Sushil shares his journey on Different Truths.com, exploring how subtle environmental conditioning led him from curiosity to quitting smoking.

There was once a time when I never thought I would become a smoker.

Until I became 21, smoking and drinking alcohol had never been part of my life. I wasn’t interested in them and hadn’t felt the need to be part of what others were doing. In fact, long before I ever touched a cigarette, I had already written about why I had never been fond of drinking alcohol and why I had chosen to stay away from it.

Life has a way of taking you places that you never knew you were headed for.

New Cultures, New People

As I began to travel to other countries, I was introduced to new cultures and to new people; people who lived differently from me and were in totally different social circles. These differences enriched my world knowledge and broadened my thinking but at the same time introduced me to choices and situations that were new to me. One of these was smoking.

Looking back at this period of my life, I would not write this with pride or regret, but simply as it is part of my journey. I will write to explain how a person who never intended to become a smoker could become one, remain one for years, and then eventually find it in him to quit. I don’t mean to write this piece to glorify smoking or to judge those who do smoke. I am writing this piece as an individual who knows first-hand what can happen, and I want others to take something positive away from this if they can.

When I landed in South Africa at the age of 21, I entered a world that was so different from the world that I knew.

Smoking

I had never been particularly interested in smoking. It just had never been for me. I didn’t hate smokers or judge them, but I certainly had never thought that I would become one of them.

South Africa changed my surroundings and slowly my thinking.

What attracted me to smoking was that it was everywhere. It did not seem to be limited to a certain class or race or profession or even age. It seemed that it crossed over all these categories. Whether you were white or non-white, male or female, young or old, rich or poor, it did not matter. Smoking seemed to be for everyone.

It was both for celebration and for crying. It was for happy moments and for sad moments. It was for men and for women. It was for the lonely and for the busy. It was for a five-minute break after work or for a long-winding conversation during lunch. Some smoked to relax; others to relieve stress. It seemed that for every occasion and every mood there was a cigarette.

As a young man trying to understand this world and these people, I quietly observed everything. Day after day, these images became a part of my life and subtly changed my thinking.

Association between Smoking and Personality

Looking back at those days, I can see how my psychology slowly evolved. I started developing an association between smoking and personality. Every time that I saw well-dressed, confident or beautiful people with a cigarette in their hand, my mind automatically created an image that said, ‘This makes them look cool!’ I actually started thinking that I was missing something that others had. It wasn’t the cigarette that fascinated me, but the image that my mind told me to think it was.

The influence was not limited to strangers. Some of the Nepali friends whom I was closest to, including Raj’s brother, were smokers. They were good people, and I enjoyed being with them. Naturally, smoking became a part of the environment around me and slowly became normal for me. No one forced me to smoke or pressured me to start. When something is always around us, it automatically becomes normal for us.

There was one more thing that I would like to mention. At work, the smokers would always take a five-minute break to smoke, almost every hour. These smokers would always use the extra time to relax a little, to chat with work friends, to have a good laugh and to momentarily forget about the boring work that they had. As a non-smoker, I would usually remain at my desk until they returned fresh from their break. It almost seemed that, as a non-smoker, I had been deprived of something special.

The Environment

These were all small things that I would have never thought about if I had not lived those days. But they did have a small influence on me, and I will admit that the environment around me did help condition my mind to believe that smoking was something special for me. Today, I realise that cigarettes could never have given anyone personality, except that my young mind had been conditioned to think that.

This conditioning was about to take me to the next step of making a decision that would change the future course of my life.

At that time, Raj’s brother and I worked for the same employer, although we managed different shops. After work, it was common for me to meet with a few Nepali friends before going home.

We would usually have six small bottles of beer with us, as Raj’s brother always bought them for us after work. Along with the beer, cigarettes were always a part of the gathering, and I would usually have a bottle of Coke or some fruit juice while enjoying the company of good friends.

Conditioned Mind

Even though I was not drinking alcohol or smoking, my mind had already been conditioned.

After weeks of watching people smoking in the streets, at work, in restaurants, at celebrations and even in stressful moments, I had secretly believed that smoking was associated with personality and that somehow, I was missing this personality.

One evening, as we all sat together, my curiosity got the better of me.

“I want to know what it feels like to smoke,” I said.

Nobody seemed to criticise my statement or argue against it. I said what was on my heart.

Raj’s brother smiled at me, gave me a cigarette and said, “Go ahead, give it a try.”

I held a cigarette in my hand for the first time in my life.

I lit it clumsily and tried to repeat what I had seen so many people do before me.

I took a puff and almost immediately started coughing uncontrollably.

The smoke burnt my throat and lungs, my eyes watered, and I could hardly catch my breath. Everyone was laughing at me while I was wondering why millions of people all over the world had voluntarily subjected themselves to something so disgusting.

If someone had told me at that time that this miserable first puff would eventually develop into a bad habit for me, I would not have believed them.

But, as they say, bad habits are not born overnight!

The next day, I took another puff.

