Quit Smoking Now!

As entities blessed with the gift of recalling past memories both fond and undesirable, humans have the capacity of identifying certain feelings, thoughts and inclinations toward people and practices. To people, we assign emotions like love and happiness for friends and anger or discomfort for enemies. For practices, we form habits.

Habits, though not harmful in themselves, become a source for concern when harmful and habit-forming substances are involved. Cigarette smoking is one such habit where an addiction to its active ingredient nicotine comes swiftly, and is most difficult to stop.

Being addicted to something doesn't necessarily mean that you have a physical craving for that certain something. In smoking, traces of nicotine fall rapidly after 24 hours, and nicotine withdrawal symptoms rear their ugly head. Once the smoker has gone beyond the physical desire to smoke, the psychological ones set in. In my opinion, the psychological aspects of quitting smoking are much more difficult to wrestle with than the nicotine.

How many times have you had a smoke just because you were bored? As a force of habit, I remember consuming half my daily intake on the sole reason that I didn't have anything better to do. It's rather difficult to quit smoking when you're idle, so I just tried to stop thinking about having a pleasurable smoke (especially when watching a movie where the protagonist seems to enjoy every single nano-particle entering his lungs) during the months after I puffed my last cigarette. Smoking while drinking was also one of my favorite smoking habits at the time, since consuming alcohol and indulging in leisurely conversation with your peers as all of you smoke like chimneys is truly one of the greatest things in life. Unfortunately, the morning after that alcohol binge would probably end up in a headache and a very sore throat.

The physical dependence on Nicotine may be easier to quit nowadays because of quitting aids such as Nicotine gums and patches, but that's just one half of the entire problem. Learning to forget all of those fun smoking habits you picked up since high school is tougher because of all the fond memories associated with them, as well as the way they have engrained themselves into your daily routine for the past years. Nevertheless, quitting smoking is a definite reality: learn ways to enjoy your daily routine without having a smoke, such as brushing your teeth right after a meal to curb your urge to smoke, and learning to drink once again without the added pleasure of a cigarette puff. The more you edge smoking out of your daily activities, the easier it is to quit the entire bad habit in the end.