I could actually taste the fresh air and smell the water, the sand, and the trees. I thought: You don’t get to do this when you smoke.”
“You can’t go to a gas station and buy cocaine, but cigarettes are everywhere. You don’t have to hide it like you do illegal drugs.”
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Quitting Smoking among Adults—United States, 2001–2010. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [serial online] 2011; 60(44):1513–19
3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19717241
Overcoming Your Fears About Quitting
• Fear: Withdrawal will make me miserable
• Fear: I’m going to disappoint my family and friends
• Fear: Without cigarettes, I’ll fall apart under stress
• Fear: I don’t have the willpower to give up cigarettes
• Fear: I’m too addicted to quit
• Fear: The cravings will never go away
• Fear: The stress of quitting is going to trigger an illness
• Fear: I’ll feel lost without my “best friend”
• Fear: I’m going to sacrifice my social life
Fear: Withdrawal will make me miserable
Christine Burke smoked in bed first thing in the morning and planned her workdays, as a church custodian, around smoke breaks. Almost every night, she’d wake up around 2 a.m. to smoke. If ever her lighter didn’t work, she’d panic. So when Burke contemplated quitting, after her epiphany at the Atlanta airport, she was consumed by fear of suffering from withdrawal. “People were always telling me, ‘You won’t believe how bad it is,’ ” says Burke, 50, a smoker since age 12. “It was like hearing horror stories about someone’s 37-hour labor.”
If you haven’t yet committed to quit, or your confidence is shaky, fear may be what’s holding you back. Fear of pain or discomfort, of failing and disappointing your family, of gaining weight, of alienating friends who smoke — there’s no shortage of worries that can surface when you think about giving up cigarettes. Maybe you’re wondering: How will I cope with stress? How will I survive my morning commute? Who will I be if I don’t smoke?
These worries are normal, and we take them seriously. It’s nerve-racking to give up a behavior that has been integral to your life probably since before you could drive. In this chapter, we tackle your fears one by one, helping you separate anxiety from reality. (For starters, no, cigarettes are not your best friend!) By examining your fears and putting them in perspective, you will find that you can be more receptive to the strategies in this book.
As for Burke, her fear of withdrawal proved largely unfounded. She did ride a wave of emotions at first. She cried easily and snapped at her daughter. But to Burke’s surprise, her mood swings and intense cravings stopped after a few days. She wore the nicotine patch to ease withdrawal, sucked on hard candy to keep her mouth busy, and practiced deep breathing to cope with stress. “You think you can’t make it another minute and that nothing will work,” says Burke, “but something always does, and the cravings go away. My fear of suffering was far greater than my actual suffering.”
Fear: I’m going to fail
Have you tried to quit smoking five times and failed with each attempt? Terrific. Have you failed ten times? Even better! We’re not kidding. A history of failure can actually work to your advantage. It means two things: You have tenacity, and you’re that much closer to success.
Though some smokers have quit on the first try, such success is a bit like bowling consecutive strikes your first time at the lanes. It usually takes multiple attempts before a smoker quits for life. That’s because giving up cigarettes often requires trial and error. You need to work out the right quitting “recipe” for you — the ideal mix of distractions, substitutions, medications, and stress-relief strategies. Quitting smoking, like any worthwhile endeavor, takes practice. From every failed attempt, you gain insight and skills that will help you next time.
So, rather than view past failures as an omen, consider them an asset, a series of rehearsals leading up to the “big quit.” Also, reconsider your definition of failure. Even if you made it one day without a cigarette — heck, even if you made it four hours — that’s not failure; that’s progress. You did something right, so figure out what it was. Maybe you drank tea instead of coffee with your breakfast, successfully postponing your urge for a cigarette. Maybe you checked your social media account on your work break rather than headed outside with the smokers.
What if you think you’ve already tried and failed with every quitting strategy and medication? Believe us, you haven’t. There’s no limit to the quitting recipes you can try, as you will see in Part II: Quitting in Five Steps. You can set a quit date earlier or later than you did before. You can ask different friends for support. You can chew on cinnamon sticks instead of toothpicks. You can go to the movies on Fridays instead of the bar. You can switch medications or combine them. (Just check with your healthcare provider first.) In Chapter 5, Preparing to Quit, we help you analyze your previous attempts so you can identify what worked and what didn’t and develop a more promising plan.
If you’re feeling vulnerable from previous quit attempts, be kind to yourself. Failing is nobody’s favorite pastime, to be sure, but your only shot at success is by trying. And if you succeed, your world will change in countless wonderful ways. If you don’t, you’ll have gained wisdom to draw on for your next try. “You’ll know you had the courage to try something that so many people don’t,” Burke says. “Hold on to that.” Though Burke’s first quit lasted only three days, the experience prepared her for the next go-around. The second time, she wasn’t blindsided by the power of the cravings, so she felt more confident she could outlast them.
“The best way to overcome a fear is to push through it — to make up your mind that you are stronger than a pack of cigarettes or a fear,” says Burke. “Finding out how strong you really are is intoxicating. Truly, not much feels better than making it through a day without a cigarette.”
As long as you are trying to quit,