My smoking background
I started smoking at the age of 15 and on and off, I smoked until the age of 25. Most of my friends smoked and I was curious about trying something "new" and "forbidden".
I grew up in a very conservative town as far as girls smoking is concerned, so we used to hide and experience smoking as something fun and mischievous. I remember thinking "this is the last time I'm going to smoke" and "when it stops being fun I will stop smoking" and so on and so forth.
The truth is that I can remember thinking about quitting practically all the time throughout the 10 years I smoked. I have been smoke-free for almost 8 months now.
How I relapsed
Since I was always worried because of smoking, I tried to quit at least 6 or 7 times. Quite frankly, I have lost track of all my quit attempts. I usually quit for a few months and then something would happen and I'd start again. I quit for a year and a half once.
The reasons I can recall now that made me start smoking again were:
- meeting up with old friends who were also smokers
- losing my job
- having really big issues with my roommate
- going through a lot of stress while in grad school
I also hadn't realized that the associations we create with this addiction can put us back into the path of slavery again if we're not careful. For instance, since smoking was what I did with my friends -- was something we shared together, when I saw them again, I smoked again.
I did not see these relapses coming. It so happened that I had smokers nearby I could bum a cigarette from in each one of the circumstances I've described above. And every time, that single cigarette was all it took to make me an addict all over again.
Lessons learned
- There is NEVER, EVER such a thing as "just one cigarette." That one cigarette WILL ruin your quit program for a long time--maybe forever.
- I used to approach smoking cessation as something I could be done with in a month. WRONG. From my experience, I can certainly say that it DOES NOT work that way. You set yourself up for failure if you don't realize that smoking cessation is a process that takes time and effort. It is not just something you do once to forget about the following month when the physical withdrawal symptoms are gone.
