Most smokers know exactly how long they have been smoking, how they started, and that it is a very difficult habit to quit. A lot of the people who smoke started at a young age. The reasons a person start smoking vary, but a lot of times it was because they grew up in a home where their parents smoked. Other people tried it because they saw their friends do it and felt pressured into it, or because they felt that it made them look cool.

 

Whatever initially led a person down the path of becoming a smoker, there usually comes a time when a smoker thinks about quitting. The desire to quit smoking usually comes as randomly and unexpectedly as the desire to start did. Usually the smoker is faced with the never ending stream of information about the health dangers that smoking poses. For others it simply comes down to wanting to quit because they find themselves faced with constant reminders of how much money they are spending on a habit that gives them no real return. Finding reasons for wanting to quit is the easy part, it’s the actual quitting that proves to be the hard part.

 

The first thing that a smoker who wants to quit will realize is that quitting will be a lot easier if they are quitting for themselves. If they try to quit to please another person, or because they are told they have to by their doctor, it will feel like an imposition and will be more difficult. The decision to quit smoking has to come from the smoker’s desire to be finished with the habit, to have any chance of being successful. To increase the odds of being able to kick this habit the smoker has to be ready to live their life every day as a non smoker. This may seem obvious, but for people who have smoked for several years, life as they used to know it is about to change and if they are not ready for that aspect of quitting, their efforts can be foiled very early on.

 

It is a good idea for the smoker to have a solid plan of action ready for when they are faced with a situation that they know will be a chance for temptation to get the better of them. They should make a list of times and places they find themselves most wanting a cigarette. They should choose a quit date. One to two weeks before the quit date they should start cutting down the number of cigarettes they have on a daily basis. The first cigarettes they should eliminate are the ones they smoke at the same time or at the same place every day. By the time they quit completely, they will already be getting used to being without the cigarettes they enjoyed the most.

 

 

Once all cigarettes are stopped there will be some physical withdrawal symptoms that can range from bothersome to extremely uncomfortable depending on how many cigarettes the person had been smoking. They can include constipation, nausea, cold sweats, extreme fatigue, and depression. The worst of these symptoms lasts about a week and start to lesson by the second week. It will be very helpful to be prepared for them by having a gentle stool softener, time for extra sleep, and healthy light foods to snack on.

 

Feeling better than you have in years will be the light at the end of the dark tunnel of withdrawal and sometimes that’s all it takes to keep going.