Programmer Smoking

This page is about cigarette smoking - not any other kind . . . although page may need renaming.

It is generally accepted that cigarettes are addictive. Programmers may be particularly vulnerable due to stress, and the need to periodically "step back" from the computer to regain perspective. Some programmers have more respect for their computer than their body and choose not to smoke indoors. Those programmers are vulnerable to conditioning where smoking = taking a break/stepping back from a problem.

Those who choose to smoke are free to do so, but for those who wish to break or minimize the habit, some SuccessStories? could be beneficial.

Specifically, what has worked for other programmers?

• NicotineGum. All the pleasure of nicotine with none of the smoke or brown spit. I've been chewing it every waking hour for the last 6 years or so. -- EricHodges

• Coffee was my crutch while trying to quit smoking. There is something satisfying about making a pot of coffee. That being said, there is something bad about a pot-a-day habit. After awhile, I was able to tone down the coffee habit. I've also taken to stepping up to the whiteboard for that break/StepBack?. Sometimes I'll jot stuff down that is important to the task at hand, sometimes I'll just doodle. But it seems to work. -- JonathanArkell

• Cough drops. My father, a longtime BigIron COBOL programmer, traded a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit for bags and bags of cough drops. My lungs thank you, dad. -- AnonymousDonor

• Swedish snus. For Americans, think Skoal Bandits, but with no history of oral cancer. Look it up at Wikipedia. -- LlewelynThomas

• Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. (ISBN 0140277633 ) After reading this book, stopping really was easy. I still go out on the smoke breaks though, just to appreciate the fresh air and the break. -- LourensCoetzer

• Telling yourself the right story. I found Allen Carr's tone a bit grating, so it didn't work for me. But I'm naturally quite self-indulgent, so I told myself it was such a bore to be having to buy cigarettes all the time: wouldn't it be so much less of a pain not to have to do it? Managed to quit after 16 years of smoking: the key was not to feel I was denying myself something all the time.

• Pretend. When I quit smoking (with the help of NicotineGum) I found that I still needed to step outside and pretend to smoke. Mainly I would just think that I was smoking, in my imagination. The value in this is that it allows your mind to drift, and your subconscious to mull away at that intractable issue of how you will structure the database.