Quit Smoking – What Is The Key?

In order to offer as complete information as possible, articles by guest authors will be published regularly at this blog. First out is Steve Bralovich:

Quit Smoking – What Is The Key?

By: Steve Bralovich

Quit smoking and your life will be fuller and you’ll be sick less frequently. That smoker’s cough you have is caused by clogged tissues in your lungs and if you ignore it, you’re probably headed for respiratory complications that will make your life a living hell and may even do you in.

But you probably already know all that because the effects of tobacco use is common knowledge these days. Not like when I was a kid and practically every doctor or nurse smoked. Heck, they even recommend cigarettes to patients as a way to calm the nerves.

However, today despite all the information both on the Internet and in other media, people find it impossible to quit. Why do you think that is?

Could it be that Nicotine is so highly addictive that it literally enslaves it’s victims rendering them virtually helpless to stop? You bet it is. It’s a substance more addictive than cocaine, plus it’s lethal and yet it’s still sold legally around the world.

If smoking has you in its clutches, here’s some practical advice to help you beat the the Nicotine dragon.

Not giving up is your most important tool in kicking the habit. No matter how many times you’ve tried to quit, keep at it. I tried for about 2 years to quit and failed miserably dozens of times. It beat me so often it even made me cry a couple of times. I think about that now and see that what this really did was stiffen my resolve to quit even more. When the day came that I finally found the key to quitting, I was very motivated to use it. I was desperate and totally geared up to quit and you need to be as well. If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it.

What is the key that finally made the difference for me?

It was the acceptance of the idea that I was really an addict. Totally and completely hooked and at the mercy of a substance called Nicotine. I was an addict just like any cocaine or heroin addict.

After all, I experienced the same withdrawal symptoms as any addict. Symptoms such as shakiness, itchiness, sweatiness, tiredness, irritability, loss of productivity, and body aches. And all I had to do to make that go away was just have another cigarette and within just a few puffs it would all disappear. I could not help it and neither can you or you wouldn’t keep reading this.

Face it, if you weren’t an addict you’d be able to quit smoking this very minute and never look back. But you can’t because every time you try, you go through the same thing over and over again.

If you’re not an addict, prove it! Quit right now and never start again. Prove me wrong. I dare you!

It’s not possible is it? That’s because the drug has you. You don’t have the drug.

You can’t control your urges to smoke any more than Norman Bates could control his urges to kill in the Hitchcock thriller Pyscho from the 1960′s.

This IS the key you’ve been looking for. I know because it was for me.

You’ll hear a lot of talk about smoking habits and how you just need the willpower and then you’ll be able to make it… which is true, but only to a degree.

Cigarette addiction is partly physical and partly psychological. But the brain’s physical dependency is the thing that keeps you trapped because it causes real physiological reactions to withdrawal.

If you can get rid of enough of the Nicotine in your system, you then have a fighting chance to break the psychological addiction.

So how does a drug addict get off the drug?

Usually through some form of a temporary crutch that pacifies the urges so that they have time to pass. This is what smoking aids like Nicorette are designed to do. With it you can safely and gradually ween yourself off of Nicotine. It buys you some time so that you can address the other things that keep you smoking.

There are more steps of course but I wanted to introduce you to the real crux of your smoking problem.

If you want to read about some effective techniques based on my own personal experiences in quitting smoking and staying off cigarettes for over 15 years, you should follow the link to my webpage about smoking addiction and how to quit.

Quit smoking for good by keeping in mind what I’ve written here and best of luck in your attempts to kick the habit!

The author is a researcher, writer, and ex-smoker for more than 15 years. For practical tips to help you quit visit the author’s stop smoking webpage

Finding the best quit smoking product

Many smokers who wish the had already quit, are on a continuous hint for the best smoking product that will solve their problem. On of the methods you will no doubt bump into when surfing the web, is the “cold turkey” method. Like the name implies it involves quitting right of the bat – nice and simple. In theory this is something you can do, because it isn’t physically dangerous to quit, as is the case with alcohol for example.

For many smokers however, “just quitting” isn’t really what I would call a strategy. You can simply quit, but you need the right preparation to succeed. I’ll return to that at the end of this post.

Naturally you can also find many other people writing about this subject in the blogosphere. Chris for example, writes about how his wife managed to quit smoking using nicotine patches, and Robet Zemekis is really in to the cold turkey method.

