Hisham is considering punching a wall every five minutes on his second attempt at quitting smoking. “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times,” goes the adage often attributed to Mark Twain. That may be truer than we know, as a University of Toronto study suggests it’s more likely it’ll take a smoker 30 attempts or more to go a full year without any cigarettes. The study flies in the face of conventional wisdom, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting 8 to 11 attempts, while the American Cancer Society believes 8 to 10. And so, the daunting futility is making a trip to the koshk very tempting at the moment.

Using data from the Ontario Tobacco Survey, the study published this week tracked the smoking status of 4,501 recent smokers (most of whom smoked daily) over a three year period. At the end of its, 3,960 were still smoking. 1,277 people made an attempt to quit and on average, it took about 2.7 attempts per person. Factoring in the longevity of the habit and the occasional “slip ups”, researchers calculate the average attempts at quitting to reach success at 30. This is not surprising considering the addictive power of nicotine which research suggest is as powerful as heroine, so it is reasonable to expect relapse rates as high a heavy narcotic. According to Brian Kans from Healthline, this means we “learn” how to quite simply through trial and error, as figuring out what works may take some time.

What do you do with data like this? This is my second truly real attempt at it and it is already falling apart three weeks in. My will power appears to faltering the longer I am at it. For me personally, it comes down to a change in the environment. Ramadan was spent with non-smokers, then Ramadan ended. But these are excuses to soften the effects of the shame of the inevitable relapse. Reading the study is already making question my attempt. On the other hand, I don’t feel as much distress about failure, because science has vindicated my relapse, which too has softened the shame. And in some ways, has filled me with a measure of hope that will sustain me through my next ten relapses. Wishing all those quitting much success.