I grew up in a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone, and where the forbidden has a special taste.
I was 13 the first time I smoked. My friends and I would go out into nature, far from anyone’s eyes, with kif and cigarettes. Later came hashish. And in those nine years, I never stopped. Not a week, not a month. Not a day.
Smoking stopped being something I did and became who I was. The first thing I needed when I woke up was to smoke. My parents kept finding hashish and joints on me, and every time, it destroyed them. In my family, people started pointing me out to their children as a warning. I was convinced I would die with a cigarette in my hand.
The day I quit
What changed me wasn’t a huge event. It was one small idea that got into my head and wouldn’t leave: I can stop everything, in one day.
Then I read Allen Carr’s book on quitting smoking. I read it in two days, and I quit — the kif, the hashish and the cigarettes, all at once. I still had all of it right there in front of me. The next morning, I woke up and didn’t smoke. And I was happy.
The first days were a bit hard. I was irritable, and sleep was hard for two nights. After that, I started sleeping better than I ever had.
Four years later
It has now been four years, and I have never gone back. My body went from 60 kilos to 80. I play sports. I sit with my parents and actually feel at ease. My days are good on their own.
I’m not a doctor. I’m not a specialist. I’m someone who went through it, and came out. I first wrote the book in Moroccan Darija, the language I thought in while I was addicted, and the language I quit in. What you can read here is the English version.
Why I write anonymously
The story matters more than the name on it. Writing under a pen name lets me tell it without decoration, including the parts I’m not proud of and the parts about my family, and it lets you read it as what it is: one person’s way out, not a brand.
