After 15 years of smoking, Adrian Diaz Bulibasa decided it was time to quit. „I wanted to have a baby, and I didn’t want my future child’s health to be affected by my choices,“ he says.
But quitting was not easy for him.
Bulibasa, who lives in London and is the editor-in-chief of the website bestformyfeet.com, loved smoking and the culture associated with it. He enjoyed going to restaurants with friends and family, sitting on the terrace, and having a cocktail or coffee with a few cigarettes.
Simply telling himself to quit did not work. He had to figure out where, when, and why he smoked. Soon, he realized that most of the time he smoked, it was not due to a nicotine craving. „It was due to the habits I had developed around smoking over the years,“ he says.
Specific places and situations can trigger the urge to smoke. You may reach for a cigarette when going out with friends, after dinner, or when feeling stressed.
These triggers are called triggers. By learning what your triggers are, you can better manage them.
„A big part of quitting is changing your habits and routines,“ says Alma E. Anderson, MA, deputy director of the Arizona Center for Tobacco Cessation. Knowing your triggers can help you give up habits that reinforce your craving and establish new habits to assist you in quitting, she says.
Other triggers are related to your body’s craving for nicotine. You may feel the urge to smoke when you smell, taste, or touch a cigarette. If you feel restless or have the urge to do something with your hands or mouth, you may want to smoke.
„You can identify your triggers by reflecting on your day and noticing what reminds you of smoking,“ says Anderson. Think about how you feel and what you’re doing, and you’ll realize what triggers your desire to smoke.
Bulibasa knew that to quit, he had to identify his triggers and break the patterns associated with each trigger. He closely examined his habits and found that his triggers were restaurants, food, coffee drinking, alcohol consumption, and sex.
„On the day I decided to quit smoking, I stopped going to restaurants and bars,“ he says. As he used to enjoy a cigarette with a cortado coffee during work breaks, he avoided going near smoking areas during breaks.
„Another thing I eventually did in that first year was to completely quit drinking coffee and alcohol because that was my trigger to smoke,“ he says.
He wasn’t ready to give up sex yet, so he found another way to satisfy his craving. „I placed the cigarettes out of reach, for example in the kitchen,“ he says. Not seeing the pack right next to the bed helped.
Bulibasa also had emotional triggers. He smoked when he felt accomplishing a task, under pressure, or bored.
To manage these emotional triggers, he distracted himself with substitute activities, such as playing a game on his phone or snacking on popcorn or sunflower seeds. „Once I saw the trigger coming, I knew I had to do something about it quickly, for about five to ten minutes,“ he says. After that, the craving would disappear for a few hours.
Anderson suggests following the four Ds to manage your smoking triggers:
- Delay
- Do something else
- Drink water
- Deep breathing
To cope with situational and social triggers, avoid places and situations where you feel the urge to smoke. When dealing with emotional triggers, try talking about your feelings, listening to relaxing music, deep breathing, or engaging in physical activity. For pattern triggers, find a substitute or physical activity, and try to change your routine. Distraction can be helpful with withdrawal triggers.
Bulibasa didn’t overcome all his triggers overnight. Over the course of a year, he changed his habits and gradually gave them up. He went from smoking 30 cigarettes a day to 20, 10, 1, and then none.
Over time, Bulibasa used fewer strategies to cope with his triggers because he no longer needed them. „I became stronger, and the desire to smoke was no longer as strong,“ he says.
It has been 8 years since he quit smoking. „I knew that if I managed to get through each day or week and smoke less than the day or week before, I would win the battle,“ he says.