Why Did I Smoke?

Quitting smoking is never easy, I know: I stopped more than once! This means that I also restart more than once, but this once will be final. It will be final?

Sometimes I feel scared: I love to have a healthy and active life and be free from slavery of smoke, smoking is a real stupidity.

And so, why have I scared?

My fear stems from the fact that, having restarted smoking after years of abstinence (during which I had never though to the possibility of relapse ), I understand how much I am weak against this dependency, which may be we can not completely overcome. Many times in fact I heard that even after 10 years some people have taken up smoking. What is surprising, because it means that there is still underlying dependence, subtle, silent and latent.

I like tell to people who want to stop that the most important thing is motivation. I am sure of this: I am talking about a felt and true motivation. I mean that the reasons to quit smoking can not be "to please my boyfriend" or "to save a bit of money": at the first difficulty these reasons collapse.

With those motivations we can overcome, not without great difficulty, the physical withdrawal symptoms (which lasts about a week), but we can not overcome the kind of worm that sticks in our mind after the first teen puffs, that whispers us that smoking is pleasurable, is beautiful, is cool and can not do us harm.

To have a good motivation we must get to the bottom of our addiction: why we smoke?

But do not stop at superficial answers we can give to ourself, and that are easily contestable, as:

"I smoke because I am a nervous type and one cigarette can calms me": and if I am nervous because I miss the nicotine and the cigarette calms me just because it is the dose of drug that I am missing?

" I smoke for boredom" : how long is a cigarette? Those 6-7 minutes allows me to not be bored?

" I smoking becouse is cool": we know too well that it is not true! The stench is cool? The cough is it ? Be unable to make a run of 20 minutes is cool? Having to get up in the middle of a fun dinner to smoke is cool?

" I smoke for take a break at work” : I can not take it the same?

And the best: " I smoke because I like it! ": But are you sure? It tastes horrible, who has stopped know that this is true!

When I stopped smoking the first time, after several failed attempts, I had no withdrawal symptoms and the decision had come serenely. One Friday I told to my partner that I would quit smoking on Monday following: those words are slipped out without any reasoning behind it. The thought was just born, but already strong. He smiled me without conviction: were words he had heard many times! But this time I felt inside that was different, and in fact I woke up that Monday and I smiled: I felt free, I was already an ex-smoker.

After 4 years of abstinence I restarted to smoke.

I was crossing a particular time of life, the separation from my partner made me lose some stable point of reference and I felt lost. Now I know that this separation forced me to deal with myself, whereas before I could lean on and hide behind the strong figure of my partner. In fact I was not sad, I was just confused: I was realizing that I did not know who I was and what I wanted. And I lit a cigarette.

Maybe I wanted to punish me for having done harm to my ex, maybe I wanted to tell myself that I was weak and justify my fear for what was my new situation, maybe I wanted to communicate to the world that I had changed my life, or maybe I regressed to a teenage, when I had not the "burden" of responsibility on myself because I was too young and carefree.

Maybe I just stopped loving me.

In the following years my relationship with smoking has been a succession of abstinence, even a year or more, and relapses. Every time I smoked a cigarette I felt guilty for what I knew I was doing to myself, but this was not sufficient to light the spark that it is used to understand that we are prepared for a radical change .

Those were years when much of my life was continuously changing : I changed the city ,more than a job, more than a boyfriend.

When I think of myself in those years I see a boat in the stormy sea at the mercy of the waves and the wind that navigates aimlessly. Even when I not smoked, I remained in some way dependent on something else, such as sport or a destructive relationship.

I think it took me all this time to find a balance I had lost (or never had, perhaps I believed to have), I moved away from myself because I did not love me. The reasons why I did not love me now began to be clear, some stem from my childhood.

When I realized this, the spark came and I quit smoking, also this time without difficulty. The work I had to do was not against smoking but towards myself.

Maybe I started to love me?

My answer is yes: after years in which I did not know who I was, I started to know me, I started getting many questions. I decided to look myself without filters, to grow and feel free. Quitting smoking was a logical consequence.

I can call that spark: love

The real reason why I quit smoking is this: I love me.

Those who can not stop smoking, are sure to love truly themselves? Or, as I did, they wants to punish themselves? Or they wants to hide something that can not accept, such as fear or guilt?

The basis of love for ourself is necessarily the acceptance. Ourself acceptance is the starting point for constructive change, this mean that we must accept also our weaknesses. Smoking is a weakness: to accept it we must understand what is behind this weakness. Understanding is necessary to change, but maybe it not protect us against a possible relapse. Knowing our weaknesses also means to know that these weaknesses can be much strong in some particular moments of life.

So, maybe I am always at risk of replace. But perhaps knowing it helps me to be more careful and not to forget the road that I have done until this far.

Many "perhaps" in this page, and only one certainty: smoking is very bad ! Not only for the physical but also for the soul: make deliberately something that hurts for us, makes us feel a little stupid, is not it? And maybe we also feel ashamed and we want run away from this thing, so we do not accept us. And if we can not accept us, we can not love us.