12 Tips to help you stop smoking

Experts recommend that you prepare to quit before actually quitting, that you give attention to the social as well as physiological components of nicotine addiction, that you obtain follow-up support.

Here are just a few steps:

1. Set a time in the future when you will quit smoking. Choose a time that will be relatively free from stress and temptation.

2. Before you quit, taper off:

Buy a brand of cigarettes you don't like instead of your favorite. Or switch to a low-tar, low-nicotine brand before going cold turkey. If you use this trick, do not sabotage yourself by smoking more cigarettes, inhaling more, or covering the holes of the filters.

Cut down by smoking half of each cigarette, postponing smoking in the morning, refraining from smoking during odd or even hours, determining how many cigarettes you will smoke and donating a dollar to charity for every cigarette you smoke over the limit.

Try smoking consciously, only the cigarettes you actually want, not smoking out of habit. Keep ashtrays full so you will see how much you smoke. Look in the mirror each time you light up.
Buy cigarettes by the park, not the carton.

3. List the reasons for quitting: health and fitness, setting a good example for your children, getting rid of cigarette breath. Be sure to include personal reasons for quitting-not wanting to smell like an ashtray or saving money, for instance. Repeat one of the reasons to yourself 10 times at specific time of the day, like before going to bed.

4. Start getting in shape; exercise, get enough rest, drink more fluids.

5. Before you quit, keep a record of how many cigarettes you smoke and why you smoke them.

Do you smoke first thing in the morning? With coffee or alcoholic drinks? After sex? Do you smoke to fill time between thought, to gain time for marshaling an argument, to alleviate boredom? Consider ways of avoiding emotional triggers for smoking.

6. Tell your family and friends you are going to quit. Enlist their help.

7. On the day you quit, get rid of all cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia. Get your teeth cleaned. Keep busy.

8. During the first week you quit (when you may feel withdrawal symptoms as your nicotine level decreases), avoid situations in which other people are smoking, drink lots of liquids, exercise, do something enjoyable. This is the time of greatest danger of relapse.

9. During the first three months after quitting, you are still prone to relapse when something triggers your impulse to light up. When you have an urge to smoke, substitute another activity - walking, eating a carrot, give it something else to hold, like a paper cup. If you feel orally deprived, try a fake cigarette, carrots, sugarless gum. Take several deep breaths.

10. Put a jar of smoked butts next to your bed.

11. Never, never have 'just one.' It grows to two, three, and whole packs faster than you can imagine.

12. Be positive! You can do it.

KiyaSama is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers.