A More Sustainable Approach To Quitting Smoking

For those of us who weren’t persuaded by “The Easy Way”

Image by Midjourney

Introduction

(Looking for the TL;DR? Scroll down for the theory and the approach if you‘re not interested in the backstory)

Once upon a time, an impressionable sixteen year-old me accepted a peer-pressure cancer-stick from a close friend in a dark and smoky corner of a pool bar, and coughed and spluttered his way into a decade of chain smoking extra-strength wallet drainers.

I believe that a big part of the attraction — in addition to how “cool” cigarettes ostensibly make one — was that my father was a notoriously obnoxious ex-smoker who had been on my (and everyone else’s) case about smoking since as long as I could remember.

There’s nothing quite like a teenage rebellion that only hurts oneself. A couple of years later, that friend and I attempted to put ourselves off by smoking an entire pack of cigarettes each, all at once; ultimately, all that led to was an increase our average consumption…