Other alternatives

We’re all different though, and finding the appropriate quit smoking product in each case isn’t easy. Each person may have to try many alternatives until he or she find the one that fits him or her best. Once you have decided on a quit smoking product you’ve just increased significantly your chances of getting healthier and living a better life. If you actually have yet to decide, why don’t have a look at ten reasons to quit smoking over at this blog?
Each quit smoking product has advantages and disadvantages, so you need to think carefully before choosing a treatment. You should definitely strive to get help from your non-smoking friends and family because, regardless of method, especially the first days are usually extremely difficult.

Try to learn all you can about quit smoking products and see which one suits you best. Nicotine replacement in one form or another is one of the most appreciated ways of fighting smoking. It typically involves quit smoking products like nicotine gum, nicotine patch or lozenges. The advantage of replacing the nicotine in your body, thus removing the side effects of quitting, will help you reduce and finally eliminate the nicotine dose without any unpleasant symptoms that are usually associated with nicotine absence.

Natural quit smoking products exist and usually contain a mixture of plants that help along the detoxification process of the body while preventing withdrawal symptoms. Zyban and Wellbutrin are quit smoking products that are advertised to solve the problem in a couple of months. These pills can be bought from any drug store but you will need a prescription from a doctor first.

With any quit smoking product that you actually consume in some way, you should take extra care to test your body’s tolerance for the substance first, or else you may be doing yourself more harm than good.

Personally though, I discovered that it actually wasn’t a patch, gum or medicine I needed to quit – it was actually something much simpler. Here you can read about how to quit smoking using the same method I did. And I might add that this method actually is a lot cheaper than anything mentioned earlier in this post.

Telling the story of how to quit smoking

Among the plethora of quit smoking products and methods out there, there are some very effective approaches – this much is evident in the sheer amount of success stories you hear from the people now living a healthier life without the nicotine addiction. What may not be quite as evident, is that there are much to be gained from actually starting to write your own personal success story even before you have actually manage to lay of the cigarettes for good. Understanding why you need to quit isn’t really the hard part, figuring out how you will actually accomplish that goal is.

The reasons for starting down the road of nicotine addiction may be countless and varied. Among those who start smoking at an early age, “being cool” and doing it due to the social pressure of ones peers is a common reason. Others may maybe have started because of some insecurity or emotional problem, which commonly have folks reaching for drugs, tobacco or alcohol.

What with today’s stricter no smoking policies, it’s becoming more clear that smoking is not cool. As a matter of fact, in light of all the scientific evidence of how hazardous it’s to your health, it could on the contrary be described as a most superfluous activity. In conjunction with the high price (as in dollars) of buying cigarettes or tobacco most people would now agree that, regardless of the reasons you started smoking in the first place, quitting would now be the thing to do.

Unfortunately this is one of the things in life that are “more than meets the eye”.

How to use day dreaming to your advantage

Have you ever caught yourself day dreaming about various subjects? Although this behavior might have been frowned upon when you went to school, it is actually a very powerful ability that you can use to your advantage when it comes to smoking cessation. Reading how people have overcome great difficulties in their lives can be an awe-inspiring experience, and for many people these stories include the battle they have fought against their habit of smoking. Simply by using your imagination – the same thing conjuring up those day dream – you can start writing on the manuscript that details how you put a stop to your nicotine addiction. In fact, I would like to challenge you to start right now.

Learning how others have lived with their smoking habit and at the end managed to quit, can give us many new insights into the reasons people smoke, the excuses we use to continue doing so and – most importantly – the triggers and methods we can use to lay of this counterproductive addiction. When you have managed to stop smoking yourself, you can add to this priceless pool of knowledge in order to quite possibly help others succeed as well. Thanks to the Internet the possibilities for a “collective lay off tobacco campaigns” of this type are limitless.

If you think that success stories and smoking cessation tips others have told you have been beneficial, try to envision that there really is nothing stopping you from doing other smokers the same favor. Going from zero to hero is never easy in any endeavor, and there are never just one way to go about it. Even “the same way” can generate a limitless amount of interesting stories.

So if you really are serious about quitting to smoke (and why shouldn’t you be), you should try to start working on the smoking cessation story involving you as the main character.

Hello world!

Hello world, this blog will (obviously) be about smoking cessation.