Know your triggers, if you want to successfully quit smoking you must find your triggers. Ask yourself after what events you would like to enjoy a cigarette? While drinking, after and before each cup of tea or coffee, after every meal, when you feel sad and depressed or when you want to talk seriously or concentrate on a subject. These are some of the common smoking triggers; my list was far more detailed.After knowing your triggers you must eliminate them one by one, but it’s not practical to think that you can eliminate all of them. Some triggers will happened and you will start to crave for a smoke, what I did was that I first replaced smoking with nicotine gums and after a week I replaced the nicotine gum with regular sugarless gums. Some other triggers can be avoided by not placing yourself in positions that might lead to activating a trigger, that’s why I abandoned all my smoking friends and hangout places.
The point is that to consume nicotine gums after triggers not regularly one of the reasons that nicotine patches are not so successful is because of this fact that you don’t train yourself fighting against crave, you just supply your body with almost constant level of nicotine hopping to never feel the crave.Search the internet there are many organizations which help smokers quit. I remember that I read an article about quitting smoking and its benefits, but it wasn’t like other articles. The writer organized the article based on time passed from quitting time. Here is the list:
- 20 Minutes after Quitting Smoking:
- Your heart rate drops.
- 12 hours After Quitting Smoking:
- Carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
- 2 Weeks to 3 Months after Quitting:
- Your heart attack risk begins to drop. Your lung function begins to improve.
- 1 to 9 Months after Quitting:
- Your Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
- 1 Year after Quitting:
- Your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker's.
- 5 Years after Quitting Smoking:
- Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker's 5-15 years after quitting.
- 10 Years after Quitting:
- Your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker's. Your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas decreases.
- 15 Years after Quitting:
- Your risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker's.
I still sometimes review it again to see my progress.
So remember to always think about what you are gaining not what you are losing. At first you might not notice the changes in your body but after few months you’ll feel the changes. That’s when you’ll realize that how smoking was destroying your health and you’ll start to hate smoking and feel pity for all smokers.
