Quitting is for quitters

Since I was 15, most of my mornings have started the same way. Wake up, shower, eat breakfast and smoke the day's first cigarette. There's nothing like the delicious menthol goodness of a fresh Newport to ready me for the day.

Smoking cigarettes had become such a part of my daily routine over the last half decade that I barely realized that I had a problem. Without even noticing I had become highly addicted to nicotine, automatically lighting up before and after everyday activities.

For example, I would smoke when I woke up, when I got in a car, when I got out of a car, when I walked somewhere, after I ate, after sex, while I drank, while studying, while I wrote a paper, with my coffee, during breaks at work, when I was nervous, when I was relaxed and especially after a nice healthy workout.

After five years of smoking I decided that I had a problem. I had developed an extremely unattractive smoker's cough and lacked the endurance to walk up a flight of stairs. So like millions of other smokers, I decided to quit on New Year's Eve.

My first attempt was to do it cold turkey, a method that lasted about two days. A lot of quitters will tell you that this is the best way to do it, but honestly, it's unrealistic. Imagine giving up a huge part of your daily routine just like that. It's like saying "From now on, I'm not going to eat breakfast." Okay, that might be a little farfetched, but let's just pretend that breakfast doesn't give you the necessary energy to start your day, and cigarettes don't lead to emphysema and lung cancer.

The next thing I tried was the nicotine patch. The patch is a square-shaped sticker about the size of a post-it that you place somewhere on your body to reduce the urge to smoke.

Instead of reducing my cravings, the patch just kind of burned and itched. The box disclaimed that it would be dangerous for me to smoke with the patch on, so I would peel it off, smoke a cigarette, and stick it back on. I later realized that this was extremely harmful to my body, not to mention completely pointless.

Next up was nicotine gum. Let me walk you through this pleasant experience. Basically, you chew on something that tastes like an ashtray and creates an unpleasant tingling in your mouth, similar to the effects of the patch. Why does the gum work? This experience is so nauseating and detestable that you are too sick to your stomach to even consider smoking a cigarette.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. After quitting for six months, I slowly gravitated towards that delectable green pack of fiberglass. I am writing this to show you how I fell back into the trap, and to dissuade a successful quitter from doing the same.

It begins with bust-downs, the end of your friend's cigarette that they're already done with. It encompasses the last few pulls before the filter, which somehow seem to be the most cherished and highly coveted drags of all.

This is when it goes to the next level. Your friend will say something like, "look man, I want to smoke my whole cigarette, why don't you just take a full one and leave me alone."

That's right, your friend would rather just give you one of their cigarettes to keep you from scavenging over their bust-downs, waiting for them to get to the bottom of their cigarette like a vulture circling prey.

Before you know it, you're bumming full cigarettes off of people. At first it's just a casual thing, like joining them when they go outside to have one. Then all of a sudden you are asking for one after a meal or when you get to class. Pretty soon the first thing you will think about on your way to a party is who will be there that you know that has cigarettes. This is the point of no return.

After a few weeks of taking cigarettes from your pals you will become known as a "grubber." Your closest friends will actually go out of their way to avoid you. In extreme situations one of them might even call you out in the middle of a party and announce in front of everyone how you never buy packs. The idea of becoming a grubber is so degrading that you will actually go out and buy a pack just to prove everyone wrong. Presto, you're a smoker again.

Although I may not be the foremost authority on quitting, having slipped back into the habit myself, I do plead that if you have recently managed to quit yourself, then please, do not give in to temptations. Do not ask for bust-downs, and do not go out with your friends for a quick smoke. As nice as it is now to be able to have that morning cigarette, the six months that I could climb a flight of stairs were a lot more fulfilling, believe me.