Steve White.net

I recently (technically speaking it was August 7 at almost midnight) quit smoking and I’ve been meaning to put some words in print about the experience.

It was the easiest thing ever to quit, thanks to a book called The Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr. After over 20 years of smoking I literally turned it off overnight (actually, the time zone is sort of fuzzy since I was on a flight around the world at the time) without any pain or cravings whatsoever.

Now that I mention it out loud it’s kind of embarrassing to have been hooked on nicotine for so long. I suppose that’s a good thing; perhaps the shame of it will keep me off the juice for good. But generally I consider myself to be a strong person — I can make up my mind to accomplish something and succeed. And so I am amazed that I put off dealing with my cigarette problem for so long.

Wanna know what the problem with smoking was, for me? It was traveling. I enjoy flying around the world and doing things, but cigarettes make the process excruciatingly painful.

First, getting on an airplane for 12 hours to get to the other side of the planet is bad enough. You have to quit smoking every time you go anywhere. Even a simple trip to the other side of the country is torture, considering airport security. During a layover, you have to go outside security to have a cigarette and then get back through security when you are finished.

Worse than that is the fact that American cigarettes, sadly, are the best in the world by far. There is no country on earth with tobacco as fine as American tobacco. If you run out of smokes when you are on the other side of the planet, it’s actually worth it to fly 12 hours back just to buy a few new cartons. Having someone ship American cigarettes to you overseas is almost impossible considering every country taxes tobacco and they don’t want the competition. As a result it’s very difficult to get tobacco through customs.

Most countries allow you to bring two cartons with you (that’d be 400 cigarettes, enough to last the average smoker 2-3 weeks) when you arrive, for personal use only. However, it doesn’t matter how long you are planning to stay. If you will be in that country for two months, you don’t get to bring extra smokes with you. If you are staying for two months, you’ll need to switch to a locally-available brand when you run out of the good stuff. Or an “international” version of a USA brand (for example, they sell Marlboro brand cigarettes all around the world.) It’s just more torture. The international versions of USA brands taste like the floor of a NYC taxi. Well, even more so than the USA version, I suppose. It all depends on your perspective… Now that I’ve quit, I imagine they would all taste that way to me.

So, to be perfectly honest, that’s why I quit smoking. I was planning a trip to the Philippines for a few months, and quitting smoking was actually the easiest, least painful thing I could do for the trip. Either I quit smoking or I would have several months of cravings and irritability. I officially quit before the trip and haven’t looked back.