I can pass up the pack, but the drag is killing me.

May 8, 2007 5:57 PM

How can I convince myself to not smoke casually?

I smoked a pack a day from the time I was 12 until I was about 25. I stopped smoking completely (not even a drag) for a year when I signed up for a marathon. I figured that running was the sort of thing that even one puff could hamper progress. I hated running, every second leading up to the marathon, through that finish line, and beyond. Since then I've taken up surfing, which is similar in the same respects of requiring extremely healthy lungs.

I've heard all the rationales...and I agree with all the evils of smoking. I don't like the yellow teeth, or the way I smell, or the myriad health risks of course.

I've quit so many times that withdrawls and the process of quitting doesn't even bother me. What happens is that I get to a place (where I'm at now) where I don't feel physically addicted to smoking. Therefore, when I'm out drinking with my friends, or hanging out with somebody who smokes, I allow myself to have one. Or two. Or four. And I thoroughly enjoy them at the time.

In public I feel gross because I know I stink for the rest of the evening, and I know it's majorly unattractive. It also makes my hangovers worse.

It seems so benign to have one or two every once in a while. The risks and drawbacks seem minimal, and I've rationalized them.

How can I stop this? What are some ways to convince myself of the grossness and dangers of that one cigarette? Please offer stories, advice, mantras, healthy substitutes (especially things I can do while I'm enjoying the company of others and the outdoors during "smoke" breaks).

posted by iamkimiam to health & fitness (21 comments total)

Therefore, when I'm out drinking with my friends, or hanging out with somebody who smokes, I allow myself to have one. Or two. Or four. And I thoroughly enjoy them at the time.

It sounds like what you're doing is not smoking casually, but smoking socially. Depending on how often you do this
(once, twice a week?), I doubt it's detrimental to your health. BUT, you want to stop - so if it's something that's making you unhappy - then you need to simply tell all of your friends that you don't smoke anymore and to not let you have cigarettes.

If that is what you want, you're going to have to make a concious effort to never ever ever smoke. And stick to it.
posted by matkline at 6:21 PM on May 8, 2007

good news: there is a decent chance it will soon be illegal in your state to smoke in bars and restaurants. (actually: I thought that was illegal in california but perhaps you're in oregon and your lat/long info is off?) many states are adopting this now, I think illinois will be next.

but the real answer lies in here:
In public I feel gross because I know I stink for the rest of the evening, and I know it's majorly unattractive.

perhaps the point needs to be driven home that you do not only feel but actually are a lot less attractive. you signal that you not only care less about your health but also that the well-being of your friends isn't important to you. to me, that would be a huge reason not to come over and strike up a conversation. (but hey, perhaps you are haunted by men. in that case ...)
posted by krautland at 6:41 PM on May 8, 2007

I'm also a social smoker, and have a friend who successfully kicked the habit. He basically cut himself off from our circle of friends, which consists of several real smokers, and a couple social smokers like myself. We didn't see or hear from him for about a year, and when he came back, he didn't smoke anymore. He also had a new set of teeth, and claimed to have found Jesus.

Short answer, if you want to really kick the habit, maybe you should not hang out with people who will tempt you to smoke for a while.
posted by bjork24 at 6:44 PM on May 8, 2007

What's worked for me is imagining that every cigarette is just the beginning of an endless chain of cigarettes that stretches on forever. I don't want to smoke all those . . . so it helps me not smoke that ONE.

Also, pick up a copy of Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking and read it. He's weirdly convincing and effective.
posted by agent99 at 6:53 PM on May 8, 2007

Well it makes you look gross to others. Possibly the man of your dreams might pass you by since he prefers to be with women that respect their bodies.

a couple smokes a week is STILL bad for your health too. Don't fool yourself into thinking one or two wont harm you.

Good luck.
posted by crewshell at 7:08 PM on May 8, 2007

(especially things I can do while I'm enjoying the company of others and the outdoors during "smoke" breaks).

