After smoking tobacco for a large part of my life I know just how hard it is to quit, I struggled for years trying all of the different stop smoking aids. While some didn’t work well for me and others had a bit more effect that doesn’t mean that you will find the same results.

Coming to The Quitter is perfect step for any smoker, you are acknowledging that you need to quit that habit. While in many other parts of our life being a quitter is a negative, in our world everyone aspires to be a quitter. One key thing to remember throughout the process is to not feel pressured into stopping, while you might want to quit smoking you might not be ready at this exact moment for it, so take your time. I know that when someone else put pressure on me, or I put pressure on myself to quit I always ended up with a cigarette in my mouth, probably just to annoy anyone that was forcing me to stop. So don’t pressure yourself and make sure the people around you know not to pressure you too.

Smoking is bad, this was established quite a few years ago now and we can’t go through a normal day without being remind of it, whether it is on the television, in the newspaper, an advert or on the pack of cigarettes you are holding. I’m not going to be any different from this, sometimes we need to be reminded just what smoking tobacco can do to our bodies.

Compared to someone who doesn’t smoke, smoking is estimated to increase the risk of –

• Lung cancer in men by 23 times, and in women 13 times.
• Stroke by 2 to 4 times.
• Coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times.
• Chronic obstructive lung diseases (like chronic bronchitis and emphysema) but 12 to 13 times.

This translates to -

• Each year the negative effects of smoking cigarettes is to blame for around about 443,000 deaths in the United States, that is one in every five deaths.
• Smoking tobacco causes more deaths than the combination of illegal drug use, HIV, alcohol use, suicides, motor vehicle injuries and murders.
• Smoking is the cause of 90% of lung cancer in men and 80% of lung cancer in women.
• Around about 90% of all deaths caused by chronic obstructive lung disease are aided by smoking.

These statistics were taken from http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/

Not only are they horrendous for your health, but they also cost a small fortune. I have no doubt in my mind that if I still smoked today I would be homeless, cigarettes cost so much. OK, maybe I wouldn’t be homeless, but I would certainly not be able to afford some of the things I have bought recently.

Smoking Benefits

The benefits from smoking? Don’t be silly! There are absolutely no positives to smoking cigarettes, they don’t make you look cool, they don’t make you thin, no one actually enjoys smoking, they don’t relax or de-stress you, all of these things are in our heads. I realised this once I finally gave up.

The Best Way To Quit Smoking?

So what is the best way to quit smoking? Well this is something that I can really answer for you. I have tried a number of different methods and I have read up on about a thousand other ones. I can tell you that some of them worked for me and some of them didn’t. The effectiveness of stop smoking aids depends on the individual. What worked for me might not work for you and visa versa. People will suggest products such as nicotine gum, patches, inhalers, the stop smoking shot, hypnosis and a range of other things. In other articles I am going outline my experiences with most of the products that I tried and for the ones I haven’t tried I’m going to do a bit of homework and let you know what I find. This will give you a chance to see how all of the different products work and what you, or I, or they feel when using them. Hopefully you will find that reading other peoples experiences helps you to work out what stop smoking product will be ideal for you, rather than you going to the nearest pharmacy and buying up every stop smoking device that they sell and wasting a load of your hard earned cash.

Until the next time…