Suggestion on how to deal with individuals who try to undercut your quit by pressing you to take a cigarette.

If ever you have a family member, friend, co-worker or any other acquaintance offer you a cigarette it is best to politely say no and just let the person know that you do not smoke anymore nor do you even want to smoke anymore. Basically say you have no interest or desire for one. That should be the end of the offers if it is from any person who was just making what he or she thought was a friendly gesture.

If the person pursues asking you about how you quit and why you feel as you do, you may want to take the opportunity to share some of what you learned here about how important quitting smoking is and how much better you feel about yourself since you have quit smoking.

If on the other hand the person continues to offer you a cigarette or is obviously actually pushing you to take one it is best to give it one or two more tries to politely say no and ask the person not to offer any more for you truly have no intention of smoking one. If this doesn’t end the pressure being put on you to take a cigarette it is time to change your tactics.

Look at the person, maybe even with a little bit of sadness and defeat in your eyes, and say to him or her that you can't take the pressure anymore and sure give me a cigarette if you must. When he or she hands you the cigarette, walk over to the nearest garbage can, crumble it up and throw it out.

Now you have an option of how you want to proceed. You can either wait for the next offer to come or you can say, "Thank you, that felt great. Would you like to give me another one?" If the person is gullible enough to offer you another take that one too and repeat the destruction and disposal. Keep it up for as long as the person keeps offering. At some point, you may want to say that this could go a whole lot faster if you would like to give me your pack. You can destroy all of the cigarettes that way in one fell swoop.

I can assure you that if you stick to this game plan the person is eventually going to stop offering you cigarettes. Cigarettes are just too expensive to keep up this kind of routine over a long time period. By the way, you should not feel any guilt for destroying the cigarettes of another person. Once a person is offering you a cigarette he or she should not be expecting to get it back. If you smoke the cigarette it is no longer available for the person or if you destroy the cigarette it is no longer available either.

If the person is indeed making the offer to somehow give you some sort of pleasure the odds are you will get some sort of pleasure out of destroying them. If not pleasure you should get a little amusement out of the reaction from the person as they see their hard-fought efforts to get you to smoke get instantly trashed.

This action will likely result in the other person feeling a whole lot more irritated by the altercation than you will. More importantly, though, you will by example be proving to the person and to yourself that your quit is strong and your resolve is totally intact to stick to your personal commitment to Never Take Another Puff.

Joel

Newer version of video specifically dealing with offers from people who know you have quit:

• How to deal with people offering cigarettes after you have quit

Related article:

• Negative support from others (article)