My freshman year of high school was a year of discovery: discovering the attention of girls, discovering the effects of drugs and alcohol and discovering cigarettes and their ability to complement all social interactions. My first cigarette smoking experience was typical: A few friends and I were hanging out at someone’s house. Just like in the commercials, one of them pulls out that small, rectangular box and says, “Look what I got.”

I started out as what some people would call a “social smoker.” This is a term that a young smoker holds fast to, not wanting to associate with those hacking adults outside of office buildings and restaurants. Being a social smoker meant smoking only in certain social situations and bumming, never buying, cigarettes. Call it a prelude to a fix.

The Costs and Rewards of My Addiction

What started out as a social activity turned into asking for bathroom passes to step outside for a smoke, smoking after visiting the gym or before the orthodontist and having to sneak cigarettes around my family. Not to mention having to take a huge chunk out of my weekly paycheck, for which I’d put in endless hours as a stock boy at a pharmacy. There were, however, things about smoking habitually that I definitely enjoyed: the luxurious, after-meal smoke; the coffee break smoke; or my favorite—the “driving a car and listening to Bruce Springsteen” smoke.

At the end of my senior year of high school, I was still smoking, and still thoroughly enjoying it. Sure, I had tried a few times to quit, one particular attempt ended with me literally running to a cigarette vendor. Most attempts just ended with me thinking about how unnecessary it was to quit. Going through pain and heartache to stop doing something I really loved seemed like a very silly concept to me. It would, however, be only days after graduation that I would have my last cigarette.

The Accidental End

I guess you could say I quit smoking by accident. The summer before college, I had signed up for a community service program to help build a school in a small Andean village in Ecuador. Three days after graduating from high school, looking over the terms and agreements of the program, I noticed a small statement and a checkbox that told me I would not be smoking any cigarettes during the five-week trip. Uh-oh.

I had to make a decision. I could either go about my entire trip sneaking cigarettes and constantly worrying about getting caught, or I could quit. And for once, quitting didn’t seem like such an outlandish idea.

When I got to Ecuador, I found out that young people smoking cigarettes has a very bad stigma attached to it. My exposure to smoking in Ecuador was limited. There were only a handful of smokers in the village, in contrast to home, where virtually all of my friends smoked (or used to—many of them have recently quit).

Not smoking was hard at some points. Cigarettes had become a big part of my life. I missed them most after meals, when I was bored, and especially, during the long days of volunteer work, when I pined for that well-earned smoking break.

During those five weeks without cigarettes, I had the opportunity to reflect on why I started smoking in the first place. There was a physical addiction, yes, but smoking definitely symbolized something for me on an emotional level. It was something I’d done for years with my best friends. I thought it made me different, edgy and alternative, which in some ways it did. I thought it added to my personality, kind of gave it shape.

But smoke-free in Ecuador, I found that I was the same person: different, edgy and alternative.

Not Worth the Bother Anymore

So when I returned to New Jersey and was faced with the opportunity to smoke a cigarette, I immediately thought about all the hard work that came with letting it go. And all of a sudden, it just wasn’t worth the bother anymore. It also helped that my friends were nothing but supportive about my decision. With the whole nonconformist, “above the influence” thing going, I knew I was the same Mike Schwab—maybe even cooler.

It’s been several months since my last cigarette, and I can happily say that I don’t feel very tempted. In fact, when I see all these college kids, nervously puffing away in the freezing cold, I feel quite proud—not to mention healthier and a little less broke.

Michael Schwab is a Sex, Etc. contributor who lives in New Jersey.