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I’ve smoked since I was about 15 years old. I’m now 32 years old. I never really thought about quitting until I was 28 or 29. My milestone 30th birthday was to be my deadline for quitting. I’ve tried and failed to quit more than a half-dozen times in the last four years. And I’m trying again, and I’m taking all of you along for the ride.
The tricks I can only employ to help me quite are becoming limited. Zyban (Wellbutrin) made my heart race and mind go crazy. Nicotine patches worked well for as long as I kept wearing them (I do credit them with helping me realize how nice it is to not smoke). Of course I’ve also tried to stop cold-turkey, and failed. So much for the well-advertised methods.
Of all my failed attempts to quit smoking, trying to stop cold-turkey was the most personally satisfying. I did it on two occasions – once I lasted about a week after throwing my pack away before a transatlantic flight home from London. The last time I just felt tired and sick of smoking and stopped for about the same amount of time. I shared this with my doctor during a recent visit where I was diagnosed as having bronchitis. He told me to read a book called the Easy Way to Stop Smoking before I tried to go cold turkey again, as I had told him was my plan.
So hear I am, day one, just having read the introduction to Carr’s book. No grand insights so far. Just a couple conditions for the program: you’re supposed to keep smoking while you read the book and you’re supposed to finish the book to guarantee success (and it does come with a money-back guarantee that I am guaranteed to be too lazy to utilize if the method fails). I’m a skeptic, and to me this sounds like hocus pocus, but what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose but my chains.