Have something in your mouth or in your hands (heh...) A toothpick or a cocktail straw or a glass will probably be pretty easy to come by. You need something to put in your mouth when they're putting cigarettes in theirs.
posted by Cyrano at 7:10 PM on May 8, 2007

I was in exactly your shoes about 20 years ago. Quitting entirely will make a huge difference in your surfing, esp. if you are challenging yourself in big waves. I recommend you deliberately avoid the activities and people you associate with smoking for a time, and avoid exposure to smoke. Most people I know who've been entirely smoke-free for about 3 years develop a serious antipathy for tobacco smoke, and then can return to the activities without cravings.

Other things which can help:

-Take up running first thing in the morning. It will help your wind for surfing, give you positive feedback on your progress, and reinforce your reason for quitting when you relapse.

-Keep a pack of sugarless gum on hand and chew as an alternative. I'm still addicted to gum to this day.

-Carry a small portable toothbrush such as you can find in an outdoor store that stores toothpaste in the handle. Brush your teeth immediately after eating or drinking to kill the ensuing craving.



matkline:"Depending on how often you do this (once, twice a week?), I doubt it's detrimental to your health."

Not true at all. Occasional smoking does not reduce risk. Regarding the OP's concern about breathing performance, the occasional cigarette has a significant effect, killing and paralyzing cilia which are mechanisms that protect the lungs from particulate matter. If you live in a smoggy environment or engage in activity such as mountainbiking, that one cigarette can do an inordinate amount of damage compared to those which follow.
posted by Manjusri at 7:32 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Not to piss on your corn-flakes, but most smokers begin by being social smokers, sometimes for years. Think about lung disease when you smoke, picture the dammage it's doing to your lungs.

The only way I could quit smoking was to get healthy. I 'm not really sure that smoking fits into this.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 7:36 PM on May 8, 2007

Just to offer something that hasn't come up, my boss -- who is now 29, and who also has been smoking since he was 12 years old -- recently started taking Chantix. The drug works by blocking nicotine from having any effect on you.

He's about three weeks in now, and has lost all desire to smoke. He "cheated" a couple of times, but because of the drug, it did nothing but make him smell bad. He'll even go out for "smoke breaks" with other employees, and though he's surrounded by the smell of cigarettes, he still has no desire to light one up himself.

Of course, it's not a panacea. You have to keep that will up once you're off the drug (the course is a couple of months), because at that point, nicotine will be able to affect you again. And another coworker who tried it had to stop because it quite literally made him go crazy one day and walk out in a fit.

But to me it sounds like it might give you the incentive you need. After a few weeks of being around people who smoke, but not being able to light one up yourself (because it wouldn't have any effect, so why bother?), it might just give you the needed push to quit for good.
posted by CrayDrygu at 8:31 PM on May 8, 2007

Similar to CrayDrygu's boss, I was on wellbutrin/zyban - which "may or maybe not" block nicotinic ACh receptors, when I was on it smoking cigarettes did nothing to reduce cravings; smoking just didn't push the buttons anymore. But. I. Still. Wanted. To. Smoke. I did this right before my MSc defence, stupid me.

Well, I was off nicotine for 3 months, then got back into smoking on the weekends/socially and within a month I was smoking full time again.

Say no to the social smokes, somehow. It sounds, though, that you haven't *really* passed that mental bump that makes cigarettes=good to cigarettes=not-good/unrewarding.

I've friends who've gone the hypnotism route (the idea is that they believe that they no longer desire to smoke a cigarette or something), and have 'quit' for anywhere between 6 months to a few years, but every single one did the 'social smoking' thing and within weeks went back into full-time smoking.

Perhaps follow up each lapse with a hypno session?
posted by porpoise at 8:45 PM on May 8, 2007

Frankly, although I see little wrong with smoking in and of itself (especially if you're around smokers so you're not even inflicting your secondhand on anyone who wouldn't be breathing toxins anyway), I hate the freaking tobacco industry. I hate that they marketed to kids in my generation with their dumb camel, I hate that they claimed that smoking didn't cause lung cancer when they knew it did, I hate that they can hire the best lawyers on the planet to allow them to stay in business anyway, and I hate that there are nicer things out there to smoke but that for some reason this noxious, deadly one gets to be the legal one.

