smokers. I never thought that I was the problem. Whenever I thought about quitting smoking, my thoughts went back to the moment when I had tried my first cigarette and regretted never having done so. But to stop now, when he has already engulfed my life, seemed almost impossible.

It took me a long time to understand that it's easy to blame your friends or circumstances – but never yourself. It's especially easy to close your eyes when your social circle is filled with smokers – so it's easy to justify your habit, even when you know the consequences.

Once smoking became a daily routine, I started to correlate with cigarettes; Jogging early in the morning, tea breaks, stress management, evening walks, meetings and even metabolic processes. Everything has become an excuse or justification for smoking.

I knew it was bad for my sanity. With each puff, in just six seconds, the nicotine runs through my blood to the brain. The content of nicotine would make my brain happy with its dose of dopamine as a neurotransmitter that tells your brain that "it was awesome; remake it". Nicotine also helps release endorphins – a natural pain reliever that relaxes you for a few moments.

One of the reasons cigarettes create such an addiction is that they exploit our network of behavioral neurons. And because it's so natural to the brain that it happens mostly unconsciously. This is why, despite our intentions, our hopes and our determination, efforts to quit smoking often fail.

But once we have gone beyond the need for nicotine, we do not need a cigarette to relax. Our body has all the mechanisms to relax without any dose of nicotine.

It's been a year since I've grown too big for this need – after seven stunt attempts. When I was really trying to put an end to this habit, every time I took a cigarette between my fingers, I quickly made the promise to quit before lighting it. I've been actively trying to quit smoking for three years. I had a habit of failing every day, sometimes my resistance did not last even a few hours. Each failed effort continued to add more despair, self-loathing and shame.

Changing one's habits is difficult. I tried to quit a few times and each attempt was a tedious struggle. I had planned to reduce my limits and gradually stop smoking. I went through all of these tormenting withdrawal symptoms, irritability, physical discomfort, obsessive thinking and insomnia. But it only worked if I stopped smoking.

I realized that the only difficult thing to do to stop smoking was the determination to do it. Otherwise, the process was really easy. Whenever I want to smoke, I let the idea be there but I do not give in to my desires. In addition, I also changed my daily routine, I gave up all the habits I had created as an excuse to continue smoking – morning walks, nighttime gatherings, tea in the daytime at a coffee shop and staying away from my friends smoking.

Life is simplified after I leave. Now I do not have to worry about hiding cigarettes or needing a mouth sanitizer. The money I 've wasted on cigarettes, I use it now to prepare myself, even to pay for my Internet services, take my partner to the movies. Quitting smoking is like a long-awaited redemption.

A year without cigarettes has made me discover something about myself: I've always had the ability to change, but I've never believed in myself because of past failures; like the elephant in the chain that never tries to break the thin rope. I'm still surprised how easy it has been to become a non-smoker.

Poudyal is a writer and independent researcher.

Posted on: 13-07-2019 06:30

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