Today, Thursday, November 20th, is the 33rd Great American Smokeout.

Its a great day to quit, too, because its freezing out. Do you really want to don your coat and take the elevator down to the street 6 times today? When its this cold out, the stink sticks to you like glue too. In winter, even us smokers hate being around ourselves.

I’ve smoked since I was 16. That was the legal smoking age in NH 25 years ago, and cigarettes were $.60. We even had a ’smoking area’ just outside of my high school which was always bustling with ‘burnouts’ like me. Here is an actual photo of it I took from my study hall window (which I never studied in):

When I went to college, I decided to quit for good, and it worked – for about 4 years. One night a friend handed me a cigarette while he took a shot at the pool table, and that was the end of that.

I will never forget the feeling the next morning, knowing that I had just ‘broken’ my 4-year streak. It wasn’t just that, but by not smoking for 4 years, ‘not smoking’ had become *easy*. Now it was hard again.

The worst part of that day is that its been difficult for me to be stay quit like that ever since. I think its that I never want to disappoint myself at that level again. Breaking a quit after a few months is much less devastating. See how we smokers rationalize?

Since then, I have smoked much less. Its rarely a year goes by that I don’t stop for 1-4 months, and at most I smoke about 1/2 pack of lights a day. But I always go back.

For me, smoking less is largely helped by all of the restrictions to smoking, the social stigma, and the nicotine patch. There are two parts of quitting smoking – the addiction and the habit. If I can stop smoking cold turkey for 3-4 days, the craving is largely gone. But that is HARD. Its hard on me, and anyone around me.

With the nicotine patch, I can ‘quit’ anytime I want, regardless of what I have ‘coming at me’. I put the patch on and I will usually stop. The patches take longer, but its relatively painless. After 3 days off the patch, its all habit.

But the habit’s the hard part. Because its going to hit you at the worst times – like when you’ve had a bad day and are drinking it up with old friends at a bar like I was that night. For me, alcohol is always involved.

If you were looking for a moral or insightful inspiration in this story there is none.

But I will give you some tips about things I *know* are part of a successful quit:

1. PLAN IT. Pick a date, preferably one where you will not be tempted so much, and prepare for it.

2. Nicotine patches work for me, if you choose them make sure you have ALL the patches you need in your house for the duration – they are expensive and difficult to obtain. DO NOT go off the patch early because you ‘feel ok with it’ – finish the program according to the instructions.

3. Before you go to bed the night before your quit date, set yourself up for success – the next morning will be tough! Set your coffee on auto, lay out your clothes the night before, I even tear open my patch wrapper and leave it sitting on the bathroom sink so I don’t miss it the next morning (ironically patches can be a bitch to open).

4. DESTROY all of your cigarettes and paraphernalia like ashtrays and lighters the night before. DO NOT just ‘put them away’ or ‘throw them on top of the trash’ I used to soak my cigarettes in water before throwing them in the trash – guess what? The microwave will make them smokable again in about 20 secs. How disgusting is that? Rip them apart, throw them in the trash, take out the trash.

5. Avoid going out for dinner, drinks, or parties for a couple weeks. This is critical.

Once you finish your nicotine plan, you are on your own my friend, because that is the rarefied air I have never been able to permanently enjoy.

There are a couple of other things I wanted to mention, and one is a note to congress:

Pass legislation to make buying patches as easy as buying cigarettes!

No, patches are not a panacea for smoking, but they don’t give you lung cancer or emphysema. Currently they are much *harder* to obtain than cigarettes, which is bad.

Want a pack of cigarettes? Just go down the street to the gas station, and they will pull them for you at the counter – you don’t even need to go look for them, they just magically appear for about $9.

Want to quit and need patches? Well, first you have to find a drug store or supermarket. Then you usually have to find an employee to go get the keys to the stupid clear plastic lockbox they put them in. I find that its not unusual for some places, especially supermarkets, to have only ’some’ patches in stock – like ‘just step 1 and 2′, even though step 3 patches are needed by *everyone* who does the program.

Then comes the ring-up. $150 for the program is pretty normal, and the things never go appreciably on sale (except the generics, which I don’t reccommend).

This is usually why I order them online – it insures a decent price, I can avoid the shenanigans, I will get all the steps I need, no excuses.

Patches and gum really need to be just as accessible as cigarettes themselves – every gas station in America.

My second recommendation is to outlaw them already. Cigarettes are poison, we all know that, we don’t sell poison just for legacy or profits. I know alot of people will argue that they will just go black-market, but that is fine – get them out of stores and the battle is half-won.