How to Stop Smoking

You may have read supportive materials or participated to ‘how to stop smoking‘ campaigns or programs, but it’s a long way from acknowledging the bad habit (addiction) to actually quitting. Many smokers try to give up smoking several times before they actually manage to remain nicotine free. For some, it will remain a life long battle to fight…

Simple Tips on How to stop smoking

Going cold turkey

This is probably the hardest way to quit smoking: one day you decide not to touch a cigarette again, and you quit without any aid whatsoever. The period following this decision, when you remain nicotine-free after a long period of time, will turn into a nightmare. You’ll face high intensity withdrawal symptoms with cold sweats, limb shaking, nervousness, depression, insomnia and a huge appetite for sweets. And on top of these all, you can’t stop thinking about how a cigarette, just one, would make you feel better!

Quitting smoking cold turkey is an act of great courage that will test your will power and self-control ability. But you have to feel sure that you’re going to make it through!

Nicotine-based products

For those who need to learn how to quit smoking the easy way, cigarette substitutes help with the withdrawal symptoms. You can choose from:

  • nicotine chewing gum;
  • nicotine transdermal patches;
  • nicotine sprays;
  • nicotine pills.

All these contain a smaller amount of nicotine than cigarettes, they have no side effects on the health of  the lungs and they make the quitting process a lot easier. Basically, you give the body an ever lower amount of nicotine, and with this gradual decrease, you bring it back to an addiction-free state.

Nicotine-based products have a variable rate of success from individual to individual. While for some, they are highly effective, for others they bring no consistent improvement whatsoever.

How to stop smoking with specialized programs

For people who have troubles giving up smoking because they use cigarettes as a stress relief, a more complex approach is necessary. It’s unlikely that you’ll know how to quit smoking on your own, if you don’t have serious knowledge of stress management, neuro-linguistic programming, positive thinking, meditation, breathing techniques and so on.

Psychological counseling is necessary to get one rid of the addiction because it helps you eliminate the emotional function or meaning that is unconsciously attributed to cigarettes. What smoker hasn’t felt the urge for a cigarette in times of peak tension: whether at work or in personal life? With a cigarette it’s like taking a break from stress. Well, this is a vicious circle that you can’t break that easily! The more stressed you are, the more you feel the urge to smoke…

With counseling and therapy, the smoker learns how to make use of other instruments, strategies and techniques to deal with personal and professional problems, without using cigarettes to alleviate the internal tension.

Therefore, I suggest you check out seriously and find out what programs there are available for smokers in your neighborhood. You should learn how to stop smoking TODAY!