5 weird things that happen when you quit smoking

It’s coming up to four years (As of publishing) since I quit smoking. I was a half pack a day smoker for about three years. Quitting was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, but it happened in an odd way. This was maybe my 7th attempt at quitting. Smoking is expensive, smelly and socially repellent. Instead of looking like Jon Hamm in Mad Men, I resembled a middling pub rock bassist. My previous five or six attempts ended in failure. Around day or two or three, I’d storm to the nearest tobacconist and spark up in my car like a mad junkie. Then one day, without any real effort, I rolled a cigarette from the dregs of a worn tobacco pouch, smoked it on my back deck and never smoked again.

I’d purchased only two devices to ease this transition: a cheap e-cigarette and terrible nicotine spray. What helped most though was the near instantaneous dislike of smoking I developed. I honestly can’t explain it. One night I went to sleep, my brain uneasy for not having one last dart before bed. The next morning, the very thought of smoking repulsed me. I don’t know if this is a common thing. The smell of the back deck made me sick (I was one of three smokers in the house). Looking at my lighters, papers and filters filled me with deep shame. Over the next few weeks, I went through a strange journey. I was well aware of the positive things that happen when a person quits smoking. What no one tells you is how weird these things feel at the time. I’m not writing this to discourage anyone from quitting smoking. I just want to prepare you for the five weird things that happen when you quit smoking.

5. Your appetite goes through the roof

Smoking is an appetite suppressant. When combined with coffee, any foolhardy filmmaker can destroy himself in the name of impressing clients. No time for lunch? Cool, I’ll have a cigarette and power through. I didn’t realise that stopping to eat and think would make me work harder and produce better content. I was a dumb kid.

Around the day three mark, I regained the appetite of a physically active twenty-seven-year-old. That it is to say, I turned into a Labrador. Skipping breakfast, which I had done previously, was out of the question. Even after breakfast, I’d be ravenous by 11 am. My serving sizes doubled and I kept snacks present at all times. There’s a scene in David Cronenberg’s The Fly where Jeff Goldblum, fresh after the teleporter incident, tears apart his fridge because he is so hungry. I felt very much like the pre-transformation protagonist of a sci-fi horror story. If you’re about to quit smoking, get ready to eat more in one sitting than you would in a whole day. Also, be prepared for the side effects of this…

4. You will be unbearably upbeat

The result of eating properly and breathing clean air for the first time in three years is a person who feels actually high. It felt like I’d been slipped Adderall. I was a faster, stronger, chattier version of myself. It was a little overwhelming to be honest. No one tells you what a jarring transition this is. The change in my energy levels was noted even by people who didn’t see me that often. Someone to this day probably thinks I came to work on meth.

This is temporary, thank god. Your body normalises after a few days. What’s horrifying is the realisation that you’ve been running on 75% energy this whole time. From days four to six, you’ll feel Super Saiyan. You may become extremely annoying. Making it to this stage killed any lingering interest in taking up the habit again. But you’re not out of the woods yet. During this period of peak energy, your mood might be it’s most frayed…

3. Your rage will be the scourge of all

Quitting smokers are known for being grumpy. Their brains have been tricked into thinking they need nicotine. When they don’t get it, they can be extremely pissy. It took a couple of weeks to stop wanting hits.
Nicotine spray was helpful in this regard. It also felt like spraying your throat with minty acid which killed any feeling of reward associated with the habit. Without it, the white-hot fury of nicotine withdrawal could have landed me in jail.

Around that time, a band called Sam and The Womp were on the radio with a song called Bom Bom. It is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard and it was inescapable. At the time I worked in a cafe because my freelance career had gone to hell. M’colleagues unironically loved the song. I remember the moment well. I was six days into quitting; past the crazy high but leaning on the nicotine spray, which I’d left at home. At that point, a voice like someone with a mouthful of marbles started blaring over obnoxious trumpets. My colleagues started dancing. Each one affecting the singer’s godawful voice. I take solace from the fact that every patron who wasn’t an Ascot Mum looked like they wanted to kill everyone and then themselves. When I came to, the city was engulfed in flames.

