{"id":6143,"date":"2019-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prd-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/?p=6143"},"modified":"2025-05-06T15:43:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T15:43:47","slug":"how-to-quit-smoking-20-easy-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/how-to-quit-smoking-20-easy-years\/","title":{"rendered":"How to quit smoking in 20-ish easy years","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

For World No Tobacco Day<\/a>, we’re sharing a personal account of quitting tobacco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up, I was adamantly against smoking. Although my parents were non-smokers \u2014 a relative rarity in the 1970s \u2014 many of my relatives smoked, including my paternal grandfather, who I was very close to.<\/p>\n

My grandfather\u2019s eventual death from smoking-related cancer when I was 12 only increased my strong dislike of cigarettes, so much so that I never even tried a cigarette when many of my friends were taking up the habit in middle school and high school.<\/p>\n

Flash forward to when I was 21, a recent college graduate sharing a house with five other people, most of whom smoked with varying degrees of regularity. My curiosity got the best of me and I had my first cigarette.<\/p>\n

After that I smoked occasionally until I moved to the Washington, DC, area a few years later with my boyfriend (a smoker) and started working at a small company that was an early adopter of the open office concept.<\/p>\n

For the first two or three months I didn\u2019t have a computer and didn\u2019t always have a lot of work to do. Smoking was a socially acceptable reason to get up and leave the office for 10-15 minutes.<\/p>\n

And so my life as a regular smoker began.<\/p>\n

My boyfriend and I quit smoking in 1998 \u2014 we used patches for a week or two and went cold turkey after that. I stayed smoke-free for several years before taking up the habit again.<\/p>\n

I met my eventual ex-husband in 2003. He was also a smoker and our social circle included many smokers.<\/p>\n

In 2007 I quit again for a few months, until separation and divorce put an end to my non-smoking status. The next 10 years brought new relationships (with smokers), new stresses and a two-hour round-trip commute. There was always a reason it wasn\u2019t a good time to quit.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2017. After a couple of decades of pretty regular smoking, I was finally faced with hard evidence of the effects it was having on my health: consistently high blood pressure readings.<\/p>\n

I knew the time had come to quit. And I knew I couldn\u2019t do it on my own.<\/p>\n

If you smoke, or smoked, you know the real challenge to quitting smoking isn\u2019t beating the physical addiction to nicotine; it\u2019s overcoming the strong connections your brain creates between routine habits and cigarettes. Driving a car? Time for a cigarette. Just finished eating? Time for a cigarette. Having a stressful day at work or home? Time for one cigarette right after another.<\/p>\n

I would need help managing those cravings if I were to have any hope of success.<\/p>\n

My quit-smoking aid of choice was Chantix\u00ae, the brand name of the drug varenicline, a nicotine-free, prescription-only medication. Chantix attaches to the nicotine receptors in the brain so actual nicotine can\u2019t, and is supposed to reduce or eliminate your desire to smoke.<\/p>\n

Chantix has had its share of controversy<\/a> over potential side effects, and studies are mixed on its long-term effectiveness. It certainly may not be the right quit-smoking aid for everyone. But for me, Chantix was very effective.<\/p>\n

I started the 13-week medication cycle in November 2017 (one week to step up to the full dose and then 12 weeks of daily pills). I set a quit date a few weeks into the process and smoked my last cigarette on November 16.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t smoked since.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to talk about the health risks of smoking. Every smoker I ever met already knows what those are (if you don\u2019t for some reason, the American Cancer Society has a handy article<\/a> for you).<\/p>\n

If you are thinking about quitting, I do encourage you to talk to a doctor about what quit-smoking aids might help you become a non-smoker too.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I knew the time had come to quit. And I knew I couldn\u2019t do it on my own.”<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthy-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to quit smoking in 20-ish easy years - MultiCare Vitals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I never even tried a cigarette when many of my friends were taking up the habit in middle school and high school.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/how-to-quit-smoking-20-easy-years\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to quit smoking in 20-ish easy years - 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