Katy McDermott

Over six months ago, I quit smoking. It sounds so casual when it’s written like that – but honestly, that wasn’t the case. The first time I tried was 17 years before I finally succeeded. In the meantime, I tested every method of quitting short of getting my jaws surgically wired shut…

Nicotine gum? Tried it. Nicotine lozenges? They tasted disgusting, but I tried them nonetheless. Nicotine inhaler? Tried that too. The patch? Yep. That led to my most successful previous attempt, as a matter of fact – close to 2 months back in 1997. (Of course, I was entirely miserable and driven into therapy by the end of it, but that’s another story…) Naturally, I tried the pharmaceutical methods as well – first Zyban and then, years later, Chantix. Ever read the fine print on those? (And I do that for my job, so I know what it means.) Sca-ry! I stopped taking them pronto.

I didn’t ignore alternate medicine on my quest. Acupuncture didn’t work (perhaps because my abiding fear of needles left me so stressed out that I smoked with shaking hands on the way home from every session.) Neither did hypnosis. I bought a pack of cigarettes on my way home from my first appointment. However, I was determined to find my “magic bullet” – some way to quit without it being hard. I even drove 6 hours last year to a hypnotist called the Mad Russian who was celebrated for “curing” almost 100,000 smokers. All that hype – and I was smoking again within hours….

Of course, I can’t forget to mention my many, many attempts to “taper down.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

(They didn’t work.)

However, in the past several years, I grew increasingly desperate (hence my pilgrimage to the Mad Russian). A former coworker was diagnosed with lung cancer, and I had several health scares of my own. Together, they made me realize that it had to happen. I had to quit. I first tried the cold turkey method (with neither education nor support) last February, and lasted 5 days before I broke, drove to the nearest convenience store, and bought a pack of True Menthols with the mingled shame and relief of a true addict. Oh, the “security,” the familiar feel of the pack in my hand, a cigarette between my lips, my lighter at the ready! Within about 48 hours, I was back to my old level – a pack a day.

In July, though, I decided to give stopping cold turkey one last shot… Enter the website whyquit.com, the result of an internet search. (God bless technology!)

At the site, I found TONS of education, and that education made the difference. I can’t claim that quitting cold turkey was easy – it wasn’t – but it wasn’t impossible either, as I’d always believed.

And the key? I wasn’t alone! There was a support section on the website, a message board frequented by people from all over the world in different stages of their quit-smoking journeys. (Those white-knuckle first few days seem to be the same no matter what the time zone.)

A fellow in China had to figure out how to avoid the many cigarettes offered to him on a 30-hour train trip to Mongolia… several residents of the UK and Australia needed to re-learn how to enjoy their games of soccer without the demon weed… a Danish woman faced her first vacation (in the Alpine forest) without cigarettes… a Bulgarian girl cheered everyone on, no matter what… an American ex-pat living in Austria tried to deal with life in one of the last European countries to allow smoking in bars… an Italian doctor wrote of sneaking his smokes in between visits to the bedsides of emphysema patients… closer to home, a wonderfully supportive dog groomer in Florida shared her dismay at being virtually surrounded by smokers, both at home and at work, and a former healthcare professional in Texas remembered smoking in the nurse’s lounge at her hospital…

Everyone had an individual story, but the common thread was that we’d all decided to quit.

The knowledge that despite our cultural, linguistic, and political differences, we were all facing (and beating!) the exact same challenge, was exhilarating in the extreme. That’s global cooperation in action! Even though many of us have months of not smoking behind us now, we still turn to each other. We celebrate each other’s milestones, lean on each other when we have a difficult time with staying quit, commiserate when life throws us curveballs, and even share strategies for losing the few pounds some of us gained while quitting. (And as a fun aside, I now know some interesting British slang! Which I’ll take care never to use in a London pub!)

In time, some of us formed our own support group on Facebook (it’s called “Nicotine Freedom For All,” if anyone’s interested), but the education at whyquit.com is what helped many of us to quit in the first place.

The support? The support is what’s helped us to stay quit.

The members of this international group have a special acronym – NTAP (it stands for “Never Take Another Puff”) – but it’s pretty loosely organized for a secret society, I’ll admit. There are no bylaws, no rules (other than continuing to not smoke), no executive committee, and no dues. The only law is the “law of addiction” (“administration of a drug to an addict will cause re-establishment of chemical dependence upon the addictive substance”), and the only dress code is “any article of clothing without cigarettes in the pockets.”

It’s helpful and wonderful and all the rest – but we really need to get to work on a members-only handshake and some funny hats…