How to Fight the War against Nicotine Addiction

After smoking cigarettes for 7 years since I was 20, average one pack per day, I quit smoking when I was 27, and stayed quit for nearly 2 years ever since. I am confident that I won’t smoke another one in my life again. I feel pressed to share with you some of my understanding in fight the demon – nicotine addiction.

Quit smoking is not easy. But it is definitely achievable if you really work hard. Quit smoking is warfare against nicotine addiction that entails careful preparation and merciless execution. This is a war worth fighting. Your reward is your freedom; you will be no longer dependent on nicotine.

I do not want to bore you and tire you with long lists of tips about quitting, but I do like to point out two essential things that you must understand if you want to achieve your goal.

1. You need to know your enemy to beat it.
2. You need strategy and action plan to fight it.

Let me explain a little bit about the two points. You must realize quitting smoking is a serious war and should be taken seriously. You enemy nicotine addiction has got its own fighting style. In other words, you need to know clearly what symptoms would strike you in what phase of quitting. Nicotine craving attacks hard, especially at the beginning. And you need to know before hand how hard it would be, and how long it would last. And, accordingly, you should figure out a set of coping strategy and action plans.

To fully understand the two points mentioned above, you can do your own research, and do the preparations work by reading up on authoritative materials you can get your hands on. They are easy to find. Just type in “quit smoking” in Google.

My own secret of quitting smoking, and staying quit, is that I figured out the Dynamics, or Patterns, of human warfare against nicotine addiction. I believe that understanding these Dynamics would help you win the war and stay quit.

Let me put the Dynamics in an analogy. To fight the war against nicotine addiction is like pushing a huge round rock up a hill.

Dynamics of human war against nicotine addiction

1. It won’t be easy. You need work hard to push that damn thing up hill.
2. It will come to an end point that you can declare victory. That’s when you finally pushed the rock up the hill, and ever since the rock can roll on by itself downhill (approximately one year later).
3. The road ahead of you, the ratio of slop is not fixed. It is steepest in the beginning and become less steep later on. That means the hardest part is the first 2 weeks, and you do not get intimidated by the hardness, it will be better. Gradually, after 6 months, the road is near even, and it does not take a lot of effort to keep moving.
4. Once started, you’d better keep pushing it and moving till the hill top. If you give up midway, the rock will roll back down to the beginning point. You lose the momentum, you waste your effort, and you have to start all over again. Similarly, if you give up and smoke again, your enemy nicotine addiction will gain back its strength very quick. If you just slipped and smoke one or two cigarettes, that does not cost your entire ascendency, but just image you lost several days’ work with that rock.

Tags: addiction, nicotine, quit smoking