Think about whose pockets you're tossing money at. Don't you know anyone who's had lung cancer? Every cigarette you smoke keeps the bastards who put your loved ones in the hospital up and running. I don't smoke because it's the only way I can avenge the deaths of people murdered by this industry.

I feel like if you really thought about this you wouldn't smoke ever again.
posted by crinklebat at 8:53 PM on May 8, 2007

I had a heart attack four years ago (age 41). One may not smoke in the intensive care unit.
posted by longsleeves at 9:13 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Two column technique. Piece of paper, line down the middle, advantages to the left, disadvantages to the right. Add up both and weight them on a 100% scale, so that you assign a number to how much better one is than another.

Repeat every day for a week or two. If it fails, post a second time to AskMeFi.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:55 PM on May 8, 2007

uh, I spent about ten years quitting smoking and got so good at it that the last three years i smoked only about half the time and was able to convince myself I was doing less damage. However, on my quitsmoking forum there are a number of very smart ex-smokers and one of them pointed out research that seemed to indicate that the trauma of stopping and starting can be even worse than smoking full-time.

Also, where i live, smoking is terribly expensive ($10 a pack of 20 last time I looked) and becoming more and more socially inappropriate. This works in two ways for me, one is I don't want anyone to see me smoking because I'm embarrased, and the other is I hardly ever see anyone smoking because they're embarassed and therefore I'm not reminded of my desire.

So what did I do in the end? Got incredibly drunk, smoked like a chimney up until my quit which I romantically set for new year's eve and then I quit. I'd had plenty of practice so I knew I could do it, the trick was to not have just one and think I'd gotten away with it. I committed to my quit-smoking forum (yet again - but there you go, you can't underestimate the benefit of cyber humiliation), promised my children (I know, I know) but most of all, made a firm decision that if I should ever waver, I would immediately and automatically simply tell myself "no". This, while seemingly insignificant, is the biggest part of the puzzle for me. As long as I don't even entertain the thought of smoking, quitting is not a problem. As soon as I say, well, maybe, and how much would i enjoy that, then the psychology of missing something and desiring something is oh at least ten fold.

So, quit. Tell some people. Refuse to allow yourself any options. Repeat.

Oh btw, I'm still quit since 1/1/06.
posted by b33j at 9:56 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thanks for all the responses!
My problem is that I feel as though I am essentially "quit" of the smoking addiction, so it's "harmless" if I enjoy one occasionally. But I'd like to find more rationale why I shouldn't have that one. Currently I am smoking anywhere from 0-4 cigarettes per week. I'd like it to be 0, every week, with good reason why 1 is too many. I don't see why or how that realistically necessitates cutting all smokers out of my life entirely (especially since we're talking about good friends and coworkers here). Money/cost/supporting big tobacco is also not an influence on this casual/social smoking since I NEVER buy cigarettes, and would bum the one I "need".

I really like agent99's suggestion about viewing that one as the start of a long train of cigarettes. And crewshell's idea of inadvertently deterring the man of my dreams over something so gross and stupid. More suggestions like those and I'll have lots of ammo to counteract with when the 5-minute indulgence seems like a good idea.

I appreciate everything said so far!
posted by iamkimiam at 11:50 PM on May 8, 2007

I'm just stopping smoking and one thing that I've noticed in the past is that once you have liked to smoke, you will be faced with situations in which you are going to have to consciously Not Smoke. I get a little prelapsarian and want to get to a point where I desire smoking as little as someone who never smoked, but I just don't think it's like that. You're going to have to stop yourself, which feels lame and artificial, but the key to quitting smoking is not to smoke. If you don't want to smoke, all you have to do is not smoke.

And yes, smoking is great when you like it and do it occasionally, but be honest with yourself about the terms of your quitting. I know how the mindset goes, "oh well, if I'm smoking sometimes I might as well smoke all the time." The rationale eventually takes hold. I have tried several times to convert myself from a pack-a-day to a social smoker, always to go back onto the coffin nails.
posted by rhizome at 12:09 AM on May 9, 2007

Like most drugs, nicotine has a curve with a come-up and come-down. The come-down after smoking a cigarette feels pretty unpleasant — it's a big part of why people smoke the next one.

