On how not to smoke.

Marcus,
I was going to write a comment in your guestbook regarding the whole smoking thing, and giving up, or rather, not being a smoker anymore. There's some problem with it, so I'll write an open letter here instead. Maybe it'll help someone else too.

I must start by saying that I could, at any moment, choose to pick up a fag and take a long, good drag on the damn thing. However, I can equally choose to take a drag of nothing but clean air. How, you may ask, am I going about being a non-smoker, despite dreams where I'm puffing away? Well, I'm not entirely sure myself, but here are my scattered ideas on the topic.

Firstly, do not deal in negatives or abstracts. When we talk of 'giving up', of 'not doing something', we are immediately casting our actions into a negative light, into the sense of abstention. This negativeness, this absence, by its very nature, is impossible to define, and therefore hard to keep to. Instead, it should be regarded as something we choose to do, which is save money, breathe clean air, be fatter, or whatever; It should never be something we do not do. Likewise, abstract notions of being healthier, living longer, and regaining a sense of smell do not really stand up to the rushing sense of relief when you take a that first puff of nicotine. Being abstract, they lack the reality of the rush. You have to learn that the rush itself is also an illusion, albeit one with an immediate presence.

When you start to see it as this, you realise that the desire for a fag is an illusion. This in itself brings about interesting notions of what reality is anyway. After 24 hours, there is no more nicotine in your system - all that is left is a mental craving. Since the mind is nothing more than an evanescent dance of electrical impulses flowing along particular neural networks, it therefore follows that the craving is also an evanescent thing.

My first real craving came after 48 hours, then after 72, then a week, then a month. I'm still waiting for the next one. On each occasion I had a craving, however, I realised the impulse would pass after five minutes or so. I go and do something else until the impulse has gone.

Chewing gum, patches, plastic cigarettes etc are USELESS. They are, like the behaviour of craving a fag, illusions. All they do is reinforce behaviour - in this case, a bad habit. You are not merely attempting to leave smoking behind: You are also trying to divest yourself of a pattern of behaviour. Remember, also, that some bastard is making money out of you buying these products. Not only that, by buying them you are effectively saying to yourself 'I have no choice in this matter. I must rely on others to beat it.', thereby ensuring that, at some point, you will fail, and you fall into a cycle of smoking, giving up, smoking, giving up.

There is no such state as 'giving up'.

Likewise, always, always, always remember that we have the gift of choice. We are who we are, what we are and where we are because of our choices. You and I chose, at some stage, to smoke; Now, we choose to be people who have no need for the weed.

This is just stuff that's occurred to me, and I'm sure there are others who have written more eloquently on the subject, and I could ceratinly say a lot more. hope it's of use to you, anyway.