It might be that you have been tempted to start smoking because you associate with other people that do. Maybe you think they must be getting something from it that you might like because they appear to enjoy it a lot. Take the word of most people that are addicted to smoking and believe that they are really not enjoying it very much at all. It is because they are addicted to it. Do you really want to become addicted to something that is one of the hardest things in the history of man to stop doing once you do not like it anymore? Have you ever been addicted to anything else? If you have then you can bet cigarettes will be just as bad or worse.

There are no good reasons for anyone to start smoking. It is as simple as that. If you are being tempted to smoke by those around you, then try to stop being around them. If you want to take up a new hobby, never let it be smoking. If you want to throw away a lot of your hard earned money on a habit that has zero rewards, that would be smoking cigarettes. If you wan to run your health into the ground, that would be cigarettes too. If you want to be tied to an oxygen bottle during your hard earned retirement instead of lying on a beach somewhere, then go ahead and start smoking.

It does not take very much effort to turn down that very first cigarette, What it does take to not smoke a last cigarette is more determination and willpower than you could even imagine. Just do not do it. It might not seem like such a big deal to just have one or two, but one or two a day can quickly turn into one or two packs a day before you know. Then you have a monkey on your back that just never wants to let go. Even if you managed to quit, it is a monkey that many people have to continue running from for the rest of their lives.

The truth is that smokers often place too much faith in whatever product they choose to help them quit. They think that once they slap on a miracle nicotine patch or start using a nicotine gun or inhaler, they are home free. While these products might help to curb your nicotine cravings they will not address the smoking habit itself. This part of the addiction will have to overcome all on your own. There are no products on the market that will help you with the hand to mouth and inhaling addiction..

So many times smokers who have quit will find that even after the nicotine has been removed from their system and they have stopped using the stop smoking aid of their choice, that nagging urge to smoke a cigarette will usually continue. There is not a lot a person can do to solve this part of the problem except use their own willpower and strength. They must stay determined to quit. Sometimes they will begin to feel weak spirited after they are no longer using a product because they feel that they are on their own. In other words, their crutch is gone.

This is not to say that some smoking cessation products do not work for some people, but usually the people they do help are the ones who are absolutely determined to quit. For the most part, smokers that use these products eventually end up going back to smoking. Studies of the results of using these type of products actually show that the number of people who continue to abstain from smoking are very low. Ninety percent or more people that use them will smoke again or never completely stop at all. These odds are not that great.

There are ways that you can stop smoking without having to spend a time on products that are probably not going to help you very much to be successful in the first place. You can choose to quit cold turkey like many people do. This is by far from a fool proof method either because many people that do this end up starting back, but some succeed and it does not cost them any money at all. They must depend solely on themselves from the start.

Then there is the step down gradually method. Since people do not usually start smoking regularly over night, many believe it is too difficult to stop overnight as well. Cutting back on the number of cigarettes you smoke one or two every few days or once a week, seems to work well for many people. They are also on their own from the beginning and have to employ their willpower and determination right away, but they can do it gradually and it appears that it is a less stressful way to quit. This method would be completely free of cost except for the fact that you are continuing to buy cigarettes, but hopefully you will be buying fewer and fewer as you go.

A lot of times when a smoker begins the quitting process they will try to do it cold turkey. This is when they stop all at once and do not smoke anything at all after they have made the commitment. The only problem with that is sticking to the commitment. A smoker can start out in the morning with all the determination in the world, but by the time they have gotten to the afternoon, they just might not be able to take it anymore and give in and have a cigarette. After they have given in and smoked that one cigarette, they usually feel defeated, like they have lost the battle and then they will just forget the whole thing and all of that effort was for nothing.

What most smokers should realize is that any progress at all is progress. Just because you get weak and have one cigarette, that does not mean you have to give up. That is like that old saying about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You just pick up right where you left off and start again. If you continue to do this, even though you do give in here and there, it should get easier to say no to those hard temptations. It might take you weeks to be able to go through an entire day without smoking anything at all, but when you finally reach that point, you are going to feel so empowered that the next day it might be just a little easier to get through it.

Even when you get that far and have went several days without a smoke and then give in and have one, this is most definitely not the time to give up just because you smoked one cigarette. You already know that you are capable of going several days without one, so once again, you start over. Quitting smoking is a process just like starting to smoke was a process. You did not start smoking constantly overnight and chances are you will not be able to quit smoking overnight either. Build your willpower slowly if you have to, but the point is to keep building it. If you give up completely every time you give in and smoke, you will never reach your goal of being smoke free.

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You might have to endure several starts and stops in your journey to quit smoking. Just keep your goal in mind and continue on even when you slip up and have a cigarette.