A day later, perhaps two puffs!

One puff became two puffs. Two became three. Three became half a cigarette. Half a cigarette eventually became a whole one.

Buying Cigarettes

For a long time, I did not buy cigarettes. I would take a puff from Raj’s brother’s cigarette or from any of my other friends’ cigarettes whenever we met after work. It seemed harmless since I did not smoke regularly, or so I thought.

Looking back at that period of my life, I realise that addictions are not developed overnight and that bad habits do not begin suddenly. A habit is usually a slow process that begins with a good intention but ends with bad consequences. It happened to me, and I had unknowingly become addicted to cigarettes.

There was no specific day on which I decided that I was going to become a smoker. I did. I do not remember any specific event that forced me to become one.

It was not a terrible incident or a severe emotional blow or unbearable pressure or even a specific pain that had driven me to smoke. I was becoming one.

But fortunately, it did not go that far.

Questioning Smoking

As the days went by, I had unknowingly developed associations with smoking that I began to question. The more I questioned these associations, the more I began to doubt that there was something wrong with my thinking. I began to ask myself, “What was I smoking for?”

At the beginning, when I was experimenting with smoking, I had somehow imagined that a cigarette had the potential to make me relax. Perhaps, subconsciously, I had thought that it could help me think better or cope with difficult moments or even make me more confident and composed.

But, after some time, I began to see the difference between the power that I had imagined a cigarette had and the power that it actually had. It had none!

What made me smoke was not that it was making me feel happy. It was just the opposite – it was making me feel miserable. It made me cough, choked my throat and lungs and watered my eyes.

But it wasn’t the first puff that made me a regular smoker. That too was a gradual process.

Then I began to wonder about another important issue. How could I become so enslaved to a cigarette when what I actually needed in difficult moments was a person?

When I am in pain, don’t I need a person to talk to?

When I am stressed, don’t I need a person to talk to?

When I am confused, don’t I need a person to advise me?

When I am struggling, don’t I need a person to help me?

A cigarette could do none of these things.

It could not listen to me or understand me or advise me or even talk to or with me. It could not tell me that everything was going to be all right. But I had somehow started believing that it could somehow make me feel better.

Something Unique

That was when I began to realise something unique. Sometimes we start believing in something not because it is right, but because we have convinced ourselves that it is right.

I had conditioned myself to think that a cigarette had the potential to make me feel better. But once I started questioning this belief, I began to lose belief in the cigarette.

There wasn’t a specific incident or a morning when I woke up after hearing some shocking news and decided that I would never smoke again. There was no doctor who stood before me and warned me that I had to quit immediately. There wasn’t even a dramatic promise that I had made to myself. I started realising that a cigarette wasn’t doing anything positive for me. It wasn’t healing or making me strong or making me creative or solving my problems or even giving me personality.

The personality that I was imagining I was gaining from smoking was something that I already had or something that I needed to develop through my own actions, confidence, work, relationships or whatever way that I chose to live my life.

A cigarette could never have given me that.

Slowly and almost quietly, I quit.

That, perhaps, is the most interesting thing about my experience with smoking. I didn’t have a dramatic start or a dramatic finish. I started, and then one day, I just stopped.

I wish I could say that I quit smoking one fine morning.

I wish I could say that I crushed the last cigarette, threw away the packet and told myself, “That’s it. No more!”

But that is not how it happened.

Reducing Intake of Cigarettes

There was no such thing as a day when I woke up and decided never to take another puff. There was no promise that I had made to myself. There was no date that I had marked on my calendar saying, “I quit.” I started reducing my intake of cigarettes.

When I felt like taking a puff, sometimes I would. But I would also start being more conscious of my feelings. I would begin to ask myself questions about why I wanted to take a puff. Sometimes I would, and sometimes I would not. One puff became less frequent. I started reducing and ignoring the cravings. And every time that I felt the urge to take a puff, I would remind myself of what I had understood. A cigarette wasn’t going to heal my pain. It wasn’t going to take away my stress. It wasn’t going to make me more creative. It wasn’t going to solve anything.

So why should I depend on it?

I did not fight myself.

I did not declare war on the cigarette.

I kept reminding myself that I was stronger than the habit that I had unknowingly created.

Gradually, the number of cigarettes that I smoked reduced.

Then the occasions to smoke reduced.

Then the cravings disappeared.

And slowly but surely, smoking disappeared from my life as quietly as it had come.

That is how I quit.

Not with a final puff.

Not with a dramatic promise.

Not with a particular date marked on my calendar.

I just kept reducing, resisting, questioning and convincing myself.

Until one day, I suddenly understood something very simple. I had stopped smoking.

Maybe that is the most interesting thing about my relationship with cigarettes. I didn’t quit suddenly because I had become a different person. I quit because the person that I was understood that I did not need a cigarette to become who I wanted to be.

The habit had only begun with a single puff, but it ended not with a single decision, but with many small ones to say, “I don’t need this.”

Photo by the author