Although everyone agrees that quitting smoking is the healthiest and most sensible thing to do, we suggest answering the questions: What do you lose if you quit smoking? What did it give you? Why are you quitting?
It seems strange, but understanding, legitimising, and being compassionate towards the part of you that wants to smoke can help you quit. That’s why we ask you: What was the initial motivation for starting to smoke?
We can distinguish between the motivation to connect: with other people, with sensations, with pleasure, with reward, with a more attractive side of yourself; and the motivation to disconnect: from your surroundings, from a task, from stress, from emotional discomfort, from suffering, from family, or from work.
When disconnection is pursued, people often want to create their own space through the cigarette.
It may also be that you are trying to fill a void. Consuming means filling, acquiring, and that is why people often consume to mitigate an internal feeling of lack, of emptiness. Or, you may start smoking to seem more interesting or more adult, or to rebel.
As you can see, there can be different motivations behind smoking, and they can be very personal and subjective.
If you feel that you are still undecided about whether to start abstinence or not, we recommend that you do a balance sheet, in which you note down, in a table of 4 cells, the benefits you feel you gain from smoking (1.) and from being abstinent (2.), and the disadvantages you associate with smoking (3.) and with abstinence (4.). This exercise can help you clarify the relationship you have with tobacco, make a decision, and look for alternatives to obtain the benefits you feel tobacco gives you.
In weighing up the reasons in favour of smoking and the reasons to quit, you must make sure that the reasons to quit carry more weight, and that they are your own reasons, not someone else’s. If you don’t feel that way, perhaps you are in an earlier phase, and you should give that balance more space and time.
You can also begin to distinguish the motivations behind the different cigarettes you smoke over the course of a week, since not all cigarettes are smoked for the same reasons: because your body craves it, as an automatism or habit, to hold up discomfort, as a reward, rest or treat, or as a little space for yourself, to break out of your routine, to seem older…
However, when there is an addiction, it often happens that the motivation becomes detached from the consumption. That means it is no longer necessary for the motivation that was present at the start of smoking (connection, disconnection, filling a void, seeming older...) to appear for that consumption to occur, as it is repeated without the need for motivation.
If you feel that your balance tips towards abstinence, it is important for you to know that, sometimes, a feeling of loss and grief is experienced when you quit smoking. Grief is a psychological and emotional experience that responds to a situation lived as a loss, and each person can experience it in a different way. It may seem contradictory, because in reality you want to remove tobacco from your life, but let’s remember that this means there is a part of you that feels tobacco gave it something, and it’s OK to listen to that part too, instead of denying it.
To move through grief, it is advisable to remember what you were looking for in tobacco, how and when it entered your life, whether there is anything good it brought you, whether there are anecdotes or curious situations in which you remember yourself with a cigarette in your hand; but also to think about why you want to distance yourself from it.
Part of this process is expressing the associated emotions, which can be of any kind: sadness, because of the loss; fear, about what is to come; anger, because of the consequences suffered, etc.
To move forward through grief, you need to allow that psychological experience, not just punish and demonise your “smoking self”. Allowing the feelings involved in these phases will make it easier for you to move through and integrate them, and finally, move forward. On the other hand, inhibiting this content can promote stagnation or setbacks.
In that sense, farewell rituals as a form of emotional digestion are a good predictor of the success of the process. With them you can psychologically anchor the transition to the new phase of your life, and influence the psychological background of dependence.
There is qualitative research indicating that, if grief is worked through, allowed, and made explicit through a farewell letter to tobacco, commitment to abstinence and its good prognosis increase (more information in the chapter “Quit Day”). It is even suggested that the letter be shared aloud with other people in your circle or who are going through the same process. This is a symbolic exercise, and each person can think of other farewell rituals that feel comfortable.
It may seem strange that we give so much space to saying goodbye, if, in reality, what is desired is to get away from cigarettes as soon as possible. It is also true that there are people who do not feel that loss or grief, and who can skip this part.
The justification for these proposals lies in the fact that the person–tobacco relationship, especially if it has been prolonged, can become a complex relationship. In some respects it can be similar to the relationship you may have with other people, and built on the basis of subjective ingredients that can be addressed, if that helps you in your aim.
As for the reasons why you are quitting, we ask you: why now and not before?
You surely have very clear reasons to quit smoking: the health benefits, financial benefits, relationships, etc.
But you have chosen this precise moment and it can be useful to know why, given that it will connect you with your personal motivation. And as we have already seen, to overcome an addiction you have to be an active part of the change.