The damage from smoking cigarettes begins with the mouth, throat, and larynx since that is where the smoke goes first. It can cause throat irritation and irritation to the gum. After you have smoked for a while, you might notice that your voice sounds raspier, this is because it is affecting your larynx. Next the smoke goes into the lungs. It can cause excess mucus and narrowing and swelling of the airways. It can cause the lungs to be less able to clear themselves of poisonous substances. You will cough more and after a while wheeze as well. It causes permanent lung damage.

Smokers realize that smoking causes problems with their breathing because this is one of the smoking side effects that they notice the soonest. It does not mean that other things are not being affected as well that they can not feel. The blood can be stickier and carry less oxygen. The blood pressure and the heart rate will many times begin to be affected. This raises the risks for blockages which can lead to strokes and heart attacks. The linings of the arteries can be damaged causing atherosclerosis which is a build up of fatty deposits on the artery walls. This causes poor blood flow.

These are the damages that most smokers might also know can happen to them. The things they might not know anything at all about is that it can reduce male sperm count and normalcy, reduce female fertility, cause skin wrinkles, early menopause in women, reduce male sex hormones, cause male impotence, contribute to cervix cancer in women, and osteoporosis. The list goes on and on and on. Smoking can affect the unborn baby in pregnant women. It can make it harder to get over colds or the flu. There is no end to the types of cancer you can have develop because of cigarette smoking.

The sad thing is that there is no certain time gauge when you will develop disease from smoking. For some people it might be thirty years, for others it could be twenty or even ten. The longer you smoke, the more at risk you become. The good news is the sooner you quit, the better chance there is that your body will heal itself. If you wait until disease has already set in before you quit, you might have already waited to late to reverse any damage.

There will be suffering associated with quitting. Of that, there is no doubt. You will likely feel like you are wanting one more often since you have decided to start the quitting process. Actually this might not be true. All of the times that present you a temptation to smoke are probably just how often you were smoking before. If you are used to smoking once an hour and you skip an hour, you will think of that cigarette several times during the hour you do not have one. This is where your strength comes in. You must resist, resist. Once you have passed the time you were not supposed to smoke and reached the time you set to have a smoke, go ahead and have it then. Do your best to put it out a puff or two sooner than usual.

There are certain times of the day when you will want to smoke for sure. When you get up, while you drive to work, after you eat, and a lot of other times during your day. You have to learn to put off smoking for as long as you can especially during the peak times of your smoking, so to speak. If you can wait at least half an hour to smoke when you wake up in the morning, this is great. It is progress. If you can wait half an hour or an hour to smoke after you eat, this is progress. Not smoking a cigarette right before you go to sleep is progress. Set a time at night when you are going to have the last cigarette of the day and stick to it. It needs to be at least an hour before you lie down and try to make it a little earlier every few night so you continue to make progress.

How fast or how slow you choose to get the tobacco out of your life is up to you. The entire process is not going to be any fun or easy, but you can do it if you make your mind up to do it. Keep up with the number you smoke each day and try to reduce it by one more cigarette everyday if you can and if this pace works for you. Some might be more comfortable cutting out an additional cigarette once every two or three days. As long as you continue to reduce the numbers of smokes and work on waiting to have those smokes for as long as possible, you are making progress and that means you are still on your way to quitting.

This smoke does not have to come from a cigarette either. But this is one type of smoke that we have some kind of control over. Smoke can come from many places with most of them being out of our control. But the simple fact is that none of this smoke is good for you. It alone can put you in the hospital or send you to your doctor. Most of the problems you receive from smoke can stay with you permanently. Some of the problems you might get rid of, but only by treatments or those treatments after surgeries. Those treatments might get rid of the problems, but they will make you so sick that you wished that you did not have to have them.

If you do not smoke, think really hard and long before you smoke that first one. Ask your family members who smoke if they had the choice would they keep smoking or never start. Do not let your friends talk you into the smoking them either. Put it this way, if a friend told you to jump off a building, would you? If you let them talk you into smoking that cigarette, then it would be like they talked you into the jumping off of a building. Your friends really do not care if you smoke or not. If they are a friend then they would not ask you to do this. Just like the saying about friends do not let friends drive drunk, friends should not entice friends to smoke.

Always remember that smoking is bad no matter what. Even though some people start out only smoking a few a day, this will not likely last for long. Most smokers go through at least a pack a day after they have been doing it for a while and once they reach this point, it is very difficult for most of them to quit.

Those who do not smoke have no idea how stressful quitting smoking can be. Stress and anxiety can run rampant in someone who is giving up cigarettes. A smoker has to be able to handle the stress and anxiety if they stand any chance at all of giving them up. One thing that many smokers will say is that as soon as their life settles down and everything gets calm, they will try to quit. The only thing is that life rarely settles down enough for most of us and even if it does for a while and you try to quit, you will find that as soon as you try to skip that first smoke, you will be in anxiety land for sure.

