Quitting smoking? How to deal with setbacks and be successful

Quitting smoking isn’t easy.

The average person will try to quit smoking 6 or more times before they successfully stop for good.¹

Knowing the common reasons that people might smoke again can help you prepare and make it easier to get back on track to quit.

Cigarettes contain nicotine, a highly addictive chemical that triggers a surge of dopamine in the brain that makes us feel good.

As well as this chemical addiction, there are the social and cultural aspects to smoking that can be hard to give up.

Examples of this might be having a smoke with colleagues over a morning coffee or always smoking on your way to the train station each evening. If we associate smoking with times of the day or events that still exit post-quitting, when that time arrives we can be tempted to smoke.

There may also be peer pressure to smoke. If your Friday night catch up with mates always involves sitting in a spot where you can smoke, friends are likely to offer you a cigarette and even encourage you to have “just one”.

These pressures combined can make quitting really hard and lead to occasional lapses before you fully quit for good.

Some set-backs commonly faced by people wanting to quit smoking include:

• Having a cigarette to reward yourself for quitting. Phew, you’ve made it to Friday without having a cigarette. Surely you can have one sneaky one to celebrate?
• Having a drag of a friend’s cigarette. It’s easy to justify one puff because you didn’t actually buy the cigarette.
• Smoking socially on weekends or on special occasions. Surely having the occasional one isn’t going to hurt?
• Habitual smoking. You associate certain things with smoking. Maybe you smoked to pass time when waiting for the bus or really enjoyed having a cigarette with a glass of wine or coffee.
• A stressful situation, such as a bad day at the office or an argument at home, may have you lighting up again to cope with the anxiety.

Being prepared for these common challenges and having strategies in place to deal with them can help you continue on your quitting journey.

Knowing when the craving to smoke might strike and putting in a plan to help cope can minimise lapses.

Start by identifying certain times of day or activities that you associate with smoking, such as walking to work or catching up with mates on a Friday night.

Try and think of ways to distract yourself from the need to smoke in those moments. That might be listening to a podcast, chatting to a friend on the phone or listening to music as you walk to work.

Ask friends if they’d be happy seeing a movie or having dinner instead of meeting at your usual smoke-friendly venue.

The trick is to replace smoking with a new activity or routine that you don’t associate with cigarettes.

Quitting can feel like a lonely endeavour, especially if you smoke with friends or family who aren’t ready to quit.

Talk to your smoking buddies about why you’re trying to quit and the moments you’re struggling to stay on track.

Ask for their help by not offering you a cigarette when they are smoking and being supportive about your quitting journey.

Trying to quit cold turkey can make it even harder and lead to frequent lapses. You don’t have to do it alone.

Nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches, gum and mouth sprays are available at your pharmacy and can be part of your quitting journey by helping you to wean off your nicotine addiction. Prescription medication is available through your GP.

Online resources at www.icanquit.com.au include a calculator that tells you how much money you can save by quitting and lots of quitting strategies to use when things get tough.

Have a clear reason about why you want to quit smoking. It might be to save money, improve health or simply because you just don’t feel good about smoking any more.

Write down your why and keep it on your phone or in your wallet. When you get tempted to light up, take a moment instead to read your why and remind yourself about your quitting goals.

It’s important to remember that a setback is not a failure and one cigarette does not mean your weeks of no smoking have gone up in smoke.

Don’t beat yourself up if you do have the occasional slip-up. It’s common and may happen from time to time.

If you do have a lapse, move on from it and get back on your path to quitting. Recognise what triggered the urge to smoke and have a different strategy other than smoking to deal with it if it pops up again.

Speak to your GP about help and support available for quitting smoking.