It's All in Your Head

Dear Smoker,

I have been in your shoes. No matter if it’s your first quit, your third, or your seventeenth. Yep, I’ve quit that many times, and more.

I have traveled a 35-year journey from addiction to cigarettes to recovery, though not in the conventional sense of being completely nicotine-free. I continue to use NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) and have made peace with that imperfection. My success is that I don’t smoke.

I smoked my first cigarette when I was eleven years old. Throughout my adult life, I tried dozens of times to cut back or quit, but long-term success seemed impossible. My moods would plummet so low without nicotine, I would question whether a smoke-free life was worth living. The daily misery of not smoking was unbearable, even after not smoking for more than 6 months at one point.

By the time I reached my forties and still smoked, mostly in secret, I believed something in me was broken because I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to need cigarettes. They were shortening my life, and also ruining it: the mental anguish of knowing I had to quit for my long-term health, but not being able to stop had become a daily agony. I knew better, but I couldn’t seem to do better. Why was this so hard?

When I finally stopped smoking for good, I made four attempts over a period of four years. In the first year, I returned to smoking when I lost a dear loved one to suicide. The next time, it was a period of scary financial struggles. Then, an unexpected and painful dental procedure. Extreme stress will produce powerful cravings for anything that provides relief. And life is stressful, so the obstacles to staying smoke-free felt relentless. I was still making the mistake of seeing smoking as my only reliable source of relief. My own sense of weakness and failure kept growing.

And yet, I did not quit quitting.

We don’t fully understand everything about addiction and why some people seem to have a harder time quitting than others. But I’m here to tell you that if I can do it, anyone can.

In hindsight, I can see that each attempt got me closer to success. I was building experiential wisdom from my failures. After decades of trial and error, quitting my own way, using a combination of knowing why I wanted to quit, making a public commitment to being smoke free, changing my environment to remove triggers, support and accountability in the form of group therapy, managing my emotions with meditation, and changing my identity to that of a non-smoker—along with using nicotine replacement therapy with no deadline to stop, took me from being a lifelong smoker who felt hopeless about my addiction to having the amazing freedom of knowing that I am now forever a non-smoker.

I have not smoked since 2016. I no longer have any desire at all to smoke, in spite of high stress situations like caring for a parent with dementia. I also continue to use nicotine replacement therapeutically in the form of four to five 2 mg mini lozenges each day. For me, the pros of long-term NRT outweigh the cons. I have made peace with my imperfection and consider myself a successful non-smoker. I am not a guru, nor a licensed therapist. I don’t have a psychology degree. I don’t have all the answers.

I’m also not condoning or recommending any form of NRT for anyone else. But I felt some vindication when I heard this professional perspective on long term NRT from Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation and head of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford in an episode of This American Life called “I Can’t Quit You Baby”

“So, yeah, so we used to use nicotine replacement therapy just to help people quit. But more and more, we’re now using them in the maintenance phase, where people are just using them for years to decades. And again, the thinking there is that wow, the ideal is that with sustained abstinence, your brain would heal and you would return to whatever your pre smoking baseline was.

But in reality, what we see is that some people don’t get to that place, and that they may need some form of nicotine to feel and function OK, going forward, indefinitely.”

Whether or not you use NRT at all, the message I have for you is that quitting smoking is absolutely possible. It may not be easy. Though for a fortunate few, it will be so smooth, you’ll wish you had done it sooner. However, it is simple.

If you want to be a non-smoker, you must not smoke again. Ever.

If, like me, you need all the help you can get while you figure out how to do this, I'm here as an empathetic guide—with structure and support at nonsmokerforgood.com and at my social accounts (follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or Substack!) as you embark on your own journey to a smoke free destination where you can stay quit for good.

On Belief

Powerful Secret 1: How you perceive your reality can literally change your experience of it.

One of the reasons for my long struggle for freedom from cigarettes was the way I viewed the problem. Quitting smoking was framed as giving something up, something that I loved, in spite of how terrible it was for me. Whatever your experience with cigarettes or vaping has been, I believe you. More importantly, you also believe you. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between a story and the truth. In many cases, your story becomes your reality.

And so, everything you are telling yourself about quitting is true, and will reinforce itself as you go along.

Do you believe you love cigarettes?

Do you believe you have to quit, but don’t want to?

Do you wish you could keep smoking forever?

These beliefs will force you into an epic struggle between your addiction and your desire to be smoke-free, making quitting much harder.

I used to believe I loved smoking. I thought it gave me something I couldn’t get any other way. It was a unique combination of euphoria, energy, relaxation, and focus. I still remember stepping onto my back porch in the early mornings, steam rising from my coffee, blinking in the first light, and listening to the birds as I lit my first cigarette of the day, my favorite. But this nostalgic reverie leaves out all the ugly parts. Hot smoke burned my throat as thousands of chemicals entered my bloodstream. The longer I smoked, the more my memory of what a cigarette would do for me always seemed better than the reality. Each cigarette I lit set me up to need another. From that perspective, it was a prison. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever escape. But I did. So can you.

If you’re looking for a way to change your beliefs about smoking and begin to see it for the addictive ball and chain it really is, try reading Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Quit Smoking Without Willpower or William Porter’s Nicotine Explained (these are affiliate links; I will earn a commission if you choose to buy from these URLs). 

Powerful Secret 2: Smoking is doing something for you besides giving you a nicotine fix.

Get yourself a pocket journal. Next time you light up, write down what you think you’re getting from that cigarette. You might find answers like a break, me time, relaxation, a dopamine fix, or a time-out from anger. Now that you know what those needs are, you can experiment with other ways to meet them.

