Men’s Health: Man2Man: I Quit!

Orig­i­nally pub­lished in Men’s Health (July 2007)

A few weeks ago I had a very bad dream. I was walk­ing back home from Hol­land Vil­lage, just a stone’s throw from where I live. It was get­ting dark, and it was a bit driz­zly, and between the knuck­les of my index and mid­dle fin­gers of my left hand was a half con­sumed cig­a­rette. As I quick­ened my pace to get home before the del­uge, I took deep puffs from the cig­a­rette, exhal­ing from the side of my mouth. One of the drags was per­haps too deep. I coughed, and then I woke up.

Ordi­nar­ily, I’d for­get this sort of dream. But because I am a newly-minted, fresh-breathed ex-smoker, I woke up in a cold sweat, hor­ri­fied at the vivid­ness of the dream, even remem­ber­ing the taste and the splut­ter­ing cough.

In that sleep­ful way one stum­bles around the room, I looked around for clues to what could pos­si­bly have trig­gered the dream/nightmare. Did I really light one up in my sleep? At what point dur­ing my walk did I start smok­ing? Where did I buy the pack from? What brand was it?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Men's Health, cigarettes, singapore, smoking

So many questions! No answers! And all my wife said when I woke her up to ask if I had been smoking was how the heck I know whether you secretly smoke or not? Please for the love of god stop talking nonsense and go back to sleep!

Of course, demonstrating my knack of pushing my dear wife over the brink, I had to continue pursuing my investigation – by clarifying my question to her, saying

“No, dear, I want to know if I really lit up. You know? Like sleepwalking and smoking? Sleepsmoking?”

My wife then demonstrated how heavy a sleeper she was by showing me how she couldn’t hear my question at all.

Although I am quite certain that I didn’t turn from mild-mannered freelance writer that night into The Smoking Somnambulist, I do have a fair bit to say about smoking, quitting smoking, and the anti-smoking measures in this country.

I quit smoking on a whim at the beginning of this year. It was one of those decisions which, for some reason, turn out to be easier than expected. So easy that it still scares me a little.

OK, so it was at the whispering of a couple of well-meaning friends over the New Year's festivities that started the ball rolling. But the truth was, I hadn't even thought of making cutting down on the smokes a resolution, much less give it up totally.

It's been half a year since I last lit up, and you could call this a remarkable enough milestone, made even more remarkable for the fact that before this year, I had been a smoker for over twenty years, and never once looked like quitting. In fact, being the obnoxious smoker that I was, I was more concerned with coming up with a quick quip about my disgusting habit rather than for my health:

To any person who'd ask in a well-meaning way while fanning away second hand smoke as to when I'd consider quitting the smokes, I'd simply say 'over my dead body'; To another who'd ask if I was a chain smoker after observing me light another up end on end, I'd say, 'No, I smoke tobacco. Chains are tough to light up'.

The thing was, I knew the harm I was doing to myself. And these days, you simply cannot ignore the horrible depictions on the packs of cigarettes of various diseases that smoking can cause. Let me tell you how effective the graphic campaign is - sure, looking at the pictures makes you feel sick. But here's the rub:

It's a known fact (among smokers) that smokers who are affected by the pictures not only do not quit smoking, they actually ask vendors for the least offensive looking packet of smokes: "Uncle, Marlboro Lights hard pack one, don't want the mouth cancer one, give me the unconscious man one".

For me personally, the pictures affected me so much I simply had to light up. All other measures designed to deter smokers also simply made me want to smoke even more from the stress of it all:

Yellow boxes at al-fresco eateries: So oppressive, must smoke!

Another 20 cent hike in the price of cigarettes: Financial stress, smoke some more!

Eventual banning of smoking from all public places: Oh no, there is no future for smokers, better smoke as much as possible now!

Last year, when restrictions were put on smoking in outdoor eateries and yellow tape started demarcating where normal people could sit and watch smokers try to cram into what is typically 20% of available outdoor seating, I saw one young smoker get up from a non-smoking seat, saunter towards the yellow zone, put one foot inside the promised land, and light up, taking care to try to contain his exhalations within his fellow smokers’ (of which I was one) airspace.

For the never-smoked-before (as opposed to the ex-smoker-non-smoker), it might be difficult to imagine the extent to which smokers twist logic to suit their ends, which invariably, is to smoke another cigarette.

I once had a flatmate who'd defy an emergency storm warning to walk half an hour to the convenience store to get an extra pack of cigarettes. His rationale:

“Bet­ter buy more cig­a­rettes now because I will need cig­a­rettes to wait the storm warn­ing out at home”.

