It’s no secret that smoking is bad for you. It can weaken your immune system and make you more susceptible to acquiring frequent colds. It can cause a chronic cough, make it hard to breathe and even put you at a greater risk of developing lung cancer, pneumonia or emphysema.
Why It’s Difficult to Quit Smoking
Cigarettes contain over 7,000 chemicals with 70 known to cause cancer. Yet despite this information people still light up. So the question remains, why? The answer is simple — cigarettes contain nicotine. Nicotine is highly addictive, and in fact, just as addictive as cocaine or heroin. Once you start smoking cigarettes, your body depends on it both physically and mentally.
More Than Just a Habit
Unfortunately, smoking, whether casual or hard-core (more than a pack a day), is more than just a habit, it’s a way of life. Most people who smoke reach for them when they feel depressed or anxious as a way of calming down. Others, smoke for social reasons, to be part of the crowd.
Breaking Free
You’ve tried to quit several times and while you may make it through a day or two but in the end, you give in and start smoking again. In order to quit for good, you must be ready to quit. If you are, you will stand a much better chance of achieving success.
Cold Turkey or Weening Off
You have a couple of choices when you decide to quit, you can wean off the nicotine slowly by using a nicotine patch or nicotine gum or use E-juice or vapor such as those offered by ZampleBox, or you can quit cold turkey. While you know your body best, weening is usually the better option because it doesn’t send your body into withdrawal and makes the process easier.
What Triggers the Urge?
In order to finally quit, you must discover what sparks the urge to light up. For some people, it’s socializing with others, either while watching a sporting event or attending a party, for example. Others wake up with the urge and smoke a few cigarettes before they can even function. A good way to find true success is to set a quit smoking date and then create a journal a few weeks before where you track the times and reasons for smoking. The point is to identify when you need to smoke the most and find other ways to satisfy the need. Coffee in the morning or healthy snacking at a party.
Failure Is Highly Possible
Nobody goes into quitting something with the thought of failure looming in the background. However, understanding the difficulty of quitting ahead of time and the chance of failure, will allow you to get through any setbacks and try again.
Support
Deciding to quit smoking is a smart decision. In order to stay the course, having a support team composed of good people in your corner is beneficial and will vastly improve your chances. Also, refraining from hanging out with friends or family members who smoke, especially during the first couple of weeks, is also in your best interest.
A Fresh Start
It takes just 72 hours for nicotine to leave the body. And, while going through withdrawal is difficult, once you get beyond the first few days, it’s up to you to stay smoke-free. Before the date set for quitting arrives, remove all evidence of being a smoker from your home and workplace. This includes cigarettes, lighters, matches and ashtrays. Since you will still have things that trigger the desire to reach for a cigarette, it’s also important to replace it with something else such as gum, mints or fresh fruits and vegetables. During the first couple of weeks, it’s also beneficial to keep yourself busy. Video games are particularly helpful since they keep your mind and hands busy.
Per the CDC, in the United States alone, more than 480,000 people die each year due to cigarette-related illnesses. If you want to quit, make this year the time to do it. The rewards are a better quality of life and a longer one too.