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Everyone has their reasons as to why they want to quit, some for health and others realize how expensive it can be. I’ve been smoking for the past 11 years, I’ve stopped many times but starting up again technically doesn’t mean I quit, but I decided that this time it was for good.

 How am I ever going to get my day started without a smoke  or how am I going to survive a meal without a smoke afterwards? Smoking is a repetitive habit that gets drilled into our brains and we’re so used to doing it as part of our routine, such as waking up or after every meal.

 The steps

 The first step is deciding that you truly want to quit, you’re not going to be able to quit if you’re not serious about it. All these stop smoking guides tell you to pick a quit day but I didn’t pick one and took it one step at a time, I didn’t want to be disappointed if I couldn’t quit by the day  I would have picked.

 After all that you have to decide if you want to try to quit cold turkey or use stop smoking aids. Stop smoking aids are expensive up front but there’s enough gum, patches, or inhaler refills to last you about a week. I smoked a pack a day and smokes here are about $13 a pack, so $40 for stop smoking aid to last me a week didn’t seem so bad after all. I used the inhalers personally, and although hard to use at first because you can’t really tell when it’s used up and time to switch the refill, they satisfied the need to move my arm in the motion of bringing it up to my mouth. This is very important, you can quit smoking but the need to bring something to your mouth and taking it back down is still there, it’s a small thing you might not realize but it’s actually pretty big. Just think about how many smokes you have a day and how many times you do this motion each time. I slowly over weeks reduced the amount of inhaler refills I used until one day I ran out of inhaler refills and only had $13 in my wallet, what did I do? I bought the cheapest no name brand nicotine gum I could find and after chewing 1 piece that tasted so horrible and made my throat so hoarse I decided that it was time to stop right then and there.

 Cold turkey is another option but it requires a lot of will power, but it’s not impossible. The key is every time you feel that craving creeping up on you, you have to distract yourself to forget about it. It’s cheaper yes, but also harder.

 Cravings and Withdrawal

 Oh the cravings, how could I ever describe the cravings? It’s like your stomach tenses up and you can feel the blood flowing through your veins just yearning for a puff of a cigarette. It’s like Jekyll and Heyd or night and day how your personality can change when you’re dealing with withdrawal. I would get so grumpy and angry and the slightest thing would annoy me to no end, but thankfully it only lasted 3 days for me and got progressively easier to manage. Don’t let this scare you away, the benefits far outweigh the hardship. No matter how long it lasts for you, it does get easier each day, trust me.

 It’s natural to stumble along the way, no one’s perfect. So let’s say you do stumble and you have a cigarette, what now? Don’t consider it a failure, it’s not and just stay positive. You can either forget about it and continue moving forward with quitting smoking or you can quit trying to quit smoking. If you do decide the latter, remember the reason you wanted to quit in the first place and maybe that will change your mind.

 So now what?

 First thing’s first, pat yourself on the back for a job well done. It wasn’t easy and it may have been a long journey, but you did it. Congratulations. Enjoy being healthy and maybe slowly start doing things you couldn’t do before because of the bad state your lungs were in, such as jogging or trying out a sport instead of watching it. Maybe you could put the money away that you would have spent buying packs of cigarettes and buy yourself something you’ve always wanted or take yourself and the family on a vacation with the extra money you saved. The possibilities are endless, it’s a fresh start.

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