A cigarette is never without a companion or two

Smoking kills. Just say no. Blah blah blah. We’ve all heard it before, and yet, the promise of a cig break and the potential love-at-first-sight meeting with another smoker scream too hard. Until you’re addicted. Here’s a post for all the Barnard students smoking outside the chastity gates, the frosh socializing outside Carman, and the studious internationals/wannabe Americans dragging outside Butler: How To Quit. 

It starts innocently enough: the cute Parisian exchange student in your Econ class asks if you want a smoke before lecture. Not wanting to look like a Stupid American in front of Pierre or Jacques, you take a few drags from one of his posh-looking Parisian cigs. And you cough for about 20 minutes. You thought it would feel more like all those nights you spent hotboxing your friend’s Wien single. You vow to never touch a cigarette again. Besides, they’re so expensive!

Fast forward to February and you open your wallet to find that you have exactly 57 cents to your name. Sometimes you cough like your Aunt Madge. It’s 35 degrees outside and the wind is whipping nastily at your skin, yet there you are, futilely trying to light up a cigarette on college walk. It’s no longer about making friends/potential romantic interests. It’s about survival. How did this happen?

You’re addicted, of course! That ninth grade health teacher was not, in fact, exaggerating the risk of nicotine addiction.

You don’t even really care about health risks (you’re already in Intro Bio, you’re doing the whole “live fast, die young” thing), but you seriously cannot afford to pay your senior friend to pick you up a pack of American Spirits every other day. You need money for Sweetgreen salads and stuff!

How can you quit smoking?

1. Find something else to keep your mouth busy. Try sucking on a cinnamon-flavored toothpick (available at those bougie health stores) or a box of licorice candy from Morton Williams. Or, buy some of that tobacco addiction alleviating gum at Duane Reade that’s about as expensive as cigs but not as bad for you.
2. Every time you take a drag, think about how nonplussed your roommate is gonna be when you come back reeking of tobacco and muck up their Feng-Shui-ed space.
3. Every time you buy a pack, put five dollars in a piggy bank. When you fill the bank, you’ll feel a sense of dread and shame that will deter you from smoking, and you’ll have hundreds of dollars to boot!
4. Tell your mom you’ve picked up a smoking habit at college. You’ll be cut off from your smoking funds in a flash!
5. Realize that everyone’s gone back to smoking pot. Sigh, break your piggy bank, and join them.

Good luck! xoxo.

Nicotine fam via Wikimedia Commons