Self-help books? They promise so much, and yet nothing changes after reading them. Fortunately, that isn’t always true. Here is the sixth book that gave me direction: quitting smoking was a piece of cake.

QUITTING SMOKING

I have read this book twice, and that is actually once too many. The first time, the book helped me immediately. In 2001, after a holiday in Italy, I quit smoking at Rome Fiumicino airport. I thought that was quite a fitting place, because I thought the name Fiumicino had something to do with smoking (but it means ‘little river’). All in all, quitting smoking cost me surprisingly little effort. I was so happy with it that I immediately gave the book to a good friend.
Unfortunately, smoking is a trap you unknowingly swim into. Too late, you realize there is no turning back. And you remain secretly addicted to it for the rest of your life. And my little smoking monster had enormous patience. In 2016, I wanted to relax more, and I chose a strategy I knew from my earlier years in advertising. There was a lot of weed being smoked back then, but I didn’t join in. The little devil inside me said that now was the time to make up for lost time. I took two puffs from my first joint. That resulted in total relaxation. Those few puffs quickly turned into more, and within six weeks I was smoking a joint every evening. That felt like an addiction, and of course, it was. That’s why I stopped smoking joints soon after, but I did crave tobacco. ‘Then just a cigarette,’ said the little devil inside me. And before I knew it, I was addicted to cigarettes again.
In early 2022, I realized that getting older with a lot of cigarettes becomes difficult: both socially and physically. I decided to quit again. I was going to work in the US: it would be easy not to smoke there because it is hardly allowed anywhere. I read Carr’s book again. I was going to finish it at Schiphol to quit smoking there. Just before my departure, I received a positive COVID notification. I wasn’t allowed to fly. Not a nice work trip. And I didn’t even have the symptoms of COVID. I was bummed. It bothered me that I wasn’t going to quit smoking now either. I had been looking forward to doing that at Schiphol. So I just grabbed the book right away and finished reading it. I smoked the last cigarette at home.