That, and again for the ben­e­fit of the never-smoked-before, there’s that very typ­i­cal instance of sheer des­per­a­tion and com­plete loss of dig­nity that smok­ers know very well: when there aren’t any cig­a­rettes left and for some rea­son you can’t go out and buy some in the next few hours – you pick all the stubs from the ash­tray, mut­ter to your­self how for­tu­nate you are to be a messy slob, because there always are stubs in the ash­tray for a sit­u­a­tion like this, and then light one of them up, being care­ful not to burn your fin­gers, take the one and only smoke­able puff from it, throw it away and pick up the next stub to smoke. Until all the stubs are gone. Then you hunt around the house for other ashtrays.

Then, there are the “secret smok­ers”. This class of peo­ple are quite an inter­est­ing propo­si­tion. A typ­i­cal secret smoker tells his non-smoker loved ones that he’s quit. And then when the crav­ing for a stick turns to sheer des­per­a­tion (as described above), he sneaks out, steals a few really long drags from either an old cig­a­rette found in a drawer, or stubs found in an ash­tray that hasn’t been cleared since he quit smoking.

And then he returns home, per­forms a Jedi mind trick on his loved ones by wav­ing his fin­gers in front of their faces and saying:

“You do not detect the very strong odor of cig­a­rette smoke in my breath, my hair and my clothes”.

It doesn’t mat­ter how ridicu­lous, but once ques­tioned, the secret smoker will still quite adamantly main­tain that he hasn’t smoked, and that, “damn, I went out­side for a walk, every­one around me smoked, and I couldn’t get away from them and that’s why my mouth stinks of cig­a­rette smoke.

I really wouldn’t be sur­prised if some­one actu­ally came up with an excuse that went like:

“I swear! I didn’t smoke! Some­one was clear­ing their ash­tray over the bal­cony, and I hap­pened to look up, and my mouth hap­pened to be open!”

Quite plainly, smok­ing is an addic­tion that is more seri­ous than many peo­ple think it is, and I don’t think there is any other sub­stance that can cause behav­iour like that and is not prohibited.

Obvi­ously, being a smoker, I was often in the com­pany of smok­ers, and I’d hear tales of them ‘try­ing to quit’, but that it’s dif­fi­cult for the many plainly stu­pid rea­sons such as:

Cof­fee doesn’t taste good with­out a cigarette;

All my friends are smokers;

And the all-time clas­sic: I will put on weight if I stop smoking.

Well, I just need to say that not hav­ing smoked for half a year, my cof­fee smells and tastes bet­ter than before, as do quite a lot of foods. Flow­ers and per­fume smell bet­ter too. And while I can’t be sure about the alcohol-cigarette con­nec­tion because I don’t drink very often, think about it. If you really can’t enjoy your alco­hol with­out a cig­a­rette, think of the money saved on these two vices!

I haven’t put on weight. In fact, one month into quit­ting smok­ing, I man­aged to pass my reservist Indi­vid­ual Phys­i­cal Pro­fi­ciency Test (IPPT) after only three train­ing runs, where pre­vi­ously, I’d train often, take the test and still fail.

I don’t think I have lost any of my smoker friends as a result of quit­ting the smokes either. All that’s changed is that I don’t join them for ‘a chat out­doors’ when they feel the urge to light up. And of course, the fact that they keep mar­veling aloud at how amaz­ing it is to see that I’ve “quit, just like that”.

As for not being able to go to the toi­let, I have news for you: tobacco is the wrong kind of fiber intake.

Per­son­ally, I feel that what­ever the ‘method’ you use to quit smok­ing, it all boils down to whether you want to quit or not. Once you’ve really made up your mind, it becomes eas­ier than you think.

But if you don’t want to quit, you won’t see things as clearly. Like how I could never con­vince myself that I really didn’t need cig­a­rettes as much as I thought, even though I could actu­ally tol­er­ate being in an air­craft for 12 hours with­out smok­ing or sleep 8 or more hours with­out wak­ing to light one up.

I remem­ber a friend who’d say some­thing to the effect of “wah, sleep so long never smoke, of course wake up straight away must smoke lah!”

Smok­ers often attribute their need to smoke to all man­ner of stress­ful trig­ger points. If you’ve been a nico­tine addict for years, like myself, some of this is true. Two months into quit­ting, I found myself in reservist train­ing in the jun­gle, soaked to the bone from stand­ing in the rain all day and night, and crav­ing for a cig­a­rette very badly.

Thank­fully, it was, and still is the only time since quit­ting that I’ve ever yearned for a smoke. Today, the sight (and smell) of smok­ers light­ing up doesn’t make me wish for one at all.

Hav­ing knowl­edge of all the health ben­e­fits of quit­ting and the dan­gers of smok­ing isn’t ever going to be enough to make one quit. It has to start from within, and you sim­ply have to con­vince your­self that you want to quit, and rec­og­nize that no other exter­nal moti­va­tion is required.

Then again, there’s no harm in also debunk­ing the myth of the nec­es­sary post-coital cig­a­rette: You don’t need it. And you can, well, use those five min­utes that you would have spent smok­ing to, um, go at it again!