Smoking can take you to the depth of your personality. It is not as bad as heroine but the challenge of giving up might even prove to be jarring for your family. It would be so much easier if you could just give up smoking by taking some multivitamin. In fact there is a lot more work to be done before you can fully access the amazing ways to give up smoking.

1. The only person that needs convincing is you. It is important that you are committed to the cause or everything else will be a waste of time and money. You should make sure that you give up with conviction rather than just following the fashionable trends. The best motivation is your own determination. The power to give up smoking lies in you and you have to harness it in order to overcome this habit.
2. Keeping busy might take you away from the cravings. For example you might decide to look for a hobby or complete a household chore that you have always been meaning to accomplish. This is the setting that you need to ensure that you can concentrate on the process of giving up the habit. Do not be tempted to overwork because that will induce stress and send you straight back to the smoking.
3. Some people have used dummies to keep them away from smoking. They will place something in their mouth that resembles a cigarette but when in fact they are not smoking at all. Gradually they will stop getting the craving. It is a good idea to go back to see where they have gone wrong but with a dummy all those psychological battles are simplified. It becomes a physical rather than emotional battle.
4. After a few weeks of being clean it pays to go and smell a room or piece of clothing that has stale smoke. That smell is so appalling that it might put you off the habit forever. At the same time you have to be wary of the fact that it might turn out to be rather attractive. Avoid the smoking for old times’ sake.
5. Do not feel sorry for yourself. Some people descend into self pity which gives them some sort of justification to go back to smoking. This is the wrong approach and you will pay the price for it.

If you learn how to stop smoking then you will be well on your way to improving your health status. If and when you take the plunge, it will be a seismic stage in your quest to have a healthier lifestyle. Of course you might even get the added benefit of not having to treat mouth ulcers and other conditions that are associated with smoking. These are a few tips on the ways in which you can ensure that you have the very best chances of overcoming a habit that has tested the most resilient people on earth including the president of the United States of America!

1. Keep a record of your successes. They will help you to remain positive in situations whereby the cravings are just killing you. If you celebrate your success then you will fear to lose all that effort for nothing. A chart of milestones will also help you to navigate the different formulations of the journey. Those people that have religious leanings might even pray during the stages so that they get encouragement in their quest.
2. Smoking should be given up gradually. Instead of the pack, start going for four then move down to one. It is then easier to delete the practice from your lifestyle. However if you jump straight from the packet to nothing then the body will not get the chance to adjust. You will be creating more problems than solutions by your abrupt changes.
3. Se clear and firm targets. Vague promises to quite at some unspecified time in the future will lead you nowhere. You must put in the work to ensure that you are quitting at the right time. It is in your best interests to constantly look for strategies that can guarantee that you will be able to overcome this personal task.
4. If you have a spouse then let them be part of the support network that keeps you going. They will have the authority and audacity to tell you off if you fail to follow the withdrawal program. They will also comfort you in the hard times when you become very moody.
5. Do not replace one addition for another. For example it is very foolish to run away from smoking and then jump straight into drinking. You will be in perpetual rehab. The best thing is to keep clean once you have gotten rid of the smoke.

You can access some amazing ways to quit smoking if you put in the effort. This article gives you some hints and tips on the best ways in which to achieve this objective. These tips will ensure that you are always on top of your game when it comes to giving up the smoke. Perhaps one of the novel ideals that have been presented is the use of anti chewing tobacco. Nevertheless there are some conventional ways that have been used to great effect.

• Withdrawal symptoms: it is important to be prepared for the difficulties that are presented by the withdrawal symptoms. These can become so severe that they might even persuade you to give up altogether. It is important to keep a clear mind and to concentrate on the objective which is to win the battle against the smoke. The symptoms might include a feel of anxiety or general sickness. There will be persistent headaches and boredom. After a few weeks these will go away.
• Never return to smoking: If you have been fortunate enough to overcome the habit then it is extremely foolish to go back on your work. It will make you appear to be weak and unprepared for the challenge that smoking presents. You must be firm and fully committed to getting clean. Do not wipe out all the achievements that you have made.
• Always remain positive: It is easy for people to look from the sidelines and tell you to be positive when in reality you are feeling like hell. That is something that you have to put up with but if you are positive about your chances of overcoming the smoking habit then it is likely that you will be able to quit.
• Do not mix medication: This is very dangerous especially if you are using patches or gums. They contain chemicals that might become very dangerous if they are mixed with other medicines. The advice of a doctor is always useful in these situations. They will know what kinds of things that you are advised to keep away from.
• Join a support group: There are support groups for people that are trying to give up smoking. You should join one and make sure that you are sticking to it. That way there will be people that are in a similar position who can support you in your quest.

Making Connections

Since most habitual behaviours don’t require conscious thought (hey that’s why they are habits right?), we rarely spend time thinking about that habit. It can be quite illuminating to sit down in a quiet environment, away from riotous kids and niggling chores, and really reflect on your smoking habit. Go back in time through your memories and try to identify the precise moment you started smoking. As you travel through your memory banks you will probably make a connection, and not necessarily just one, with a specific event that had an impact on your smoking. It could be that a break-up with a cherished girlfriend or boyfriend in your teens started you smoking; or perhaps a negative family incident caused the habit to start.

