How to Quit Smoking

Smoking cigarettes is more than just nicotine addiction, it is a psychological habit. By breaking each positive experience you link to smoking, you will have a much better chance of quitting.

Rather than thinking of smoking as one habit, start thinking of it as lots of habits, and handle each habit one at a time.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• will power
• a desire to quit smoking

1. List all the moments that you associate with or desire a cigarette. For example, smoking after a meal, after sex, before a meeting, at a bar, out with friends, after exercise.
   
   Like Pavlov's dog, you have positive associations between smoking and other things, so it is like a daily ceremony you're performing.

2. Pick one thing from your list and consciously avoid smoking (break the tradition!) An easy one to start with is smoking right after a meal. Set yourself a goal to wait for that cigarette until say an hour after eating. Once you have successfully broken the food & smoking habit, try cutting out the cigarette right after you wake up.

3. Make a rule to not smoke indoors and follow that rule. If you are at a bar, in your home, or even in your car, make yourself go outdoors before you can have a cigarette. This will ease the challenge of breaking the other habits on your list.

4. Continue to eliminate one habit at a time, smoking after sex, smoking while driving, etc.
   
   The hardest habit for many to break is smoking while drinking or social bar smoking. Whatever your hardest habit is, feel free to wait to attack it. If you try to overcome the most difficult thing first, it will keep you from overcoming the easy things.

5. Give yourself a deadline for breaking at least 3/4 of your smoking rituals. When you reach that deadline, it is time to set a new deadline for quitting completely. Yes, eventually that day will come when you really must decide that your last cigarette will be your last LAST cigarette. Until that deadline, and long after you quit, keep telling yourself that you really don't need cigarettes anymore.
   
   Once you quit, never start again. Not even once. No matter how convinced you are that you can have one and stop at one, you are risking a re-addiction. You worked hard to quit, why waste all that effort?

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[gahton21]

on 1/2/2009 These are great tips. I am trying to quit smoking for my new years res. I will follow these tips for shure..