How to Quit Smoking for Good
You might only smoke a few cigarettes a day. You might be a pack a day smoker, but regardless of which kind you are, quitting smoking gives you more years to live. You might want to quit and have tried in the past only to fall short of the goal.
You can’t understand why your willpower alone isn’t enough to give up the habit. The answer is because smoking involves both a mental and a physical side. You can become addicted to the mental part of having an addiction and the way the addiction makes you feel physically.
You might not know it isn’t your fault. Nicotine is an addictive chemical that makes you feel good by giving you an adrenaline high and like any addiction, you have to fight it using the right steps. There is no overnight success and there is no one step treatment that will fit every smoker because not all smokers are the same.
By now, you realize that you can’t do it on willpower alone and you know that you need some help. You can join a support group of people who are trying to quit, you can seek hypnosis or you can try other methods like the patch or electronic cigarettes. The success is found in replacement. You have to replace the bad habit with a good one. It takes about three weeks to make something a habit.
Once you make the choice to stop, the next step will be to fight back against the cravings. When the craving for a cigarette hits, reach out to someone who can support you through the craving. If you don’t have support, go somewhere that smoking is not allowed.
Because of the addictive side of cigarettes, you’re going to deal with withdrawals. You’re also going to face temptation. But just like a food addiction, understand that you have to set up your environment to help you have success.
If you have a food addiction to junk food, you wouldn’t keep junk food in the house – that’s setting your environment up for a fall. Don’t keep cigarettes in the house and don’t keep cigarette reminders in your house, either.
Create a success plan that you can follow. Take a calendar that you can mark off the days you’ve been cigarette-free. That will help you to see progress – and having a visual can work as a way to encourage you.
Stay busy and don’t put yourself into situations where the desire to smoke will be harder for you to battle. Change your routine. If you would sit back at the table after a meal and have a cigarette, then get up right after eating and go for a walk.
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