HOW TO STOP SMOKING: MAKING FIRST STEPS FOR QUITTING

Having found out a bit about yourself as a smoker, the next step is to move on to a programme for quitting. You must prepare yourself for this; you are not going to stop today or tomorrow. It’s suggested you to look ahead to, say, a week hence. That will give you time to do three things. First, you can condition yourself mentally to the fact that this is not one of those half-hearted attempts to quit that you have dabbled with a few times before: this is for real and for always. There may be objections and the obstacles: 'Now is a bad time', 'I might succumb to the craving', 'I'll put on too much weight if I succeed'. Put all those quibbles aside for the present and concentrate on the job in hand.

The second reason for looking ahead for a week is so that you can keep a personal 'smoking diary' to note down both the specific times when you smoke and the importance of nicotine on those occasions. This record is going to be extremely important later when you come to ease out of smoking into other activities. Do not forget that you need to keep your chart with you all through the day, and make your notes regularly and systematically.

Thirdly, you need a week to tell other people that you have decided on a set date when you are going to give up. So much of smoking is a social activity: in a pub or club the cigarette is like a token of friendship offered in much the same way as is a conversational gambit. Refusing to accept or offer the token may be regarded almost as an insult. So you have to let people know that, from next week on, you are going to be the same person in every respect except one: you will no longer be taking part in that particular ritual called smoking.

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