The Secret To Quitting Smoking Isn't Actually A Secret At All: How You Can Quit And Stay Quit

"I just took up smoking, and I think I'm doing it wrong," Esquire writer Tom Chiarella told a tobacco company rep over the phone. "Something's not right," he continued. "I don't hold cigarettes right, I don't inhale fully, I don't know how to ash, I never know where to throw the butts. And when you're old, just starting out, no one will teach you. Do you have anyone who can help me learn to smoke?"

This absurd yet intriguing piece of writing, called "Learning to Smoke," follows the adventures of a 46-year old man, a non-smoker up until that point of his life, who was apparently so committed to his job that he was willing to start smoking, become addicted, and quit after one month just to write about it. (His article, linked below, is worth reading, though if you've recently quit smoking, you may want to hold off — Chiarella is most certainly "romancing the cigarette" and will probably make you want to light up.)

Though he might have been engaging in a twisted science experiment in his forties while you probably stood behind the bicycle racks at school in your teens trying to look cool, your first experience with smoking is bound to have a lot in common with Chiarella's.

That is, nobody enjoys their first cigarette.

That is, that first cigarette is much more likely to make you cough, make you feel dizzy, and even make you puke than it is to make you go all "aaaah, that's the good life".

READ Reduced-Nicotine Cigarettes Make Quitting Smoking Easier

None of the 4,000+ chemicals in cigarettes make us feel wonderful the first time we light up. As Tom Chiarella described, we have to learn to smoke. That process is quick, but it's a process. By the end of his month-long adventure, Chiarella certainly went through the same withdrawal symptoms the rest of us do. He accomplished what he set out to: he learned to smoke, became addicted, and then had the dubious privilege of finding out first-hand how much quitting smoking sucks as well.

The Inner Workings Of A Nicotine Addiction: The Hard Facts

How does it work? We now know that nicotine hijacks the brain's reward centers, that it tricks the brain into thinking that it's just as important as the other things that cause dopamine release — existential things like food and sex. That's right, cigarettes trick us into thinking we need them.

If you have been smoking for a while now (whether that is, for you, a few years or a few decades), you might well think that you genuinely enjoy it, but that's the addiction tricking you.

READ You Can Overdose On Nicotine

Not only does smoking mess with your brain's dopamine receptors, you also come to link cigarettes with certain activities you engage in. Smoke when you feel sad? Smoke when you feel happy? Smoke when you're taking a break from work? Smoke after sex? Keep it up for just a little while, and as already seen in the old Pavlovian dogs, your brain will soon start giving you cues. "Work break! Ding, ding, ding! Nicotine please!" And then: "Aaaah...!"

You did as your brain ordered you, got your hit, and your craving is gone. This feeling is what makes us think we enjoy smoking, but if you hadn't started smoking in the first place, you'd never have been subjected to the bad feeling that precedes the "good feeling" smoking gives you.

Smoking neither relieves stress nor makes you feel good. Nothing about that cigarette was good the first time you smoked it. You have simply allowed your body to be tricked by nicotine. All smoking a cigarette does is make you want to smoke more cigarettes. Had you never started, you'd neither have more stress because of not smoking, nor less joy. The good news is, though quitting isn't easy, that if you do stop smoking you can once again be free.

Quitting Smoking: Not Easy, But Simple

If you've ever been interested in quitting smoking before, you've doubtless seen lists like these:

• About 20 minutes after putting out your last cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse return to normal.
• After 12 hours, your carbon monoxide levels will have dropped and your blood oxygen returned to normal.
• After 72 hours, your lung's alveoli are beginning to repair themselves.
• After about two weeks, your risk of heart attack starts dropping.
• Down the line, you'll see your risk of stroke reduce, your cancer risk go down, your blood circulation improve, your smokers' cough go away, and so on.

Such lists are certainly helpful, especially if one of your prime motivations for quitting smoking is health. In order to have a really good shot at quitting, and staying quit forever, though, you need to have a good understanding of how the withdrawal process works as well. After you stop smoking, right as your body is getting to work repairing itself, the reward centers of your brain will scream for nicotine.

Know this though. The first 24 hours are likely to be the toughest. The nicotine levels in your body will go down by nearly 94 percent within the first eight hours, and if you were to get tested for nicotine 72 hours after smoking your last cigarette, your test would come back clear. By that time, 90 percent of nicotine metabolites, the stuff nicotine breaks down into in the body, will be gone as well.

Once you pass that three-day mark, you've all but won the physical battle against your nicotine addiction. Your mental battle, however, may be far from over. Just like alcoholics remain alcoholics even when they quit drinking, ex-smokers can be said to be nicotine addicts (though not smokers) forever. As you have increasing numbers of quit days under your belt, watch out — you may have moments of weakness, or you may trick yourself. In order to stay quit, you'll have to figure out how to handle those moments in advance.

READ Chemicals Responsible For Nicotine Addiction Discovered: Could Smoking Soon Be Universally Obsolete?

Stop Smoking And Stay Quit: How?

The key to a successful quit is no secret. The smoker has to want to quit more than they want to remain a smoker. That's all. A little preparation sure helps though, and as a quitter myself, I advise you to consider these steps:

• Our addicted brains have to trick themselves into thinking smoking isn't that bad for the body, or at least to avoid thinking about the health consequences of smoking. As soon as you are seriously beginning to consider quitting, start reading up on the true damage smoking is doing to your body. Watch creepy stop-smoking ads. Read the stories of people who ended up with lung cancer because of smoking. Allow your conscious brain to become scared of smoking. Very scared.
• Read the experiences of former smokers. Internalize the very true fact that quitting is indeed possible, for everyone, even you.
• Know that though aids such as Chantix and nicotine patches are available, everyone has to go cold turkey in the end. Strongly consider just getting it over with. Set a quit date, and truly commit to it.
• Consider taking that first post-smoking week off work. Fully expect to feel terrible. You're detoxing, you're recovering from a particularly nasty illness. Give yourself permission to commit to nothing but "today, I will not smoke" that first week.
• Think about joining an online community for quitters. Not only will they understand how you feel and give you tips on how to get through your withdrawal, the shame of admitting you've relapsed can stop you from relapsing.

READ To Beat Nicotine Addiction, Cold Turkey Approach Is Best, But Herbal Approach May Be Almost as Good

When you feel a craving, realize that the craving will go away whether you smoke or not. The only difference is that by saying no to cigarettes, you'll soon remain free of that craving, whereas if you smoke, it will be back with a vengeance, again and again. Do whatever you have to to get through those cravings, which, by the way, don't tend to last longer than three minutes. Deep breathing, using a straw to pretend to smoke, sucking a lollipop, or chugging down a nice big glass of water or orange juice, can all help you.

After a week or so, you'll inevitably begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. "Oh, that wasn't so bad! I can do this!" Watch out, here! Challenging times are still ahead. Next time you go to a funeral, or a wedding, or meet an old smoking buddy, or have a stressful time at work, that craving will hit again.

Your brain, still polluted by addict thinking, might well say: "You've done it, you've quit, so now you're able to smoke just the odd one here and there." Don't kid yourself. One cigarette is all the cigarettes. Or, as people in the quit community I joined like to say: "You're one puff away from a pack a day." Just say no.

Not one puff. One cigarette is all the cigarettes. Don't light up, and stay quit. I promise that it will get easier, and soon too, as long as you keep following that rule.