Easy Steps to Quit Smoking
Ok, so this will be my first post on quitting smoking. I recently (this is my fourth week being smoke-free) quit smoking and I wish I could tell you that there are five easy steps to quitting but in my opinion, how many easy steps there are depends on the person. Let me tell you how many steps it took me to quit smoking. Although some people say that I’m not out of hot water just yet, I feel I will be successful. Here we go.
The first thing I did was I asked myself why I smoke. I tried not to use answers such as, it makes me calm down, it makes me less hungry, it calms me, and it is part of my daily routine. These answers, in my opinion, we not my own but were placed into my subconscious while reading various other articles about quitting smoking and related posts. I could not think of an answer that I could call my own. I then asked myself, why do people smoke. Again, I avoided the media influenced answers to that question and could not find a factual answer to that question. I basically proved to myself that there was absolutely no reason to smoke. The only reason I smoked was because of the physical aspect, my addiction to nicotine.
At this stage, I was 85 percent convinced that I was going to quit smoking. Here’s what really got me to go the extra 15 percent. I am a single father of a beautiful three year old boy. He is my life and my inspiration to make me succeed in anything. Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m sure you do. It wasn’t enough for me to hear people tell me that I should quit smoking because I wouldn’t want to leave my three year old son without a father. Friends and family would always be telling me that but to no avail. One day, I took out a cigarette to go onto the balcony and have my morning cigarette. A little boy (my son) blocked my path with extended arms and said the following,”NO! You can’t smoke daddy! I no want you to die”. My initial reaction was just standing there with a cigarette in my mouth not being able to counter that statement. After all, my son was right. How could I tell him otherwise and expect him to live a healthy life. How could I do that to my son? His statement went straight to my heart, passed all the defensive mechanisms, passed all the walls I had against such statements. That was the 15 percent that made me finally quit smoking.
The next morning, after smoking as much as I could the previous night (probably a bad thing to do), I put it in my head that I was waking up a non-smoker. Before I headed into work, I went to my local Shoppers Drug Mart and bought some Nicorette. I’m not saying that you should buy it too but I thought I would use it as a tool to help me in reaching my goal. I hated the Nicorette gum, the patch just made me overdose on Nicotine, and I decided to choose the Lozenges. I must say, they don’t taste that bad. I recommend the MINT flavoured brand. You may feel a bit of a burning sensation on your tongue but I think that is just the nicotine being released. These lozenges did not cause me any bad long term affects. I followed the instructions word for word. I had a lozenge first thing that morning and one every 3 hours after that.
During week two, I noticed myself forgetting to take a lozenge after the three hour mark. Now I probably should have still followed the Nicorette instructions but I felt like I was winning this battle and had finally taken control. I think I only had a lozenge twice in a 12 hour period and/or when needed. I decided to see how much control I really had. Everyone will tell you that the hardest thing about quitting smoking is not having a cigarette with your beer (if you drink) or after your meal. I went out one Saturday night and had a couple of beers. I felt really good about how much control I really had. Didn’t even phase me one bit. Zero cigarettes on that night and no temptation to have one. After that night, I considered myself a winner.
I know it’s only been a month but I’ve quit smoking. This time its real. As you can see, there really is no formula to quit smoking. It all depends on you and what is motivating you at that time. Do you really want to quit? Do you really need to quit? Make sure that you are motivated to quit and that you need to quit before attempting any way of quitting smoking. You know my story and I hope that within it you can find some sort of answer that you are looking for.
Passive Smoking and Health
Everyone knows that smoking is bad for health but even then every 5th person in this world smokes. Out of almost 6.5 billion people in this world 1.2 billion people are regular smokers. Smoking is silent killer and every year 5.1 million people die because of smoking around the world.
Smoking is not only harmful for your own health but it is also harmful for people around you like your family members and friends. According to recent study almost 600,000 people die every year worldwide due to this (death rate of passive smoking is 60000 every year). Second hand tobacco smoke kills those people and almost 35% affected by passive smoking are children. The victims of passive smoking pay the price for the health destroying behavior of others, especially their own family members. 40 % of children, 35 % of women and 33 % of men were exposed to second hand smoke of tobacco. Half the deaths caused by this among the women and other half among children and men.
Passive smoking cause many diseases like lungs cancer, heart disease, asthma and lower respiratory infections. Children exposed to second hand smoke most likely happen at home. This is really sad because if you are smoker then you are big threat for the life of your own children and wife and other family members.
Government should need to take strict measures against smoking; smoking should be discouraged by increasing tax on cigarettes or by passing and enforcing smoke-free laws for public.
10 Ways To Stop Smoking – Which Would You Choose
There is much confusion around the topic of quitting smoking, so here are 10 ways you can potentially quit smoking, as you will see, some are far more effective than others.
1. Nicotine gum. Designed to replace the nicotine lost when quitting. It’s success is about 10%
2. Nicotine patches. Same theory as with the patches but the dose of nicotine is quite high. In spite of this the success is about 16%. Only 1 in 6 users are free from cigarettes in one year.
3. Zyban. A pharmaceutical product, designed to mange cravings. It’s success rate is about 14% with only 6% still free from smoking after 12 months.
4. Champix another pharmaceutical drug with potentially sever side effects has a reported failure rate of 84%
5. Cold Turkey. This is possibly the hardest way to quite. All of the stress for little reward. Success is approximately 7%
6. Acupuncture. Using needles or Lazor to stimulate specific points which are claimed to overcome desire for cigarettes. Average success 50%
7. Standard Hypnosis. 66% rate is reported. It is one of the best ways to quit but still leaves a few issues unresolved.
8. Group Hypnosis. About 25% success rate. Can only be general in its application.
9. Shick. This is an in clinic shock aversion treatment. Claimed success 50% plus
10. Advanced Hypnosis with Neuro Linguistic Programming. This method covers all the bases, it is very specific to the individual client and has a high success rate of 95% plus. The reason it is so success is that it addresses all the emotional issues which are neglected in most methods.