Smoking has bedeviled me for 25 years. After years of success slaying one behavioral and mental health demon after another (binge eating, alcohol, and depression), smoking is the one that keeps coming back. Why is this addiction so persistent and pernicious? I still don’t fully understand the allure, and why I lose the power to resist it. 

For years, I made attempts to quit with only brief success (quitting for only a couple of days, for instance). Since 2019, I’ve managed to quit for months at a time. I’d feel great about life and how things were going, and get excited about experiencing the self-efficacy that comes with getting a handle on a behavior I hate. I’d be so grateful for freedom from this addiction, only to pick up the habit again, often when I least expected to. Every time I quit, I tell myself that this is the last time, because quitting smoking is a terrible experience, and one I never wanted to have again. And yet. There it is again. 

I will say, my periods of quitting get longer, and the spells of smoking get less frequent and shorter. All of my time achieving temporary freedom from this addiction does matter. I get better at being a non-smoker the more often I do it, and the longer I do it. I have quit for most of the last three years. 

I love being a non-smoker. I love removing myself from the Great Debate: Do I do it? Just this once? How will I get cigarettes? What will people who want me to quit think? How will I feel about myself as I do it? Removing myself from this calculus makes for a happy day. I love not having to find ways and times to smoke, not running out of cigarettes and going for supply runs, not smelling like smoke, not feeling like a low-class smelly degenerate in a conference room filled with non-smokers, not disrupting my flow at work for a smoke break, not huddling over a cigarette in driving rain/freezing cold/blazing heat, not getting up from a cuddle with the cat to get a smoke in, and most of all, not experiencing the endless cycle of wanting and craving that defines the whole day as an addict – even when I’ve just smoked, I’m thinking about when I can smoke again.

With all of this freedom, how on earth do I keep returning to the prison cell of addiction? Every time, when I initially quit, the smell of cigarette smoke induces mouth-water craving. I want to stand downwind from you while you smoke, smelling it like cookies in the oven. The longer I’ve quit, the more repulsive the smell of smoke becomes. Just days ago, after a long period of quitting, my experience of cigarette smoke was that it is the smell of death and addiction. 

When I’ve picked up again, I always hope a little hope when I smoke that first cigarette in a long time. I hope that it induces revulsion like it did when my parents smoked around me as a kid. I hope the experience is terrible.

It never is. 

Just this week, I smoked again after a very successful and very happy 9 months without smoking. I was stressed and waiting for people to get me things I needed in order to do my work – feeling stressed but having to wait is a huge cue to smoke for me. I debated for an hour. Then I sat down and did it. It was like coming home. I loved it. I did it a bunch more times. I did it the next day, when I swore it was just for today. I bought a pack. I smoked and smoked. And now I need to quit again.

If only smoking was like those other behaviors I’ve changed more successfully. Overeating makes me gain weight – that’s an immediate cue to stop. Drinking makes me blacked out and hung over – cue to stop. Meditation makes me calmer and happier – cue to continue. Like climate change, smoking’s worst effects are cumulative and easy to downplay in the moment. If only there were instant negative biofeedback. If my lungs burned – cue to stop. If it gave me chest pains – cue to stop. Hacking cough – cue to stop. But there’s no signal. There’s only the momentary satisfaction of indulging a behavior that’s conditioned me for 25 years: This is rest. This is freedom from stress. This is something I get to do, just for me, in a lifetime full of doing for others.

In my periods of freedom from nicotine addiction, I’ve gotten better at finding the behaviors I need to stay quit. Like with alcohol, I’ve needed subtler and less harmful ways to celebrate, and to relieve stress. I’ve had to find new ways to transition between activities: The meditation break after a meeting, calling a friend after submitting a project, petting the cat between tasks. In a post-COVID/work-from-home world, the social dynamics of meeting people over smokes is thankfully not the issue it used to be for me – it’s been very hard to give up smoking with friends at the office, and having an opportunity to meet other smokers after a support group meeting, and making new friends outside the bar – the very real upside to smoking is that it connects you to people who are part of the tribe. I still haven’t found a consistent way to spend time with my mom, who is a smoker, now that we don’t smoke outside together.

I see advertisements for “The Easy Way to Quit Smoking,” and choke – you mean there’s an easy way? That would have been so much better than the hard way I did quit. I should try that next time. I’d love your comments: Can you see yourself in my story? If you’re a recovering smoker, how have you quit? If you keep picking back up, what makes you do that? If you’ve never been a smoker, what do you think when you see people smoking? Looking for some advice and feedback here, because I really want to stay quit. Help a girl out.