I actually just took an early break. That was the closest I’d gotten to blackout anger. Nothing prepares you for the fury of quitting cigarettes. Sometimes it only takes one stupid thing to tip you over the edge. I didn’t blow up at anyone and the thought terrified me. You won’t truly be free of the rage until you master this next step…

2. You will adopt hundreds of new hobbies

In the writing of this article, I figured out that I quit smoking with the help of the following:

• An E-cigarette when I badly wanted the tactile sensation
• Nicotine spray to control/create a negative association with the cravings,

And

• Playing guitar, drawing, writing, learning history, knitting, jogging, lacrosse, knife juggling etc

No one told me how much free time I’d inherit. If you smoke every two hours for five to ten minutes a day, that turns into almost an hour of free time when you quit. What’s dangerous is that if you don’t fill this time, you sit around thinking about smoking. I started playing the guitar during this period and for a time got really good. Quitting is the perfect time to embark on a new hobby, preferably something meditative like knitting, drawing or playing an instrument. If personal development is not your bag, I also recommend any role-playing game with more than a hundred hours of playtime. Turns out the scale of addiction is, in descending order; Cigarettes, any Fallout game, Heroin.

This, to me, was the biggest step to quitting long term; Exercising instead of the morning cigarette, playing the guitar instead of the pre-work dart, actually working instead of running out every two hours. Filling in the time you’d spend either smoking or thinking about smoking made quitting way easier.

Oh, one last point. This is the one that everyone keeps going on about and it annoys me…

1. You’re probably not going to save money

Points to whatever massive arsehole thought of it; Jacking up the price of cigarettes got me to quit. Not poor health, not my shitty reliance on the habit, not even my partner at the time begging me to quit. It came down to coffin nails costing twenty smackers a pack. Hand rolled cigarettes are about $40, so I was theoretically saving $40 to $80 a week. That is roughly $2000 to $4000 a year I would’ve saved if I hadn’t spent it on lollies, fizzy water and other rewards for not slowly killing myself. There are anecdotes of people with greater restraint using this post-smoking surplus to fund lavish holidays, new motorcycles and other fun things.

I guess I used soft drinks and snacks to eventually wean myself off nicotine spray. I knew I’d successfully quit when the E-cigarette stopped working. This terrified me. It was only a matter of time before I needed that tactile stimulation that comes with holding a cigarette. Fortunately, by that point, the desire for cigarettes was a small, vague sensation being tamped down by sandwiches and finally nailing Futile Devices by Sufjan Stevens.

Four years later…

It was my 30th. I had a board game party. We set up five tables with games like Coup, Munchkin, The Resistance and Betrayal At House Of The Hill. It was awesome, albeit as host I got stuck at one table for too long. I sadly didn’t get to chat with everybody. The only smokers at the party were my mother and an old friend from school. I had briefly suspended my policy of not drinking which I started last July. I caught a whiff of smoke and briefly felt the hunger. I ran to the nearest table and started losing at Coup. It was the first time I’d had cravings in years.

I quit smoking at a time in my life when I was struggling to stay afloat. My film career was stagnant, I was single and still wasn’t quite over the death of my father one year prior. A few months after I quit, things got better. I won an award for a grubby little film I made in a weekend. I got a full-time job making awesome videos with cool people. I met a lovely girl who I eventually asked to marry me. I entered an era of cautious optimism. I don’t credit quitting smoking with that, but the self-control it taught me absolutely made me a better person. Or at least put me on par with everyone else.

If you’re thinking of quitting, I hope this list prepares for you for some of the weirdness you may not be expecting. I implore you to stick it out. I assure you, if this lazy, impulsive idiot can quit, you damn well can too.

Lucas Miller is video maker and screenwriter. Check out his work at www.studiokohi.com.