How Can I Stop Smoking?

If you have ever tried to stop smoking cigarettes you already know that it is not an easy accomplishment. And if you have actually stopped smoking you deserve a good pat on the back. Anyone who has ever tried to quit knows that it is a whole lot easier said than done. You always end up asking yourself the question, "How can I stop smoking"? When I started to voice my desire to stop smoking I got lots of unsolicited advice. Strangely enough, most of it came from people who had never been smokers. This would be funny if it weren't so absurd. Anyone who has never been a smoker cannot possibly know what it is like to try to quit, and yet they are all telling me how to go about doing just that. What's really sad is that nearly all of them gave me the same advice. "Just quit", they said. Ha! How many times have smokers heard that one? So, it only makes sense that you should only take advice from someone who has been there, done that. I am only one of those people. There are many and you personally know a lot of them. I smoked for over forty years. I'd wake up in the morning so congested that I could hardly take a deep breath. I would get up, get a cup of coffee, spend about half an hour coughing up phlegm until I could breath (I mistakenly thought) normally. Then I'd light up the first smoke of the day. What a life. How can I stop smoking is a question I asked myself only when the coughing got really bad. I tried sheer willpower about once a year. I'd get off the smoke for a day or two and fall right back into it. I found that when I wasn't smoking I could not concentrate. I couldn't read a book without reading the same paragraph about four times because my mind was not on the book but on the smokes. After awhile I was asking myself the question "How can I stop smoking?" almost daily. It became an obsession. I started doing some research and found that there are a multitude of methods out there. I also found, not surprisingly, that no one method works for all people. We are all wired differently, and whatever method worked for my Uncle Joe would not necessarily work for me. Also, while we are trying to stop smoking, we all have different triggers that can make us slip and fall off the wagon. For me, it was stress. I'd get a couple of days of not smoking under my belt, feeling pretty good about myself too, and then I'd get a bill that I wasn't expecting. Things like this tend to stress me out and I would then use this as an excuse to light up. If have been asking yourself "How can I stop smoking?" you need to know that you can, in fact, quit. You just have to find the right method. Some people can stop by just having a good support group to lean on. If you have two or three friends who also want to quit you can get together and try all at the same time. In this way you can offer one another support and encouragement. I am fortunate in that I have found the answer to "How can I stop smoking?", but once again, you need to find what will work for you. I had to use a combination of things. You need to hang in there, keep looking and don't give up. You can, and you will, stop smoking cigarettes!