How I Accidentally Quit Smoking in Two Steps

It hadn't been my intention to quit smoking for good, but sometimes things have a funny way of turning out.

At the time, I was a relapsed smoker keeping his habit in the closet while living in another city, away from my former significant other, my family, and anyone else who would go on the warpath if they knew what I was up to. ("But I don't understand! You were doing so well!")Meanwhile, I had felt trapped in an expensive habit that I didn't enjoy much anymore, but one that had certain side effects if I went too long without it, namely impaired concentration, or even a general feeling of spaciness. I was forever quitting cold turkey, only to relapse within hours, or even sooner.

It felt like the tobacco industry had me right where it wanted me.

Step One: Breaking Positive Associations

Somewhere in mid-2005, I was commuting back home to Ottawa at least two weekends per month, or more if work was slow. (I was an actor and extra in the Toronto film and television industry, a line of work that tends to be feast or famine.) Being in the smoker's closet, I would refrain from my habit while I was in Ottawa, and then once back in Toronto, I would light up again for the first time in at least two or three days. All told, I was averaging about two completely smoke-free days per week.

As this pattern repeated itself over two or three months, I noticed that each time I'd arrive back in Toronto and take that first drag on a Du Maurier Light, the initial taste would seem even worse than before. At the same time, it was taking progressively longer for my taste buds to acclimatize and resume tricking my brain into thinking cigarettes are delicious. And even once the taste was re-normalized, I found I simply wasn't enjoying the habit like I used to.

Without realizing it, I had completed Step One of an unplanned two-step program that would see me kick the habit for good--or for at least 15 years so far as of this writing. I had learned from previous attempts at quitting that if I was going to be a long term non-smoker, it would require breaking my positive associations with cigarettes. During a two-year smoke-free stint from 2001 to 2003, I had been very diligent about not smoking but had never stopped missing it like crazy, whether it was the taste, the smell, or the attendant social rituals, such as going outside for a smoke with like-minded people to bitch about politics. Or non-smokers.

Now things just felt different, and I was ready to take this pursuit a step further, even if only as an experiment.

Step Two: The "I'm Only Quitting for Today" Rule

Once I realized that I may have dismantled any positive associations with cigarettes, which I now knew taste how ashtrays smell once you've been without them for a spell, I thought about the other thing that had been keeping me from successfully quitting, which was the fear itself of not successfully quitting. In addition to that two-year smoke-free stint, my years of being a smoker had been marked by countless abortive attempts at quitting, many of which would end later that day, though some would last a few days. Every time I relapsed, I would feel a sense of failure and disappointment. And with each relapse, I could feel my self-confidence further erode each time I took that first drag, and would simply hate myself for it. While I certainly wanted to finally kiss this habit goodbye, I also wanted to avoid the runaway self-loathing that accompanies a rapid-fire quit-and-relapse cycle.

With this in mind, it occurred to me that the way to conquer this fear of failure was to do an end-run around it by implementing a one-day-only rule. Rather than deciding to quit for the long term before knowing whether or not I could deliver, on Day One of this project I told myself, "I'm only quitting for today. I give myself permission to smoke like a chimney tomorrow, but today I will be smoke-free." That night, my final task before turning out the lights was to mark that day on a Far Side calendar with a big black X.

The next morning, I looked at that X on the calendar and wondered what another one would look like next to it.

On the third smoke-free day, I serenaded my calendar by running my electric guitar through a wah-wah pedal and playing some licks that would have made the Mitchell brothers blush.

From there, it became a matter of celebrating small benchmarks, first in terms of weeks, and then in terms of months. I also made sure to always have the total number of smoke-free days on hand. The very sight of the X's provided its own motivation to keep going, while also increasing my sense of urgency around not relapsing.

One month in, I felt strong enough to go and visit the chain smokers at the neighborhood coffee shop, which had a small glassed-in smoking section. (This was in the months just before the City of Toronto banned smoking in restaurants and bars.) I had gone without seeing these friends in the early going, as I knew my limitations. But after a month, I was shocked to find that exposure to their cigarette smoke failed to trigger a nic fit. They looked on in amazement as if I were pulling off some sort of David Blaine endurance test by not cracking from within the clouds of second-hand smoke.

Moreover, for the first time in my adult life, the smoking section and its occupants stunk. (Egad...is this how I had smelled to almost everybody else all this time?)

Gradually, an unbroken series of X's populated the rest of that year's calendar and then spilled over into the next one as well. By the end of 2006, I had moved back to Ottawa, and somewhere in that shuffle I had stopped my daily calendar ritual altogether but was moving forward anyway as a non-smoker.

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