Substitution - The Key To Quit Smoking

I literally tried to quit smoking more that 100 times. So, it's really hard for me to remember any one particular time. I do remember many of the tricks I tried to help myself. I would empty my pockets of anything to do with smoking. I would take all of the cigarettes out of my pockets; I would leave my matches and cigarette lighters at home. I would empty my car, clean my desk of anything "tobacco", and hide all of the ashtrays.

Once cleansed, I would grub cigarettes from anyone who would talk to me.

I also tried to make it more difficult to smoke by putting barriers in my way. I tried smoking a pipe. I had always heard that it made you look 'sophisticated'. No one told me they stink. But I tried it anyway and I can remember my anxiety of always longing for a puff while I tried to fill the pipe's bowl with tobacco. I tried rolling my own but they looked too much like marijuana refers and I was too embarrassed to be seen with one. Also, I didn't want to get arrested.

Anyway, roll-your-own's were just like the pipes, dirty and cumbersome. With the pipes and the roll your own cigarettes, you had to carry a bag of tobacco, pipe cleaners and reamers, and cigarette papers. The tobacco was always in my pockets.

The only good result that came from smoking a pipe was that whenever I cleaned my pipe, I could actually see all of the ugly watery-brown crap and tars that I was ingesting into my lungs.

So, I tried smoking cigars and chewing tobacco to cut down on the tobacco smoke and the nicotine I was breathing into my lungs everyday. The only thing I can say about these two options is that each one was worse than the other. At one time, I even tried to grow a handlebar mustache in a vain attempt to create a personal fire hazard that would scare me away from smoking. It didn't work. And, it was too much trouble grooming the mustache.

The only thing that really worked for me was 'substitution'. This was a simple system.

• It was painless.
• It cost nothing.
• It really worked.

Since I started using substitution, I haven't smoked anything for the last 35 years. Here is how I did it…

I noticed that if I felt I wanted to smoke a cigarette, and I happened to be doing something else at the moment, such as dictating a letter to my secretary, I would put the urge off until I was finished with my letter. Then I would light up. But, sometimes I just forgot about the urge to ssmoke, and…, I would not smoke that particular cigarette.

At that time I was working in New York City and if I needed to travel anywhere I would have to take a bus or a subway to get there. It was, and still is, illegal to smoke on any city bus or on the subways so if I felt I wanted a smoke, too bad. I would just have to wait until I got off of the bus or train. And sometimes, the urge would have passed by the time I got where I was going and I would forget to smoke that cigarette, too.

I don't know how I stumbled upon the pattern but I thought if I could repeat these instances, or similar scenarios each time I wanted to light up a cigarette, I could probably cut my smoking in half. Just by putting off acting upon the urge to smoke, even if only for a few minutes, by doing something else, by distracting myself from the urge, or by concentrating more fully on what I was doing at the time, I was substituting some other activity for the urge to smoke.

It was difficult at first but as I practiced this new no smoking technique I found I was able to put off smoking each new cigarette for more and more minutes at a time. My time between cigarettes began to increase and as these minutes increased they turned to hours, then days.

In a matter of a few weeks I had quit smoking. Just by substituting. By doing something else, something simple, instead of lighting up that next cigarette.

• Some suggestions to help you substitute:
• Make a phone call to a friend or neighbor
• Write a letter
• Wash your face and hands
• Take a walk, get some fresh air
• Drink a glass of water (no alcohol)
• Chew gum or have a piece of candy
• Read a book
• Walk your dog
• Work at your hoby
• Get a hobby
• Watch TV
• Listen to the radio
• Take a nap
• Go to bed
• Do anything but reach for a cigarette

For those of you who really can not stop smoking and none of the above suggestions work, try this: Sit down on the edge of your chair, bend over as far as you can, kiss your cigarette butt goodbye! (Just kidding : )

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