How to Stay Quit When You Are Grieving
I was standing in the back corner of a funeral home parking lot three months ago when I realized that grief is the loudest liar I have ever met. It was a Tuesday and the air was that specific kind of damp cold that makes you want to pull your shoulders up to your ears, and I was watching my cousin lean against his car. He pulled a pack of reds out of his pocket and the sound of the cellophane crinkling was so familiar that I felt my hand twitch in my coat pocket, reaching for a phantom pack that hadnāt been there for over a year. I almost walked over to him and asked for one without even thinking about it because my brain was so tired from crying and making phone calls that it just wanted to go back to the one thing that always felt like a āresetā button. I didnāt do it, but I stood there for a long time watching the smoke curl up into the grey sky and I realized that staying quit while your heart is breaking is a completely different animal than staying quit when life is normal. When things are going well, you have all your tools and your reasons and your little apps that track your progress, but when you lose someone, all of that feels small and silly compared to the weight of the hole in your life.
Why Grief Hits the Quit So Hard
The reason it feels so impossible to stay smoke free when you are grieving is that smoking was never just about the nicotine for people like us. It was a ritual and a companion and a way to mark time, and when someone dies, time stops making sense anyway. You find yourself sitting in a quiet house at three in the morning and the silence is so heavy that you start thinking about how a cigarette would fill that space, or how the physical act of lighting up would give you something to do with your hands that isnāt just wringing them together. We used to use cigarettes to handle every emotion, the good ones and the bad ones and the boring ones, so when the biggest emotion of all hits you, your brain naturally goes back to the oldest tool in the shed. It tells you that you deserve a break or that it doesnāt even matter if you smoke now because the worst thing has already happened and what is a little lung damage compared to this much pain. It is a very convincing argument when you are exhausted and your defenses are down and you just want the world to stop spinning for five minutes.
The First 72 Hours Are the Danger Zone
Those first few days after a loss are a blur of shock and adrenaline and people bringing over Tupperware containers of food that you donāt really want to eat. This is the danger zone for your quit because your ārationalā brain has basically left the building and you are running on pure instinct. I remember during those first few days I kept finding myself standing by the back door where I used to go out to smoke, and I would just stand there looking at the handle like I was waiting for someone to give me permission to go out. Your brain fog is already at a maximum because of the grief, and adding the stress of a craving on top of that can make you feel like you are actually losing your mind. You might find yourself driving to the gas station before you even realize why you are there, or you might find an old pack in a drawer and think it is a sign from the universe that you should have one. It isnāt a sign, it is just a coincidence, but when you are in the thick of it, everything feels like a sign and everything feels like a reason to give up. You have to survive these 72 hours one minute at a time, and sometimes that means literally counting to sixty over and over until the wave of the craving passes over your head.
What to Do Instead
I am not a therapist and I am not going to tell you to go for a run or start a journal because I know that when you are grieving, sometimes even taking a shower feels like a marathon. What worked for me was finding ways to mimic the ābreaksā that smoking used to give me without actually picking up the habit again. I started carrying a bottle of very cold water everywhere, and every time that heavy pull started in my chest, I would take a huge gulp and just focus on how cold it felt in my throat. It sounds simple, but it gives you a physical sensation to focus on when everything else feels numb. Another thing is the āfake smokeā where you go outside to the spot where you used to smoke, and you do the deep breathing part without the cigarette. You still get the fresh air and the five minutes of quiet, which is usually what you actually need, but you donāt have the regret that comes with lighting up. If you need to scream or cry or sit on the floor, do that instead of smoking, because the cigarette wonāt actually make the grief go away, it will just add a layer of guilt on top of the sadness that you are already carrying.
Telling People You Are Still Quit
One of the hardest parts is dealing with other people, especially at a wake or a funeral where there are always people gathered outside to smoke. Someone will inevitably offer you one because they remember you as a smoker and they think they are being helpful or offering you a bit of comfort. I had to tell my cousin āno thanks, I am still not doing thatā about three different times because he kept forgetting, and each time I said it, it felt like I was reminding myself as much as I was telling him. It is okay to be blunt and it is okay to tell people that you need them to not smoke around you right now if it is too hard. Most people will understand because they know you are going through enough already, and they wonāt be offended if you have to walk away from the group to keep your head on straight. You donāt have to explain your whole journey or talk about how many days it has been since your last cigarette, you just have to protect your peace in whatever way you can.
The truth is that a cigarette wouldnāt have made that funeral any easier for me. It wouldnāt have brought anyone back and it wouldnāt have made the parking lot any warmer or the grief any smaller. If I had taken that cigarette from my cousin, I would have woken up the next morning still sad, but also feeling like I had lost a piece of myself that I worked really hard to build. You are going through something incredibly heavy and it is okay if you are barely hanging on, but donāt let the grief take your health away too. You can be a person who is sad and a person who doesnāt smoke at the same time, even if it feels like you are learning how to walk all over again. Just get through today and then worry about tomorrow when it gets here.