Everyone Loves A Quitter

Nick Williamson loved smoking but not enough to form a long-term relationship with it. Now single, he finds he has more space to breathe.

I’m not going to lie. Straight off the bat I want to say that I loved smoking, I miss it nearly every day. As soon as I see a friend light up one of those hellish little cancer demons I feel like grabbing it from their lips and legging it, coughing and spluttering all the way home, or at least until I run out of breath.

I was 13 when I had my first cigarette, it was horrible, I didn’t finish it and it made my knees weak and my head spin. Why would I try it again? Simple, it’s cool. Or at least some people consider it to be. All the older kids I knew did it and a lot of my friends were just starting – why would I want to be the one who got left out, to leave myself open to segregation? Peer pressure was my downfall to seven years of smoking and rollies were my death stick of choice, unfiltered, fresh-smelling and cheap. The art of rolling a cigarette became part of my smoking experience, I had it down to a record speed with my technique. Rolling is like riding a bike, you never forget.

The first time I tried my hand at quitting was in college. I went through the NHS quit line and got set up on prescription nicotine patches. You put them on every morning and ten minutes later your arm starts to feel weak from the nicotine being pumped into your system. The patch itches for about an hour, but after the initial annoyances it begins to work, your cravings actually feel reduced and apart from the slight fishy smell the patch has to offer, everything’s fine.

Right up until you see a friend smoke.

Suddenly your mind flips and you start to rationalise smoking: ‘Why am I quitting now, I can afford it, I’ll quit when someone else does’ or ‘I feel fine, I’ll quit next time I’m ill.’ First mistake: Willpower is the only thing that you can rely on to quit smoking. Patches, gum, inhalers, these are all crutches that people put too much emphasis on. Quitting is hard, and you will only quit if you actually want to, fact. That’s the reason so many people don’t, they think that one day there will be a magic cure, a pill or injection which takes away the addiction. And if this doesn’t happen, they will all smoke themselves to the grave.

Nine months ago I finally made the conscious effort to quit cold turkey. I was on 30 cigarettes a day and was starting to experience breathing problems. I was working as a labourer and smoking was all around me. When I started coughing and wheezing a lot, I became paranoid that something was going wrong inside me. I had X-rays and heart scans which luckily came back negative, but the realisation that I could be the one who gets cancer hit me hard. I saw it as an early warning sign, to get out while I was still breathing on my own.

It’s been a hard process, the first two weeks being the worst. I had never realised how many parts of my life involved smoking. Walking to the shops, after a meal, meeting a mate. Worst of all, though, was going to the pub. The smoking ban turned all the non-smokers in our group from righteous complainers about their health, to coat-watching table guardians. It also managed to encourage chain-smoking outside. As a result of that, we ex-smokers have been caught between a smelly and a lonely place. The ban itself was a good idea – my choice to smoke (and it is a choice) shouldn’t be imposed on other people’s freedom to breathe fresh air and not smell like an ashtray.

Putting aside having to look after coats, I’m glad I’ve quit. My skin looks cleaner, I don’t cough all the time and my lungs feel lighter. My mind is more focused on keeping my body healthy, and that mindset has also been transferred to my diet and exercise routine. I’m no longer hung up on what might be going wrong inside me. I’m more focused on having fun while I’m healthy.

I will always be addicted to nicotine, it’s something that all ex-smokers have to deal with. I will forever walk into corner shops and mouth ‘I love you’ under my breath to the back shelf of death. But that’s what happens when you smoke. So don’t start.

• Smoking kills 50% of its long-term users. Which means if Nick had carried on smoking there would have been a very strong chance that it would have killed him.
• Smokers experience breathing problems because smoking causes their airways to become swollen, narrow, and filled with sticky mucus.
  Yuck! This explains why Nick suffered from wheezing.
• Smoking causes 90% of lung cancers.
• Smoking addiction is not just physical but also psychological, meaning people trying to stop smoking with the aid of a nicotine patch will still crave, or like Nick, mutter sweet nothings to packets of ciggies.
• Cigarettes contain over 4000 chemicals, of which at least 60 cause cancer.
• All forms of tobacco are harmful to your health be they rollies, tailor made, chewable or shisha – there are no ‘healthy’ cigarettes!
• Smoking restricts blood vessels, it reduces the amount of blood flowing to the skin, depleting the skin of oxygen and essential nutrients. Skin damaged by smoke can make you look between ten and 20 years older! Quitting the fags has helped Nick restore his youthful glow.
• 24 hours after quitting carbon monoxide is eliminated from the body and the lungs start to clear out the build up of tar.
• Three to nine months after quitting coughs, wheezing and breathing problems improve as the lungs have room for up to 10% more oxygen.
• One year after quitting the risk of a heart attack is halved.
• A nicotine patch helps reduce cravings by replacing the nicotine in your system.  Unfortunately though, like Nick you might find that you smell a bit fishy and start itching like a dog.
• Luckily for Nick, by quitting before he reached 35, smoking will not have effected his life expectancy.

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