Stop Smoking Challenge

Stopping smoking is a very concrete and simple goal. However, reaching that goal is not so easy than you would think. In my experience, the problem is not the physical withdrawal symptoms of Nicotine, because they are generally quite mild. The real problem of stopping smoking is beating your psychological addiction to Nicotine. Beating your internal Nicotine addict will be easier as long as you remember following three points:

1. Understand that

Setting a stop smoking date is an essential tool for stopping smoking, and if you fail to keep your promise, there is a good chance that you will wake up every morning and promise to stop smoking tomorrow. Most of the smokers have been in this situation, and I am currently one of them. What has led me into this situation?

I am ashamed to admit that

As I wrote earlier, I still want to stop smoking. I feel weak, because my earlier attempts have failed. I also feel guilty, because I feel that I have let my friends and family down. To be honest, I am pretty sure that my few readers are laughing to me. Well, none of this really matters, because I cannot change the past. That is why I decided

My only goal for last year was to stop smoking. Unfortunately, I failed to meet that goal. Even though I am no longer smoking on a regular basis, I feel that I have not achieved anything. I am still a slave of Nicotine. However, admitting that gives me at least some kind of hope for a smoke free future. Luckily for me, I have still got time to reach that

My previous blog entry described actions, which I took to find my motivation to continue my life as a nonsmoker. One of the actions was to write down both advantages and disadvantages of stopping smoking. This blog entry describes that list without leaving anything out. I present you the advantages and disadvantages of stopping smoking:

Advantages:

• Freedom. I am no longer a slave of the cigarette. Smoking does not control my life

As you might remember, my previous blog entry discussed about learning from my mistakes. Unfortunately, I have not followed my own advice. After my slip, I have had problems motivating myself to continue my life as a nonsmoker. Instead, I have continued it as a casual smoker.

The problem is that every time when I drink alcohol, I smoke cigarettes. I cannot understand, why I am behaving

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, my life has not been totally smoke free. However, I have managed to pick up the pieces, and figured out what went wrong. This blog entry is written to remind me, what will most likely happen again, if I forget the lessons, which I have learned from my mistakes. Naturally, I am also hoping that this will prevent someone

One would think that after one has spent almost two months without Nicotine, one’s addiction would finally be under control. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I stopped smoking 59 days ago, and lately I have been haunted by memories of my mistakes, which I have made in the past. At first, I was very surprised, because I honestly thought that I had made peace with this part of my

Smokers seem to be one of the most haunted group of “normal” people in the western world. Laws are written to ban smoking in public places. Taxes are raised, and smokers are forced to pay more from their little pleasure. Some argue that the governments are going too far. Smokers claim that their human rights are violated. I am not sure, who is right, and who is wrong. All I

I have noticed that one of the main weapons, which is used to motivate smokers to quit smoking, is health education. Cigarette packs contains warnings, which announces that smoking is harmful to one’s health. In some countries they even print shocking images illustrating smoking related illnesses to cigarette packs. And if one tries to search information about smoking, one should be prepared to find a lot of information about the