Let’s hear some more familiar lines:
“This is my only vice. I don’t gamble and I don’t even swear.”
“I have just finished breakfast/lunch/dinner and can’t imagine not smoking.”
“I get up early each morning and I need a cigarette to go with my coffee to wake up.”
“The clothes are taking so long to dry, and I have nothing to do. I’m bored.
“I’m drowsy and need to wake up for work. Just one cigarette and I’m okay.”
“I’m stressed out and I need something to calm my nerves.”
“I need to think.”
“Promise I will reduce the sticks of cigarettes I smoke every day.”
“I need one or two sticks to be able to start writing.”
“I stopped smoking some years ago. Now I’m back but I will quit soon.”
“It’s a long drive and I need to stay awake.”
“I know. I’ve heard it before — cigarettes are the nails in our coffins and I’m adding more nails to mine faster than you, but come on. We will all die anyway, whether we smoke or not.”
Having been around smokers for years, I can add a hundred and one more reasons why they “need” to smoke.
With smokers in the house, that familiar stinking smell is the first thing that greets you in the room each time you come in. You see cigarette butts and ashes anywhere in the house. But all these can be stopped when you decide to become an ex-smoker.
Instant benefits
When you decide to stop smoking, you will see immediate benefits, and these will keep on happening as long as you stay away from those harmful sticks. Barbara A. Coley in her handbook in the ETR (Education, Training and Research) Associates, a non-profit health promotion partner Web site entitled “Do you want to be a former smoker?” enumerates some instant benefits when you quit smoking.
Within 20 minutes: Your blood pressure, pulse rate and the temperature of your hands and feet return to normal.
Within 8 hours: Oxygen level in the blood increases to normal as carbon monoxide in blood decreases.
In 24 hours: Your risk of heart attack starts dropping.
In 2 days: Your nerve endings start to re-grow, and your senses of smell and taste improve.
In 3 days: Your breathing gets easier and lung capacity increases.
Within 2 weeks to 3 months: Your circulation get better, lung function improves up to 30 percent and walking gets easier.
Within 1-9 months: Your lung cilia re-grows, coughing, sinus problems and shortness of breath decreases, and you will have more energy.
Other benefits
As soon as you turn your back on cigarettes, your hair, clothes and your breath won’t stink. You can use the money to buy other things instead of spending on cigarettes, and your skin tone and complexion will improve.
You will also start to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments as you work hard to become a former smoker.
How do you start?
Quitting the smoking habit is easier said than done, especially for someone who has been smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for the past 10 or 20 years. Non-smokers cannot understand or cannot relate why smokers cannot just get rid of the habit immediately, but if you want to be an ex-smoker, you need determination and commitment to reach your goal of bidding goodbye to cigarettes forever.
Set a start date.
Coley said setting a start date is the first thing to do to become an ex-smoker. The best days to choose are midnight on Thursday or Friday because by Monday, you will already have been through the hardest part of the withdrawal symptoms.
Practice making smoking a choice
Each time you feel the urge to smoke, stop long enough and think about the benefits, costs and consequences of smoking before you make a choice between smoking and not smoking. If you can’t help it, go ahead and puff on a stick but if you choose not to, put the stick away until you feel the next urge to smoke again. Then do the same sequence — urge to smoke, stop, think about it, choose and act until the next urge begins.
Mental practice
You just can’t wake up one morning and throw all your cigarettes away. You will just pick it up or buy a new pack if you do. Coley said that you should begin your activity plan at least two weeks before the start date you have set for yourself. Go brisk-walking for 20 or 30 minutes a day. It helps.
Practice deep breathing
When the urge to smoke hits you, and you are determined to become an ex-smoker, practice deep breathing. Release the tension from your body by breathing in slowly and deeply and releasing your breath slowly. Relax your muscles and allow the tension to flow. Do this for 5 minutes, at least 3 to 4 times a day even if you don’t feel any tension.
Take a trial run.
Try to go for one day without smoking with the thought that you can always smoke again after 24 hours. If you survive 24 hours without smoking, this will tell you that smoking is really a matter of choice. You can smoke if you want to, and you can choose not to smoke if you want to. Coley said that cigarettes don’t land already lighted on your lips. You have to get them and light them.
Keep trying.
If you fail on your first 24 hours, you can always try again the next day.
Other helpful tips
Put your cigarettes in a different place so you cannot just reach for it each time you feel the urge to smoke. Drink lots of juices and water every few hours to help flush nicotine out of your system. Sleep as much as you need. Relieve tension by taking warm showers. Stay away from smokers.
With a strong determination, you will soon be joining the other ex-smokers who have defeated the smoking habit.