By exploring how past events may have influenced your smoking you can determine whether in fact you need to resolve some deep emotional issue first before you can really tackle stopping smoking. If the event that is fuelling your smoking habits isn’t dealt with you will find it much harder to quit smoking.

Breaking Connections

Once you have identified one or more key past events that may have started you smoking you should seek ways to break the connections. There is scientific evidence in the realm of psychology that suggests we form memory links between the emotionally charged events that occur in our lives and our physical bodies.

You will be aware that when you recall a strongly emotional past event, whether positive or negative, there is often some physical feelings that seem to accompany the memory. This is the link mentioned previously; our thoughts produce physical reactions in our body. Fear is a classic example of this. When we think about something that frightens us we nearly always also actually feel the sensations that go with the emotion of fear even when the object of that fear isn’t near by; we are not in danger and yet we can manifest the physical feelings of our fear simply by thinking about what causes our fear. Phobias are the most well known form of this phenomenon.

When such a past event is linked in this way to smoking, for example when we remember something negative from the past our immediate reaction is to seek solace in a cigarette, it becomes very difficult to abandon the one thing that appears to help us i.e. the smoking. However, the good news is it is possible, and often very simple, to break these emotional connections and open the way to breaking the smoking habit completely.

The four big killers from cigarette smoking are lung cancer, heart attack, stroke and Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease or COPD. The lung cancer is not the only form of cancer that smokers put themselves at markedly higher risk of either.

Smokers represent 90% of all male lung cancer sufferers and 80% of all women lung cancer sufferers, of whom, 90% die within 5 years of diagnosis. Smoking also increases the risk of other cancers. Amongst the plethora of other diseases, smoking enhances the risk of cervical cancer, cancers of the mouth, lip and throat, cancer of the pancreas, bladder cancer, cancer of the kidney, stomach cancer, liver cancer and leukaemia.

Of course smokers are made totally aware of the illnesses that they risk as a result of their habit. Health warnings are emblazoned everywhere. Governments and health organisations around the world continue to berate smokers with warnings and images of the diseases they are risking as a result of smoking. The reason they argue being that smokers are intelligent and can make choices when given the appropriate evidence. As an ex-smoker (and a happy one at that), I disagree.

The problem with their argument is that these health organisations and governments think that smokers smoke out of choice. This is blatantly not so. To understand the flaw in this idea I suggest we do a little mental experiment:

Let us imagine we take a smoker and a non-smoker as our subjects. We then starve the subjects for 24 hours but give them water so they will not die. We then offer them some food of their individual choice, whether it be soup or stew or curry or cake, they get to choose. Then let us poison this food in front of each subject and tell the subject we are poisoning his or her food. Stick with me here… both of our subjects are famished and both know that their favourite food in front of them is laced with poison and will kill them if they eat it.

Which one is more likely to go ahead and eat the poisoned food, the smoker or the non-smoker?

Neither of them of course, but now ask yourself this question;

“Which one of them is no longer hungry because the food is poisoned?”

Do you see the problem? Just because something may be bad for you and you know that, does not necessarily mean you will not want it. Smoking is not a matter of choice, just as eating isn’t. Smoking to a smoker is a means of obtaining nicotine and the craving for that nicotine is going to be no less when you tell him or her that it’s delivered by a health destroying, cancer instigating, stroke inducing, emphysema causing, heart attack inducing cigarette.

Nicotine delivery is most effective when taken as smoke from cigarettes, rolling or pipe tobacco. It gets delivered fast to the bloodstream and fast to the brain where it is wanted. Nicotine patches, gums, sprays and inhalators all deliver nicotine but it takes several minutes for the delivery. Smoking takes less than 10 seconds to get the nicotine to the brain and that is important because the cravings are short lived but intense, hence smokers prefer to smoke than have a patch dribbling them a little of what they are addicted to.

Once you can understand that nicotine addiction is the problem and you understand that you must overcome that addiction, you build on your chances of becoming a happy non-smoker.

Part of the problem with the government sponsored and pharmaceutical company led solutions to smoking are that they re-enforce the belief that quitting smoking is difficult and they try to solve what they see as a problem of tobacco smoke by giving the addict the drug in a different form such as NRT.

For years now, NRT has been preached as the saviour of smokers around the world, just as methadone has been preached as the solution to heroin addiction. Neither are terribly effective at achieving the goal of bringing people back to normality; i.e. being nicotine or heroin free. Governments and health organisations need to think more about the addiction smokers have to cigarettes because of the nicotine than brow-beating them with bad news about the health effects.

Arguably 80% of smokers are motivated to quit smoking, but motive does not necessarily provide means and opportunity. If smoking is to be overcome, a smoker must not just “not want to smoke”, they must believe that they have no desire to smoke. Only once a smoker can lose the desire for cigarettes, can they become happy non-smokers. Understanding how they can reach the point of not desiring a cigarette is key in removing the perennial problem of relapsing ex-smokers.