Smoking Cessation: A Bumpy Ride To Life 2.0

The Prelude

It was one of the dry summer days during my first year in college, that I suddenly started to feel obsessed with dark lips. It didn’t matter whose or where, I just fell in love with dark lips. The thought of dark lips felt so intoxicating that I thought what if my own slightly pinkish lips turn blackish.

No, I didn’t have any plans to gloss my lips with any cosmetics, but I was just mad about dark lips to the point that I knew I could fall in love with someone who had dark chocolate-like lips. Then, by the evening I was at the campus telephone booth to make a long distance call to my mother, where I saw a skinny senior guy who was surely a serious smoker and had really dark lips. I was attracted, but don’t let your wild imaginations fly high here 😛; I am mostly attracted to beautiful alpha women ,

but somehow I just got attracted to the idea of dark lips. Should I blame my ‘forever’ love of 90% dark chocolate? May be, not!

Well, that’s when the bad idea got into my head that if I start smoking then soon my lips will also blacken.

How I got into smoking addiction

The very next day, while waiting at the railway station for a weekend visit to my then home, I purchased and smoked my first cigarette. It was not so cool to begin with as I had coughed a little bit and felt slightly dizzy in my head. But felt a bit more energetic minutes later, that’s it.

Didn’t know at that moment that I would be soon addicted and that it will be a horrific ride into the maze of dependency which will stifle my personal freedom for the next two decades.

I told myself that I will smoke only few times a day, but I was on the path of self-sabotaging my own willpower. By the end of the next summer I was so addicted to smoking that I could not sleep without smoking the last one for the day and would definitely need one right after waking up. I was smoking 10-12 cigarettes a day by the middle of my 3rd year in college.

By this time, my lips blackened significantly, but I was not enjoying my helplessness in respect to my smoking addiction. No matter what the situation or weather be I always needed to hoard cigarettes in my living space to feel ‘secure’. Guess what? The more I hoarded to feel assured about the my addiction having a free ride, the more I smoked away. By the time I was out of college and doing my first job in Mumbai, India, I was having immense trouble getting frequent smoking breaks from the boss! I was now into a classic condition of self-pity culminating in regret – why the heck I got into this addiction in the first place, huh!

My lips blackened but I got into a dark tunnel of addiction from where it seemed that there’s no light.

My Non-serious attempts to quit smoking

It continued like this for years. I tried different approaches to reduce my daily nicotine intake such as switching to so-called Ultra Mild and menthol cigarettes. But they were also not of much help. In fact, my body demanded more or less the same amount of nicotine! Consequently, I needed to smoke more ultra mild or menthol cigarettes to keep away my withdrawal symptoms.

Years later I learned that why cigarette/tobacco or nicotine addiction so tough to get rid of. Tobacco in any form contains the addictive component called Nicotine. Any ingestion of Nicotine into the blood stream creates nicotine receptors in certain regions of the brain that are largely responsible for managing our cognitive behavior. Sadly, the nicotine receptors can form very quickly in our brain and once formed it will force us to supply more nicotine (through withdrawal symptoms) to create more nicotine receptors or to nourish the existing ones. The vicious reinforcing cycle will soon start ruling our conscious mind with deep feedback system into the subconscious mind. The result is that, one may ‘consciously’ feel the need to give up on the addiction but the subconscious mind will sabotage with some or the other justification of not giving up on it entirely! Sometimes, I heard that people even get into serious health issues including but not limited to carcinoma, still not able to give up on this life-threatening addiction.

But for me the subconscious mind had slightly different game plan. Years before, while dating my long-time karmic partner, I had promised her to give up on smoking by the time I hit the mid-life defining age of 40! I can’t generally break my promise to anyone though I am very selective about making a promise in the first place. So, I probably ‘unconsciously’ knew that I will walk the talk, no matter how.

My struggle for smoking cessation

But it’s no mean feat to give up on nicotine addiction. I was resolute though, as I knew that in 5 years or so I will be 40 years old.

In between I tried few things like cutting a Marlboro 100 into two halves, switching to Cigars, but to no help actually.

Then I took the drastic step of suddenly stopping smoking altogether. I was soon brutally humbled by the severe withdrawal symptoms including insomnia, blurred vision and poor reflex. Consequently, I had a very bad road accident while driving a two-wheeler with my partner as pillion. We somehow got lucky and survived the accident, with few severe injuries on the limbs. But this incident opened my eyes to the fact that how dangerous the nicotine addiction can be to one’s life. It’s being like a Ghost Rider having sold your soul to Mephistopheles (the Tobacco or Nicotine).

My lips were blackened but so was my mental state.

As an entrepreneur, I had the natural trait of being more resilient in the face of difficulties, to persevere anyways. So, I decided to go all out against my addiction to smoking and became determined to use all hacks and means to get rid of it.

