How hard is it wo quit smoking?

It's been four weeks since the smoking ban came into effect in England, but how is everyone doing?

The answer is that smokers are still smoking just as much, but now they are doing it in the streets more and in beer gardens and in open public places.

Smokers will obviously carry on smoking if they so wish, but when you come to decide to quit remeber that now you will be creating new smoking routines and patterns of behaviour. Smoking is for the most part in your head and mind, when you change the way you look at cigarettes, quitting will be ten times easier and ten times quicker.

You should be able to quit relatively easily inside four weeks. Don't expect it to be a complete piece of cake or to be done in a few days. Be reastic and set yourself acheiveable goals.

Nicotine Addiction

Have you ever asked yourself or any other smoker - how adicted are you to nicotine?

Yes cigarettes are addictive, but how much? And how Much do you and your body really NEED cigarettes and the nicotine in them?

If you count the amount of cigarettes you really need in a day there probably won't be more than ten at the very most. Yet you almost definitely smoke more, so there are other reasons for smoking.

Anyway, a good way to find out how much you really need cigarettes is to ask yourself these questions - how many cigarettes do you smoke at night? How many times do you get up in the middle of the night to smoke a cigarette?
Not how many times have you smoked at night, but how many times in your whole smoking life have you woken up specifically to have a cigarette?

I have ver, very rarely found a person who has answered this question with once or more. The answer you give to this question will give you an ideas as to how much your body really needs nicotine. After all that's why cigarettes are so addictive right - because your body needs them.

If your body doesn't need them at night, then perhaps you are not as addicted as you think. Now all you have to do is figure out how to break your addiction.

Quitting Smoking With Help

When it comes to quitting smoking I advise you to get some help.

It can come in two forms - a spcialist - not someone who just going to reccommend nicotine replacement therapy, but someone who has a proven track record using tried and tested techniques and behavioural changes.

Or it can come in the form of a quit buddy. Quit buddys can be a pretty good idea, for a start you can swap ideas on what has worked / doesn't work for you. You can discuss the benefits of carrying on smoking compared to the benefits of quitting. You can both find a new activity that will distract you from smoking and you can support each other when times are tough.

Quitting smoking on your own, with nicotine patches and gums or with will power can be extremely difficult and can take up to ten attempts. Find someone who can give you the best tips and advice to help you quit in one attempt, in a few weeks rather than in seven frustrating attempts over eight or none months.

Don't forget that at least 84% of people who try to quit on their own or with patches will ultimately FAIL and will be smoking again in a matter of months - it's innevitable. Quick-fix methods don't work, they are the equivalent of a 'get-rich quick' scheeme - sound like a good idea, show some prmise but ultimately are a complete let down and you often end up worse that when you started off.

So you can't quit smoking

A lot of smokers struggle and fail to quit, and the reasons behind the failed quit attempt are countless. But usually they boil down to lack of preparation which leads to

* withdrawal symptoms
* weight gain
* stress overload
* constant focus on cigarettes

These are all problems you could face when you quit. So it is important to address your reasons for quitting to ensure that you are able to see yourself through these troublesome times. Are you quitting for yourself or for a friend, for the doctor, for your children and family etc.

By far the best thing to do is quit for yourself and your own personal reasons - and use your family / friedns as support and motication.

However, when you stop smoking for yourself it's a good idea to use your emotions. The best way I can explain this is to tell you how a friend of mine quit smoking some fifteen years ago. My friend told me that when he was in his mid twenties he drank a lot and did plenty of drugs and was partying at every opportunity he got. Of course smoking was an integral part of his social life, it just went hand in had.

But one night he had a bad experience - he took som many drugs, drank so much and smoked so much that he collpased and as he recalled, 'thought I was going to die.' He was in a bad way for the next three days and felt like he had ten hangovers at once.

Anyway, the experience was so bad that he decided to give up the drugs and the drinking and the smoking - in his mind as he recalled 'smoking was the key to it all.' He told me how he was so scared to go through that experience again that he wanted to stop smoking, as it seemed to him to be the connecting factor between the smoking and the drugs.

Every time he had a craving or felt the effects of withdrawal he just saw an image of himself on that night an din the following days and it got him through it.

This is a very good example of how someone has used their emotions to make their reasons for stopping smoking, stonger and completely outweigh the reasons for smoking.

If you really want to quit, the you should learn how to rebalance your smoking scales as I call them in my book - make the things that make you want to quit, completely outweigh, out focus and completely destroy your reasons for smoking.

Smoking Ban 1st July 2007

It's the first of july 2007, and from today smokers will no longer be able to smoke in public places in England.

So now you'll have to find somewhere else to light up. It can prove to be a struggle for some who tend to smoke almost twice as many cigarettes a day when they go out on the town and those who work in or near public places.

So my suggestion to you is to find out the kind of things that make you smoke when you are in a public place and either break the association or establish new routines that don't involve cigarettes and smoking.

This will work well for you if you are trying to stop smoking and if you just want to cut down or prevent cravings and reminders when you are in public. The worst thing you can do by far is complain about it and constantly focus your mind on cigarettes - you always want the one thing you can't have. So talking about cigarettes will only make it worse for you.