A Simple System to Quit Smoking Cigarettes

Quitting smoking is one of the best things you can do for your health and probably one of the toughest to accomplish. I was a smoker for 10 years before I finally quit. And I use the word "finally" very loosely here. I have not had a cigarette in 15 months but it is still hard for me to think of myself as a nonsmoker. It is even more difficult to believe that I will never go back to smoking again.

I would not presume to tell anyone that I had a sure fire way of quitting smoking. Everyone is different and as a result I believe different things will work for different people. All I can really share with you is how I finally did it.

I decided to pick a day. I marked it on the calendar and convinced myself that I had to begin the process of quitting by that date. You can pick a day of the week a day of the month or just wake up one day and go for it. But I am a bit of a procrastinator and I felt that I needed a deadline.

Once the date arrived I simply tried to smoke less. I attempted to accomplish this in a slightly unconventional way however. Every morning when I woke up I would see how long I could go before I felt that I had to have a cigarette. At first I could only wait an hour or so. But as the days went by I found myself waiting much longer before I would light up that first cigarette of the day.

After a while I wasn't even thinking about smoking unless something triggered the thought (like after meals or if I saw someone else smoking a cigarette). At this point I was starting to realize quitting smoking was a real possibility. One night I smoked the last cigarette out of a pack and I didn't have anymore in the house. It was only about an hour away from bedtime and I debated with myself on whether I should run to the store or just try and go to bed. I decided to skip the store and fell asleep a little while later.

As it turned out that cigarette was the last one I smoked to this date. The next day I just went about my normal business and when something triggered my urge to smoke I didn't have any cigarettes to reach for. I made up my mind not to buy another pack and since my body had adjusted to not smoking that many cigarettes a day it was pretty easy to keep my mind off smoking. After I got through that first day smoke free I knew I had quit for real.

I think my system worked because I was slowly breaking the mental addiction to cigarettes while also breaking the physical one. Everybody is different and some people might be able to quit cold turkey and others might need nicotine patches and gum. I would recommend this approach for anyone who has already tried to go cold turkey and failed but isn't quite ready to purchase a nicotine substitute.