The first morning without smoke
Another day, yet something felt different. My mornings usually contain a first cigarette before anything else, before coffee, before breakfast, morning routine or anything else. Like my day cannot start without giving my lungs their fair share of poison...
Waking up, the room was quiet. First thing that popped in my head was if I get through the day without the smoke, although I still didn't get out of bed yet. So I went and started preparing breakfast, something that only happened when being in a relationship and it was common courtesy to prepare it for your loved one. As a single man, well that routine wasn't really my cup of tea, but that day it was something to focus on. The usual routine mostly contained the following steps:
Cigarette
Coffee with cigarette
A snack (a fruit or something, although this step I didn't make for a long time at first)
Another cigarette and I was ready to start my day
Cigarette.
It’s not just the nicotine; it’s the whole choreography. The way your hand moves. The way you carry yourself. How you move everywhere with a phone, wallet and a pack of cigarettes on you. The memories when you were young and you saw other people smoking and they told you not to start smoking, seeming like hypocrites by saying that with a cigarette in their mouth, like they know better... But guess what, they do know better. Only that it is difficult to trust someone who does the exact thing they advise you not to do.
When you remove the cigarette, the rest of the routine doesn’t simply disappear. It sits there, waiting, and suddenly nothing fits properly:
The coffee feels wrong.
The minutes are longer and your patience shorter.
Then a silence falls on you, and suddenly you find yourself filling it with chaotic thoughts.
People sometimes talk about freedom or release after quitting. And yes, there is a kind of freedom. But it doesn’t always arrive as a bright, clean feeling.
Sometimes it arrives as a sense that something is missing from your hands and a bit more time in the morning that you don’t know how to use.
The silence is not only the absence of smoke. It’s the absence of noise in your head that used to be filled with decisions like: “Do I have enough left or do I need to go buy a pack first?”
Those questions eventually do go quiet, but they are replaced with your brain searching for ways to make you give him back the sweet things that he's used to. But at first, the quiet can feel like standing in a room where the music has been turned off and everyone is still staring at you.
If you’ve lived with a similar routine, you might recognize this too:
– You make coffee, and your body expects the next step.
– Make breakfast and still expects the next step.
– Breathe and your body expects the next step.
It’s the brain and body repeating a script they’ve rehearsed thousands of times.
The first smoke-free morning, the craving might not feel like a dramatic attack. It can feel like an echo. A distant voice calling you while you pretend you don't hear it... then you start searching for things to do instead of the one thing you every day would do.
This doesn’t mean you’re failing. It doesn’t mean you still want to be a smoker. It means your body and brain are still catching up with the decision you’ve made.
You’ll find yourself throughout the first day patting your pockets for something that isn’t there anymore.
When something disappears from your life, especially something as addictive as cigarettes, the instinct is often to replace it and to fill the gap immediately.
Less coffee, as for me was the faithful partner of cigarettes.
More food, especially sweets. Always having a pack of crackers helped me fight the urge, not much though.
More time spent on the phone, looking at things I had no interest in and burying myself into work.
Anything to avoid the space in my time where the cigarette used to be.
Sometimes it helps to go head forward into the decision of quitting cigarettes, but carries the risk of burn-out and giving in to the urge of having just one more.
There is value in not rushing to fill every second. Letting the gap exist for a moment and seeing what it actually feels like. You'll find things about yourself that you forgot about. Staying still just long enough to notice:
“This is uncomfortable, but I can survive it.”
The first morning without smoke is not only about what you do, it’s also about discovering that you are stronger than you believed it to be.
For me cigarettes were not just about nicotine. They were also a way to step out of the room—physically and mentally.
Need a break from your own thoughts? Smoke.
Need a moment to decide what to do next? Have a smoke.
How about dealing with an urgent problem? Smoke, like your brain suddenly opens and operates at 100% of his potential, a quite convincing illusion but still an illusion.
On that first morning without cigarettes, you might realize some small changes like paying more attention to the things around you, the metallic taste in your mouth when you drink your coffee without the before and after cigarette and so on. Depends from person to person.
Time will move slightly slower, not because you'll have more of it, but because it’s not cut into smoke breaks anymore.
None of these are dramatic or very noticeable in the moment, but they are little signs that something is shifting. You may not feel excited about them but you might feel that it’s enough for your brain to slowly register “This is new and new might not be that bad.”
We are wired to crave the feeling of progress, moving from point A to point B as quickly as possible which, in the process of quitting a vice like this, there is only one way to move ahead – the slow, difficult way.
Progress will show itself in the shadows of your cravings and frustrations and how you deal with them. Some changes in you will announce themselves quietly. Some you might not even notice, but they sit there, waiting for you to notice them.
Measuring progress by big milestones, like “the first week” or “the first month”, the first morning might seem unimportant and yet you're at your strongest your first day, as you decide to stand up to your own bad habits.
Quitting is not just about removing a bad habit. It’s about slowly discovering who you are when your first breath of the day is not filtered through smoke.
Take care of yourself,
- D. Nicholas
