Greetings and peace be with you jeremy;
I liked the prayer advice from truthforpeace, quitting is personal, and you need to search for your own best way.
When I smoked I used to kid myself and say smoking helped to calm my nerves, but the exact opposite is the truth. You have a smoke and the nicotine wears off, so you need to top it up again so that your nerves will be OK. Cigarettes cause the problem, they are not a part of the calming solution.
People give up in many different ways, I feel it is really important to sort the mind out first, you have to want to quit, you need to convince yourself you can do it, after all many people do. You are no different to all the people who have kicked the habit.
I tried two or three times to give up, but my mind wasn’t really convinced I could do it, I had left a couple of excuses open whereby I could start again if things got tough.
Looking back at the times I failed I can recall I wasn’t feeling very convinced I could quit. It is a hundred percent to do with the mind, I stopped without patches or help from doctors, I depended on my own determination.
In a way it is not worth trying to quit unless you really make a determined effort to sort the mind out first. Being angry with myself for letting a stupid white stick get the better of me, is a good place to start, anger is a powerful emotion, but It only worked for me because I directed the anger at myself for being so stupid and weak.
When you decide you are going to stop, don’t wait until you have run out of tobacco, instead go and locate all your tobacco at home, work the car and anywhere else you might keep it. Destroy it in some way, soak it in engine oil, throw it in some one else’s dirty bin, do it last thing at night.
Somehow you have to convince yourself you mean business.
Before you give up smoking admit to yourself all your known weaknesses and excuses of why you may not succeed. At some point you are going to be bored, you are going to come into contact with a smoking mate, you are going to get stressed, you are going to be in a shop selling tobacco, you are going to be out with social smokers, you are going to think I can just have one.
Be ruthless and make it personal, you are the only person who knows yourself, go through all the weaknesses and excuses that apply to you. You have to be truthful to yourself.
The first one to two weeks are going to be hell, then it will start getting slightly better, you fight the beast moment by moment, one hour at a time, one day at a time. Some times it will feel easier than others, and at times it will seem hell..
I can remember the first six months of not smoking, I developed a smoker’s cough, and coughed up loads of gunge, but it definitely felt better afterwards.
Giving up is not about the first day, or the first month or the first ten years, it is a lifetime strategy. It is almost pointless giving up for three years and starting again; it is all to do with the mind.
One thing that has helped me is to acknowledge that I am afraid of cigarettes, I know even now that if I just have a couple of drags I will be smoking again.
Tell all your smoking friends that you have given up, and tell them not to offer you any in future.
The strategy that helped me the most, is you only have to cut out all the fags that you need or enjoy the most, like the first one in the morning, or with drinks and meals at times of stress or boredom.
So you cut out the first one in the morning then you just delay and delay having the next one. If you have to have one; have it without a drink or in any other non-enjoyable way.
If you really have to have one, have the smoke at a time that will give you the least possible enjoyment or reward, and if you are not going to get much out of it, do you really need it?
I have total belief and faith that both you can and will quit.
Now you don’t have to believe me, you only have to believe in yourself.
In the spirit of striving to beat the beast,
Eric