If I'm going to kick the habit, I need to fear my cigarettes
by Sam Higgins
The cessation classes are a good thing, and when I say that, I mean they aren’t a bad thing. That is really a generous way of me saying the smoking cessation classes are a thing.
I’m still not entirely sure, going in, what I expected of these classes. Their obvious goal was to get people to quit smoking, but the woman running the program doesn’t seem to know much about addiction. She knows about proper health, which includes not smoking, but she can’t empathize with our plight.
I want to make it very clear that the classes didn’t fail me. I failed me. It’s my responsibility to take care of myself and care enough about my own well-being not to smoke.
I will say I have significantly reduced the number of cigarettes I smoke, but I still smoke nonetheless. I attribute my smoking less not to the classes, but to the damn beautiful weather we’ve been having lately.
Something about the heat and sunlight. The sun highlights the distaste and the stale tobacco smell in a way that seems to defy the optimistic and clean atmosphere around me. God, I hate that flamboyant yellow bastard in the sky.
Looking back on the experience, I realize the classes failed to introduce the key element of fear. Fear gets difficult things done. Fear makes a man run a great distance at an inconceivable pace or lift a heavy object to save a life. Fear is what gets people to vote for or against a certain political candidate, find a ride home from the bar, practice safe sex and join the National Rifle Association. Without fear, there would be no shelter.Smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death. Smoking costs the country billions of dollars. So why did the classes frame the issue of sweet, deadly tobacco use in terms of the positives of quitting rather than the negatives of continuing? What am I really supposed to take away from four one-hour classes where three to four people, one of them being the counselor, talk about their feelings of frustration?
The classes weren’t aggressive or inspiring. The program kindly and detachedly let you know that smoking is something you should not do, that it’s going to be difficult and that withdrawal symptoms will last about two weeks. It offered a few good methods for relaxation and words of encouragement and not much else.
The only reason people will quit smoking is because they are afraid. Because they embrace the fear and let it facilitate a healthy change.
In order to quit the thing I like so much, I need to be afraid of it, and I need to change the way I view the world. I have to see myself as someone who doesn’t smoke and is happy. I need to exist in the moment and get out of my head. I need to quit caring so much about the security smoking provides. I need to think of myself as someone who doesn’t smoke and not someone who is trying to quit.
I know I will quit if I ever desire to become a complete and self-actualized person. I just need to embrace a healthy amount of fear in my life and focus on the moment.
The withdrawal is fleeting, I just have to let it go and stop caring about the cigarette. The longer I go without one, the harder and harder it is to go back.