What worked for me was learning to associate smoking with the unpleasantness of the come-down. As I was getting jittery, tense, headachy or irritable, I'd remind myself "It's because of that last cigarette that you feel that way." It got rid of the urge to smoke "just one," because I knew it would lead to feeling bad later in the day.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:40 AM on May 9, 2007

1. Read "Cigarettes Are Sublime". by Richard Klein.
It's sort of the philosophy of smoking! It helped me to begin the process of letting go, because it's got really interesting stuff in there about WHAT IT IS that smoking a cigarette actually does for you, what value it has (...sublimation, fyi).

2. What worked for me is telling myself one night before I went to bed, "when you wake up you are a non-smoker." Then you wake up and you just "believe" you are a non-smoker. Isn't that what hypnosis does?
Forget you ever smoked! Act like a person who just doesn't smoke. Do what that person would do. You really have to detach cigarettes from your personality.
posted by mjao at 5:48 AM on May 9, 2007

I used to be a social smoker. At my very worst, when I was working at a coffee shop (everyone took smoke breaks) and going out almost every night, this meant I was smoking up to 5 cigarettes a day. But usually it was more like 5 a week.

I, like you, didn't really have a hard core addiction to the things. I could quit and start again and quit again at whim. I could go two weeks without a cigarette and not even think twice about it. I could go 6 months without one. And, also like you, I would let myself start up again or have that "just one" cigarette at the bar because I knew down the road that quitting wasn't going to be hard. The fear of addiction, which previously scared the crap out of me, was no longer a deterrent. I too heard that light smokers faced the same risks of health problems, lung cancer, etc as heavy smokers. And I was on birth control - which has an increased risk of possibly deadly blood clots if you smoke. I still smoked.

Sorry, but I just don't think there is a "trick" to it. There is no open sesame abba cadabra magic words that any of us can say that will suddenly make you not want that smoke at the bar. You just have to decide not to have it, and stick to that decision. Like mjao said above, you have to start thinking of yourself as a non-smoker. Change that self-identity from "I am a social smoker" to "I am a non-smoker." In the long run for me it came down to just making the decision. I thought to myself, "why am I doing this? If I can quit so easily, why don't I just quit and stay quit?" Saying it out loud. "I am never going to have another cigarette." I had to grow up and be an adult about it. I am not a prisoner of drunken impulses. I can, even when drinking, make smart choices and choose not to smoke a cigarette.

I made that decision 3 years ago, and am so glad I did. I managed to do it even though my live-in boyfriend smokes about a pack a day so cigarettes are always around. You can do it too.
posted by misskaz at 6:20 AM on May 9, 2007

The Allen Carr book recommended by agent99 worked wonders for me as well. If you're REALLY ready to quit (and not just going through one of those "well I suppose I should quit but I don't really want to" spells), he does a great job of dealing with the psychological aspects of quitting (which is the hardest part by far).

One thing to think about (that he mentions in the book) is that by doing the sort of social smoking you are talking about, you may be making yourself MORE psychologically addicted to smoking. When you limit the supply of cigarettes, you look forward to the few you allow yourself that much more (and feel less of the negative physical side effects), which can make casual smoking harder to give up than quitting chain smoking cold turkey.

It sounds like you already accept that smoking is fairly disgusting - I'm guessing you "thoroughly enjoy it" because of habit and social triggers; you associate smoking with past good times. Once you convince yourself that you really don't enjoy smoking, it becomes very easy to resist the occasional cigarette.
posted by chundo at 7:49 AM on May 9, 2007

1. I "quit" for a couple of months. No smoking, not even socially.

2. I had a really bad day.

3. I went out with my friends and drank a bunch.

4. I had a cigarette. Hey, it's just one, right?

5. It relaxed me, made me feel better.

6. I had another.

7. Etc.

You know why it relaxed me? You know why it made me feel better? Because I'm a smoker. I haven't quit, I've just stopped, and not even that very well. If I was truly independent of the desire to smoke, then that one cigarette every once in a while wouldn't be so nice.

It takes a long time to quit. You are not getting any closer. Hope that helps with the perspective.
posted by rush at 11:50 AM on May 9, 2007