I started with chewing nicotine gums (Nicotex 2mg first and then 4mg) instead of smoking a cigarette. It worked for sometime that I needed to smoke only few times. But it didn’t help with my nicotine addiction. In fact, I quickly got addicted to Nicotine gums or my smoking addiction got replaced with another mode of nicotine addiction! Too bad. It appeared that this whole Nicotine Gum business is a huge scam that it shifts you from one mode of addiction to to another one.

But again as an entrepreneur I needed to justify the time and resources for any activity, even nicotine addiction.

Alright, if you have come reading this far then I presume that you are really serious about quitting smoking.

The struggle continued…

Few months later I had to travel to another country where smoking was not seen as a cool act. Moreover, given the nature of business I had there, I knew that it would be too difficult to maintain my addiction and needed to urgently have a plan for permanent cessation from smoking addition. I frantically researched the internet to find any hack to quit smoking permanently. Then I came across to the site https://smokefree.gov/tools-tips/medications-can-help-you-quit which named two medicines Bupropion SR and Varenicline. But it didn’t provide any dosage or duration. But I was familiar with the name Bupropion SR as I used to get it for my mother. It is a very commonplace psychiatric drug typically prescribed to manage depressive symptoms. But how could it work for smoking cessation? I had no way to know. So, I contacted my sibling who is a practicing Psychiatrist living in another country. I vaguely remembered that he once talked about medications to quit smoking which he tried on himself. He confirmed the medicines and shared a dosage for 6 weeks or 8 weeks depending on the severity of addiction. He also warned about a hell lot of side effects of the medicines. But he said that since none to the side effects are going to kill one, it’s worth tolerating them for the sake of smoking cessation. Bupropion SR is available over the counter in my country so I got few strips and started the course. First with Bupropion SR 150, one tablet after breakfast for 7 days and then two tablets (one after breakfast and another one no later that 6 pm) for the next 7 weeks. I followed that dosage ritually despite the side effects of insomnia and a bit of weight gain. After one week into the medication I started feeling some kind of repulsion towards smoking and by 4/5 weeks I didn’t feel the urge or craving to smoke a single cigarette. Great, I was very happy and confident about finally giving up on smoking. My travel plan got cancelled for some or the other reason. But I got some taste of success in smoking cessation, at last!

However, my elation was kind of short lived. Within a year under some very stressful life situation I again got back to smoking and nicotine addiction.

My lips, by the way was about to get back the natural pinkish hue and I was not disliking it :-).

The Final Assault

Then to navigate out of that extremely stressful life situation, I decided to get into some serious weight training with the goal of aesthetic muscle building. I was 36-37 yrs old then. But my self sabotaging behavior with respect to smoking came back as well. I read that Cigarette smoking has a positive and independent effect on testosterone levels -> http://www.hormones.gr/8449/article/cigarette-smoking-has-a-positive-and….html and decided that okay I will keep smoking while doing weight training. I would regularly pump up through weight training. However, I found that my hypertrophic state of muscle was not really leading to “building” of muscle mass, despite good nutrition management and adequate rest.

There were mixed opinions about the effects of smoking on muscle growth in the some of the prominent sources in the internet such as this one -> https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/does-nicotine-affect-muscle-growth#nicotine-and-athletic-performance . But I felt that I must give one final assault to my smoking addiction. Thus, with the goal of aesthetic muscle building through some serious weight training in mind, I took the challenge of smoking cessation with renewed vigor. As a entrepreneur I had ample courage to find hacks to wicked problems. So, I decided to be some kind of bio-hacker this time.

How?

I made some intuitive calculation about the severity of my addiction and the possible reasons behind my relapse into smoking addiction even after completing a standard dosage of medication. My gut feeling was that the sudden surge in stress level in my life might have something to do with the Nicotine Receptors that were dormant in my head after the medication. My suspicion got confirmed and my judgement was validated when I found and read this paper under the title “Stress Response Genes and the Severity of Nicotine Withdrawal” -> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/pgs.15.149?scroll=top&needAccess=true . Therefore, I took the decision of starting one more course of Bupropion SR 150 for 12 weeks, instead of 6-8 weeks suggested earlier by my sibling brother. I started the course of Bupropion SR 150 during the spring of 2016 and by the onset of summer I was out of smoking addiction. But, I knew that I was still vulnerable to the addiction and may regress into it, if my stress level becomes abnormally high. Therefore, I started more disciplined weight training, immediately after the 12 weeks long course of Bupropion SR 150.

My Victory over Nicotine Addiction, finally

Typically, the risk of relapse into nicotine addiction remains for about 5 years after cessation. I was very cautious during this period and through some self-discipline and grit, I managed to get past that 5 year period of high risk and today after 8+ years since I had quit smoking, I am proud to share this note with you all.

I had been a very serious smoker for 20 years and struggled for about 6 years to completely give up on smoking. But, I did it anyways! It’s never too late to start and I sincerely hope that this note will inspire many of you who wants to give up on smoking but somehow fail to do so. If I can, you can too!

Well, my lips are no more blackish and I have less liking for darker lips now.