QUIT SMOKING THE RIDICULOUSLY EASY WAY
Ever tried to quit smoking? By the groans, I guess many of you have. I'm really going to annoy you now. I just gave them up, and it was easy. I'm off them a week today, and I haven't missed them in the slightest. I used to smoke forty a day, often more, and I've dropped to zero without any pain whatsoever. Hell, I've actually enjoyed it. What's all the fuss about? It's not just easy, it's fun!
This isn't the first time I tried. The first was about ten years ago or so. I lasted a day. My mistake that time was to try to substitute something else for the nicotine. I started stoking up on caffeine; coffee, Coke, tea. Every time the cravings came I'd put the kettle on. This was as stupid a way to try quitting as has ever been imagined by the mind of man. In a matter of hours every nerve in my body was stripped bare and screaming for a fix.
The next time I went to the opposite extreme, and calmed the pangs by the simple expedient of trying to remain drunk. This worked better - but not much. Drink enough and soon you have all the willpower of a dandelion clock. I gave in one night and had just one drag, to see would it make those awful cravings go away. It did - and so I was hooked again.
What's my new secret method then? It's simple. Get ill. Not just a bit ill, that won't do. You've got to feel like ... You know how when a dog gets really sick it'll eat its own vomit? As ill as I've just made you feel by mentioning that. Nausea is what you want, and definitely a fever. I imagine pneumonia would be just about perfect. I'm not in fact sure what I had. Either I was an early victim of the so-called 'winter vomiting bug' that's on tour at the moment, or it was some bacteria like streptococcus. Or possibly, both at once. Fever I had; those endless and crazy fever dreams that border on being waking hallucinations. As well as constant sweats, stomach cramps, occasional vomiting, a throat so sore that when I coughed it felt like I was tearing the skin off, and - yes - a really bad cough. It was quite the illness. But the upside: I couldn't look at a cigarette, didn't want to know about them. It wasn't that the cough and sore throat would have made it unpleasant; somehow the infection turned off the cravings completely. I just didn't want one.
So after three days or so - I am genuinely unclear about how long the fever lasted - I returned to lucidity and this happy thought: The hardest part of giving up smoking is the first cigarette you don't have. I'd missed this hardest part three days back, and I realised that I would probably never get an escape opportunity like this again. So I decided that I had smoked my last cigarette. That, I think, was psychologically vital - the decision that I wasn't 'trying to give up', but that I had already finished with smoking. Forever.
Well it's been a week and I haven't looked back! I get cravings now of course, and I'm sure I will for some time, but I find they pass in a moment. I've come up with some psychological tricks to get over them. As I'm still not fully well it's easy for me to make myself feel queasy, by tensing my stomach muscles, poking myself in the solar plexus or even simply thinking of something nauseating. (Perhaps a touch of finger-down-throat would work for someone in a less delicate state.) So every time a craving comes I do that, in order to forge a subconscious link between smoking and nausea. Seems to work.
Another psychological warfare technique is to tell myself that too much fuss is made about this quitting business. Possibly it's propaganda given out surreptitiously by the tobacco companies, inadvertently abetted by those - I used to be one - who tried and failed to give up themselves. I think this heroic dramatisation of the struggle increases the tension - and tension is what the drug preys upon. By telling myself it's easier than that, I've found it to be easier.
But where's this fun part? Well I'm finding that in effect the withdrawal from the drug is like a drug in itself - and a stronger one. I guess that the absence of the substance I was addicted to has caused my body to think that it's in trouble, and it's pumping out adrenaline by the gallon. Ever since I've been almost constantly manic; wound up like a clockwork chicken, as bouncy as a rabbit with rabies. I don't know how long it will last, but it was worth giving up simply to get this high.
I'm thinking here ... Self-help books sell by the truckload, but how can I profit by this when the circumstances were unique? It's simple. My forthcoming book, "Stop Smoking the Diseased Way!" will come with a little capsule attached to the cover, like those perfume samples on girls magazines. Only this will contain the flu virus. I'll make a fortune.
[Well, nearly six months later I'm pleased to report that I'm still clean. After the manic period I was going through above the predictable backlash came, but by then the cravings were gone and I did not relapse. I feel as little interest in cigarettes now as I did before I ever smoked, nearly fifteen years ago. The only after-effect is from my psychological tricks - I find the sight of an ashtray almost unbearably nauseating now! It Seems the disease cure really works.]