How to stop smoking depends on who you are. What works for some people may or may not work for you, depending on your environment, your lifestyle, your metabolism and brain chemistry, and your personal motivation to kick the habit. Try everything and anything to quit smoking, including these strategies.
Substitutes
Most smokers are afraid of withdrawal symptoms. Nicotine substitutes, such as gum, lozenges, and patches, have proven to be very effective in helping to curb these unpleasant symptoms. While you are still addicted to nicotine, chewing a nicotine gum, for example, is better than smoking.
Illustrate The Expense
Calculate how many packs of cigarettes you smoke each month. If you smoke two packs a day and cigarettes are $7 per pack in your area, you are spending $420 a month on cigarettes. Take four real $100 bills and 20 $1 bills and incinerate them in the ultimate demonstration of the finances lost to cigarettes. This demonstration will hurt, but it needs to hurt to get you to quit. Do this in front of your family members and watch their reaction if you really need motivation to quit.
Set A Date
Most smoking cessation programs suggest that you set a date, sometime in the next few months, on which to quit. Plan this day as if it were a big event in your life. Plan to celebrate by throwing yourself a smoking freedom party. Set your date and remind yourself constantly that you are going to stop smoking on this day. Get all your tools and resources ready before the big day arrives.
Face The Truth
Find out about the ugly health consequences of smoking by visiting websites like the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association. Learn about COPD, the first stage of emphysema. Look at pictures of smokers' lungs after autopsies. Learn how smoking ages your appearance. Find out how rapidly your health will improve within a few weeks of quitting.
See Your Doctor
Tell your doctor you want to quit and ask about medications that can help you cope with withdrawal symptoms. There are now several mild sedatives available that can help with addiction withdrawals.
Exercise
Take your cigarette funds and use them to join a top-rated gym in your community. Hire a personal trainer at the gym to help you lose weight, or keep weight off after you quit smoking.
Get Support
Enlist the support of family, friends and co-workers in your quest to kick the habit. Join a support group such as Nicotine Anonymous. Seek counseling to lift you over the initial stress period. Hypnosis, acupressure, acupuncture and herbal cures can also help, even if the effects of these methods are only psychosomatic.
Keep Trying
Former smokers are like climbers of Mount Everest: you're not likely to make it to the top the first time you try to scale the mountain. In fact, most quitters indeed fail the first time they try to quit, according to Nicotine Anonymous. If you fail, don't waste time wallowing in defeatism. It's a learning process. Change strategies and try again.
Last Round
Here's a ritual suggested by the makers of Nicorette gum: Smoke your very last cigarette, alone, in front of a mirror in the bathroom. Stand there and watch yourself smoke, puff for puff. Do nothing else. Look yourself in the eye. Experience your love for yourself and your family as you smoke. Take the last puff and then flush the butt in the toilet. Turn off the light in the bathroom and stand there for a moment in the dark. Say, firmly and out loud--and listen to voice say it-- "Okay, enough of this. I quit smoking." Then, step out into the light. Walk away from cigarettes forever. When you're tempted to smoke, think about that moment. You put the cigarettes where they belong: in the toilet with other unpleasant waste products.
References
- "Burning Money: The Cost of Smoking (Tobacco: the Deadly Drug)"; Amy N. Thomas; October 30, 2008
- "Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Smoking Cessation: A Practical Guidebook to the Most Effective Treatments (Practical Clinical Guidebooks)"; Kenneth A. Perkins, Cynthia A. Conklin, and Michele D. Levine; August 20, 2007
- "Quitting Smoking For Dummies (For Dummies (Psychology & Self Help))"; David A. Brizer; September 12, 2003