It takes time and practice to become your new non-smoking self. And there are a few things that will make this process easier

1. Know your most powerful reason for quitting
2. Make a public commitment
3. Change your environment to minimize triggers
4. Put together an emergency kit of non-smoking support
5. Rebuild your identity to become a non-smoker

Your Powerful Reason for Quitting

You have to want to become the new you more than you wish to remain the old you. So you’ll want to get very clear about your number one reason for becoming a non-smoker. This is the “why” that will motivate you through the hard times when you want to give up.

Motivation can come in the form of a positive reward or a fear-based avoidance. In my experience, positive motivation makes you feel a little bit lighter because it pulls you toward a better future, but pick whichever works for you. Sometimes, fear is a great motivator.

Examples of positive motivation: “I’m going to use the money I save by not buying cigarettes to pay for an active family vacation to Disney World with my grandkids,” or “I am going to run a half-marathon next year.”

Example of avoidance motivation: “I don’t want to die gasping for oxygen like my mom, uncle, or friend did.” For me, it was my dear Uncle Randy. In fact, I dedicated my book to him. 

Write down your powerful reason. It needs to be specific, and it can’t be trivial. Post it somewhere that you will see it every day. Say it out loud as often as you can.

Make a Public Commitment

It doesn’t matter if you’re ready. You’ll never feel ready, because your brain wants to know how this endeavor will go before it decides that you are ready and there’s no way to know how it will go until you do it. Doing things outside of your comfort zone equals growth. Also, they’re hard and scary, and you might need a push in the form of a deadline.

If you’re trying to do something difficult, something that part of you doesn’t even want to do, you need to commit and set a date. Otherwise, you’ll be eternally stuck in the “I’m not ready yet” loop.

Sample commitment: “I, (your full name), am fully committed to quitting smoking on Month, Day, Year so that (insert your powerful reason for quitting).”

You must publicize this date with someone whose opinions matter to you, both to hold yourself accountable and, ideally, to add them to your support network. Find at least one person to share it with. If you feel like you have no one to confide in, share it on the Reddit Stop Smoking forum. Now hang your written commitment somewhere that you can see it every day.

Congratulations, you have already started the process of quitting!

Forget Willpower, Change Your Environment

Picture yourself starting a diet. You want to limit your calorie intake to less than what you burn. It is a restriction from what you were doing before, so it is a challenge. Here are some things that are going to make it even harder to stick to your new diet:

• Stocking up on snack chips, candy, and ice cream
• Drinking alcohol before dinner
• Eating with people who are not watching what they eat
• Sitting down to watch The Great British Baking Show when you are hungry

Willpower only works when your reasons for exerting it are bigger than your desire to smoke. But it depletes over time. Environment beats will over time, every time.

Your environment consists of people, places, and props. These include who you smoke with, where you smoke, your house, your porch, your car, and what you smoke with, your favorite lighter or ashtray.

When editing your environment, it is helpful to understand something about habits, both quitting and replacing them. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares four laws for behavior change that follow the stages of a habit, cue, craving, response, reward. To break a habit, make the cue invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, and make it unsatisfying.

Take a few minutes to write down all the people, places, and props that you associate with smoking. Then choose which ones you will change. You might detail your car, take a thirty-day break from alcohol, or not see a certain group of friends for a few weeks after your quit date.

Pack an Emergency Kit of Support

Who and what will help you stay the course You would never go on a difficult journey without an emergency kit or at the very least a spare tire. Your quit-smoking journey will have bumps. Plan now so a tough day does not turn into a relapse.

• Meditation and mindfulness
• Quit smoking apps

• Read “Quit Lit” and self-development books (like Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Quit Smoking Without Willpower,Atomic Habits, by James Clear, or William Porter’sNicotine Explained).

• Journaling
• Replacement habits, water, gum, fruit or candy, a short game, call a friend, a quick walk, pushups
• Prescription support like Chantix
• NRT, patches, gum, inhalers, lozenges
• A person you will call or text if you are struggling or had a slip

Figure out what you think you will need to succeed. You will need people. Any smoking friends or family you might have are not those people. Line up a trusted non-smoking friend, a close family member, a support group, or an addiction therapist. Add tools like mindfulness, a quit app, or online forums.

How to Rebuild Your Identity

Never smoking again might sound really hard right now, but it gets much easier once you change your identity to a non-smoker instead of someone who is trying to quit. You are going to become someone who does not smoke, no matter what. How do you change your identity?

I am sure you have heard the saying, “Fake it till you make it.” It works. Our brains are easily tricked. Journaling, mantras, and visualization help you train your brain to become the brain of a non-smoker.

“If I smoked, I would have a cigarette right now. But I don’t. So what am I gonna do instead?”

Have a prepared list of options, water, gum, a piece of candy, phone a friend, visit a quit forum, ten deep breaths through a straw, a five minute meditation. I repeated that mantra thousands of times in the year I quit for good, 2016. Every time I said it, I did not smoke. It cut off the dialogue about buying a pack or how miserable I would be if I did not give in. Instead of struggling with desire, I told myself over and over that I don’t smoke. Over time, I became a non smoker who would not dream of lighting up.

Changing your identity is critical because it changes your relationship to your addiction. Instead of constantly fighting desire, you are simply a person who does not use that thing anymore. There is no negotiating.

Congratulations on making the decision to quit. The benefits start immediately. Do not worry about being perfect. Use all the support and help you can get. You are on your way to becoming someone who does not smoke.

I believe you can do this. Do you?

This content was excerpted from my book, Quit Smoking for Good: From Hopeless Smoker to Healthy Non-Smoker in Five Simple Steps.

This piece was originally published in A Newsletter for Quitters on Substack on August 10, 2025. Read the original post here.