HOW TO STOP SMOKING: GIVING UP - AN ACT OF SKILL NOT OF WILL

The big question in your mind, before you get down to the practicalities of giving up smoking, 'Have I got the willpower?' You know full well that you are just like the character in Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan who confesses: 'I can resist everything except temptation.' You like a puff: it makes you feel good, at least for a while, and it has become a habit, a regular 'fix'.

If, however, you look at people who have been successful in giving up you find that they are not superhuman, but have no more and no less willpower than anyone else. What they do have is a better awareness than others of why they really needed to smoke in the first place. With that knowledge, you can go on to find other ways of fulfilling those needs, ways which do not have the unfortunate adverse medical effects of tobacco products.

Giving up is a matter of knowing why and how you smoke; when a cigarette is needed and for how long. Then you can begin to find alternatives to smoking which will fill the same needs.

Look at the self-analysis chart. Put down your scores in the left-hand column for each type of smoking behaviour - be honest! - and then tally up your scores. If you score 10 or more for any section (perhaps even all), then you can say that this is your 'smoking profile' - the characteristic situation in which tobacco is important for you and to cope with which you will be needing to work hard to find a substitute.

Incidentally, if you do pass the 10 mark in all categories, you must consider yourself as predominantly a 'craver' - someone with a considerable addiction to nicotine which may need a specially designed elimination approach to conquer.

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