Quitting smoking for good

Around 80 per cent of smokers want to quit smoking, and many will resolve to do that in the New Year. Smoking costs a fortune, both for the individual, and for the country, and the Government has set 2025 to stamp out the habit for good. Megan Whelan tells her story of quitting. Hopefully for good.

I had my first cigarette aged 10. It was disgusting. I can remember a friend laughing at me as I spluttered and coughed, and then teaching me how to inhale. That was the start of a (so far) lifelong addiction.

The last census shows that I’m now one of a growing number of New Zealanders who have quit. In fact, the number of smokers has dropped by nearly a quarter in the seven years between the two counts. 463,000 adults still smoke, according to the poll, and more than 700,000 of us say we’re “ex-smokers”. I wonder if the other 699,999 think about smoking as often as I do. Which is, basically, at least once a day.

The number of Maori who smoke also fell in the last census. But 2009 research shows the smoking rate for Maori was double that of the non-Maori population, and the rate for Maori women was three times that for non-Maori women. The Cancer Society says smoking is responsible for around 10 per cent of the health disparities between Māori and non-Māori. Tobacco is the single biggest killer of Māori, accounting for a third of all deaths. We all know it’s bad. And yet, most smokers – and ex-smokers – will tell you they love smoking.  

For me, smoking has always been tied up with my idea of glamour. James Dean, 1940’s movie stars and the cool kids I went to boarding school with. We’d sneak out of school to a reserve nearby, and smoke, skipping class and imagining ourselves as being so grown up, so dangerous, smoking in our school uniform smocks.

After university (Holiday Menthols and cheap vodka are my defining memory from first year), I managed to quit for a couple of years, start again, and then quit for about five years. It was quite easy for me to quit. I’d decide I had had enough, not tell anyone for a few days, and then after a week or so of not smoking, announce that I had quit, to the accolades of my friends. But, even though I managed to stop for 10 years, I was never not a smoker.

One study says 75 per cent to 80 per cent of smokers who quit relapse before six months. Another found that if people last two years, about 80 per cent of them manage to kick the habit altogether. Yet another found the rate of relapse after one year is about ten percent. Whatever the stats say, after one year, I am not ready to call myself a non-smoker.

When I started again about five years ago, for the first time I wasn’t just smoking a couple of cigarettes – and ramping it up on the weekend when drinking – anymore. I was smoking close to a packet of cigarettes a day. Smoking, which had always seemed to be a social thing, a thing I liked but was in control of, was an addiction. Oh, how I laughed.

It first occurred to me when I travelled to Kiribati for work. I was stuck in a transit lounge in Nadi for several hours, unable to go outside for the cigarette I was desperate to have – and equally desperate not to admit I needed. Tense and angry, it felt like my heart was racing, and I couldn’t tell if the sweating was the heat, or my desperate craving.

Arriving in Kiribati, after 12 hours of waiting, flying, and queuing, I dumped my bags on the kerb, and lit up, in front of dozens of gathered people. It was the first time I had realised how much cigarettes, which I loved – and still do – were controlling me.

Quitline says most people try to quit for their own health, and the cost. Certainly the $18 or so for a packet of cigarettes is a good reason. And the Health Promotion Agency’s Smokefree website says the tangible costs of smoking to New Zealand in 2005 were around NZ$1.7 billion, or about 1.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. “This includes costs incurred because of lost production due to early death, lost production due to smoking-caused illness, and smoking-related health-care costs.”

I lay there, tense, my fingernails pressing into the palms of my hands. Such was my craving, I had marks on my palms for days.

Everybody knows the health benefits of quitting, and that smoking makes you unattractive. Smoking kills more people in NZ each year than road crashes, alcohol, other drugs, AIDS, suicide, murder, drowning and earthquakes put together. An Australian study found that people currently smoking are three times more likely to die early than people who had never smoked. The Ministry of Health says about 5000 people die each year in New Zealand from smoking or second-hand smoke. Quitting is also one of the hardest things people will ever have to do.

***

More than a year after that awful transit lounge, after trying to cut back numerous times, I decided to quit. This time, instead of quietly sneaking off and keeping my bad mood to myself, I tweeted that I was going to quit that day. (Last January, Quitline helped about 7000 people via its phone and online services.)

Walking home, after working early in the morning and having lunch with friends, I wanted a cigarette. Badly. But I told myself that it was just because I was walking home, and I always smoked doing that. This was psychological, not physical. This would be easy.

Two hours later I woke up after a nap. I was hot, and my skin was itchy. So itchy, in fact, that I lay in bed trying to stop myself clawing at it. I wanted to climb the walls, I could visualise digging my fingernails into something, and in the end lay there, tense, my fingernails pressing into the palms of my hands. Such was my craving, I had marks on my palms for days. I drank a litre of water, and sat outside, contemplating whether I really wanted to do this. Whether I could do this.

It was at that moment I realised just how much trouble I was in – I hadn’t really planned this whole “quitting” thing, I had just decided to do it. I had no gum, no patches, no drugs. Just sheer willpower, and the thought of letting down the people who had already told me they were proud of me. (In fact, Quitline says, only 4 percent of people who “go it alone” will successfully quit. Yes, I do feel a little smug about this.)

I was horrible to be around. Short-tempered, picking fights, whiny.  I trolled Twitter, looking for people to have arguments with, because anger stopped me thinking about smoking.

The first time I went out drinking was hard. I hadn’t realised how often I used smoking as an excuse to get up and take five minutes away from people and noise. And that hourly walk outside for a smoke was a really good way to gauge my drunkenness.

That first three or four days were one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but it did get easier. After a few days, I could go whole hours without thinking about smoking. I could see strangers smoking and not want to French kiss them to get at their second-hand smoke. My hands stopped feeling strange not holding something, and I went back to my normal – only slightly less irritable – self.

***

Twelve months on, I’ve had a couple of cigars in that time – which totally doesn’t count. (Mostly, because they didn’t make me start smoking again.) I have an emergency cigarette in the house, which I have managed not to smoke. I still feel like at any moment, I could start again.

Not a day has gone past that I haven’t thought at least once about smoking. I can still imagine the feeling of the first drag on a cigarette, as the smoke filled my lungs. There are few things I loved more than sitting on my front step, drinking strong black coffee and having my first cigarette of the day.

I know all the reasons not to do it. I know that feeling of the first drag was accompanied with a horrible taste, and a nauseated feeling. I know that it smells, is anti-social, expensive and most importantly, is horrible for my health.

I’ve made it a year (or I will have tomorrow), which is a good start, but I’m not nearly ready to call myself a non-smoker yet. I’m a smoker who doesn’t smoke. And some days, the only thing that has stopped me is remembering that first day I quit, and never wanting to feel like that again.  

(Cover image by Flickr user Raul Lieberwirth)