Simply by cliking on this lens you have already decided that you are looking for an answer to the big question a smoker asks.
HOW DO I STOP WITHOUT GOING CRAZY.

What I mean by taking the first step is that you subconsciously have already decided to stop,the next step is to transfer it across to the concious and put it into action.

All smokers will tell you that they will stop when the time is right,but that time never comes because:-

When you are stressed you say "not now I'm to stressed".

When things are good you say "things are great why spoil it by stopping now and creating stress".

You have to remember I was a smoker for 33 years and I hated it when people said to me "you really should give up you know", the one thing we all know is that nobody is going to tell us when to stop.
No amount of medical evidence or photos of tar blackened lungs is ever going to covince us to stop.
For goodness sake they even put these photos on cigarette packets and tell us that smoking will kill us,but a smoker always thinks it only happens to other people,and mentally blocks all warnings or images.

The fact that smoking is very expensive doesn't matter because I can afford it.It doesn't matter that we are poisoning ourselves and paying for the priviledge to do so.

So when is the right time? We'll dicuss this later. There are certain thing you need to understand first.

You may think this is a very stange statement,all the experts say its a habit,so let me explain.

Drinking tea instead of coffee first thing in the morning to me is a habit and I could change that easily,so if smoking is a habit surly I could change that easily also.But that doesn't appear to be the case WHY? Because first and formost smoking is an ADDICTION.

It is an addiction to one of the most addictive drugs on the market today, NICOTINE. Yet did you know that the withdrawl symptoms from nicotine are very mild and certainly aren't life threatening,but consist of a slight feeling like a hunger pang, I personally found, in the centre of my chest. This is one of the reasons people eat and put on weight thinking the pang will go away,and it does, without eating food, amazingly quickly.But if you find you have to eat I found eating green apples helped.

This is one of the reasons I personally do not like the use of patches or gums containing nicotine as this only prolongs your addiction and in my opinion makes it harder.Why would you keep feeding your body with the very same drug you are trying to eliminate. It only takes 3 weeks to virtually rid your body of nicotine.

Unfortunatly this is an article not a book and I won't go on.
Just spend one minute thinking about this.

What it would be like to have a life free of cigarettes.Not having to think "do I have enough to last tonight". Constantly being cotrolled by cigartettes."How long is this movie,or this dinner going to last before I can get my fix".
Thinking "will I be able to go on a plane for that long"
NON smokers dont think of these things yet they seem to get along quite nicely.
At the moment smoking completly controls almost all aspects of your life. Would't it be nice to take that control back.

So when is the right time?

The right time is when you decide to stop thinking about it and DO IT and nobody but you can decide that. But my advise is NOW.

One more thing that never seems to get mentioned,maybe it is people trying to be polite.But one of the first things you notice as a NON SMOKER,and this happens in the first few days of quitting is how disgusting people smell after just having a cigarette. It is so foul that I find it difficult to stand to close to a smoker.

But most importantly is somthing that my 9 year old daugter said to me just after stopping "yeh daddy you stopped smoking. You dont stink anymore and your not going to die" What more can I say.

Getting a little help is nothing to be ashamed of and in my opinion is essential,Because to make it easy to stop you have to be in the right frame of mind.

Over the years I tried patches and gums,but it wasn't until I realised it is as much a mental addiction as a physical one, and being given the correct information makes it so easy to stop.

Below are a couple of websites that I have checked out and believe offer the same kind of information I used to stop.

The money you spend buying this information is nothing compared to what you will save,in not only money but health and well being.

Don't be a slave to cigarettes anymore,

Brake free and DO IT NOW!

I want you to be able to say "I STOPPED SMOKING"