Some people find it impossible to stop smoking without some help of some kind. Some just want to quit cold turkey, but that can be the most difficult way of all. It is always a good idea to see your doctor if you are serious about quitting smoking. It is not that you have to try one of the stop smoking pills that have proved to be very dangerous for some people, but you might need a pill of some kind. Many people do resort to taking a mild anxiety medication, at least temporarily, to help them while they are quitting smoking.

This is not something that is a bad idea necessarily, because it does help sometimes. Just remember that when you have an addictive personality, as some smokers obviously do, it can be dangerous to any medication that you could become addicted to in place of cigarettes so you must use caution and only take medications as recommended. Talk it over with your doctor first. If you try it without any help and see that you can not make it, then maybe a mild medication might help you through the roughest part. If you manage to quit smoking, it will have all been worth it.

You have to learn to smoke fewer and fewer cigarettes each day. You might start with twenty when you smoke more than a pack per day and work your way down from there. When you feel like to can eliminate one more cigarette in a day, do it and do not allow yourself to go backwards. This is the only way this method will work. Even if you slip up and smoke one more in a day than you were supposed to, do not let it be what talks you into giving up. Just start the next day right where you left off and try it again. This is one instance when a quitter can not quit.

It will depend on you which cigarettes during the day you want to cut out first. Pick one time when you always smoke and eliminate that one time each day until you are accustomed to not having a smoke, perhaps at lunch time. For some smokers the easiest one to do away with first might be the one you smoke when you first get up in the morning. Breaking the habit of smoking a cigarette with that first cup of coffee in the morning could be a huge triumph for you. For someone else it might be not smoking after they finish a meal or not smoking while they are driving. Just pick one and get started.

You know before you start that even though you are going to try and stop gradually, it is still going to be a constant temptation that you will have to battle until you have weaned yourself off of cigarettes completely, and even then the desire to smoke will likely linger on for months to come. Some people say they still have the temptation to smoke even after they have been stopped smoking for years. It is all in how much you really want to quit. If you want it bad enough, you will do what it takes to be successful.

Thirty five dollars might not seem like that much, but to some people who have to live on a tight budget, it is a day of groceries. It can be a night at the movies, if you live in a small town. It can be a minor part for your car. Thirty five dollars goes farther than you think when you need it. Can you think of one single reason that you need to buy some cigarettes?

You have to face the fact that smoking is nasty. It is unhealthy. It makes you smell bad. It turns your teeth yellow and ages your skin faster than it normally would. It can interfere with your job, your social life, and even your family life. It stinks up your house and your car. It leaves brown residue on your clothes and other belongings. Have you heard anything that sounds like a good reason to smoke yet?

No one can tell you that you have to quit. This is something that you have to decide on your on. It might help you if you have other reasons to quit, like a spouse that hates it or kids that do not need to be exposed to it, but for the most part you have to do it for yourself. You have to want to quit to be healthier. You have to want to save that wasted money. You have to want to change your life for the better.

Quitting smoking is no where near all about the money you could save. It is about being healthier. It is about living longer. It is about having a more active and enjoyable life. The last thing it is really about is the money, although the money might come in handy in your new life. Your life will change dramatically when you quit smoking. After you manage to get over the shock of it and the withdrawal from it, you will be happier, healthier, and richer.

Some of the hardest times to not smoke a cigarette are the ones you depend on the most. When you first get up in the morning. Right after meals. When you are on the phone. When you are driving. When you are watching television. On your breaks at work. Some people are even addicted to them after sex. These are likely to be the times that are hardest to break. What might be a good idea to start with first is setting some new ground rules for your smoking.

If you smoke more than a pack of cigarettes a day, the first step down is not to allow yourself to smoke more than a pack a day obviously. If you are only about a pack a day smoker, then cut out your smokes by five the very first day. This will still be enough to allow you to have the smoke breaks you want the most, but you can eliminate the smokes in between these times.

Give yourself a few days or a week at this level. If all goes well and at the end of a week if you have decreased the number you smoked by five every day, eliminate one more. Try a few days at that number. How fast or slow you eliminate another cigarette per day is up to you, but try not to allow yourself to get stuck on a certain number too long without removing one more.

Eventually you will get to the times when you have to eliminate a smoke when you get up or skip one on a break at work. You might learn to do without one on the way to or from work. This system can work if you are really serious and it is much less stressful than trying to quit all at once. What have you got to lose by trying it? The only thing that can happen is you end up smoking less for a while even if you do not quit completely.