The Heartsavers Mission
Consider finding a quitting partner, such as a friend or relatives.
Set a date to quit together and you will be able to give each other support
Prevention of coronary heart disease.
How to quit smoking
In order to be able to quit smoking successfully, we must first look at why people smoke in the first place.
Benefits of Smoking
Apart from the fact that it could kill you nicotine is a fantastic drug. It helps you relax and combat stress, improves your concentration, helps to control anger and hostility, can help you to lose weight, gives you a sense of control over your life and in nicotine, you have a friend for life. Also, taking risks can be fun, why else would people climb mountains, jump out of planes with parachutes, or go scuba diving?
Nicotine Addiction
The other major reason why people smoke is that once they start they find it difficult to stop. Nicotine is an addictive drug, some would say it is as powerful as heroin or cocaine addiction. When you are addicted to any drug, you will experience a craving to if you go too long without it.
Nicotine withdrawal symptoms are not pleasant, headaches, irritability, restlessness, anxiety, to name a few. Consequently smokers find it very difficult to quit, and only a minority succeed on the first attempt.
The Benefits of Quitting
You will start to reap the benefits of quitting from Day 1. You will save money, just calculate how much you spend each week on tobacco, money that literally goes up in smoke. You will have fewer coughs and colds, your smokers cough may begin to disappear, food will taste and smell better. If you already have heart disease you may notice that the severity and frequency of chest pain almost immediately decreases. You will notice an almost immediate improvement in fitness and endurance.
Longer term benefits are well known, ten years after quitting you will have no more chance of dying from heart disease than a life long non-smoker. Even after one year your risk has reduced to 50% of that of a current smoker. Of course your risk of cancer will also dramatically reduce.
How to Quit
To successfully quit smoking one vital element is to replace the benefits of smoking with something else that gives you the same (or greater) gain. For example if you find that you get more stressed whilst trying to give up smoking you will find that a sensible exercise programme and stress management techniques will redress the problem. Thus we find that it is actually easier to make far reaching and comprehensive lifestyle changes than to make only one or two. This is further proof of the effectiveness of the holistic approach as described in earlier sections.
All the perceived benefits of smoking can be obtained in other ways, all you need to do is make the basic lifestyle changes. It's important that you do not get discouraged if you do not succeed at your first attempt to quit, you will need to try again and at least you will know what to expect the second time round and can prepare yourself.
The best time to attempt to quit is when you are feeling strong and good about yourself, when there are plenty of good things happening in your life to take your mind off your craving for nicotine.
If after a few days of abstinence you find yourself smoking, don't give up your attempt, you're not weak, it's a difficult task you've set yourself and the occasional lapse along the way does not mean failure, the only real failure would be to give up on your attempt.
It will help if you avoid social gatherings where there will be drinking and smoking, the alcohol will lower your self will. Try to arrange trips away for the weekend during the first few weeks of non-smoking, it should provide enough mental stimulus to take your mind off smoking.
If your friends are supportive of what you are doing it will help your own self motivation, so always announce your intention to quit in advance.
There are now products on the market which can help you to quit such as nicotine patches which will help to reduce the discomfort of withdrawal symptoms and the physiological craving for nicotine.
Finally we must emphasise once again that you will increase your chances of successfully quitting smoking by adopting all the life style changes advocated by the Heartsavers philosophy simultaneously. The boost to your morale and self esteem by making positive changes to your life and breaking free of old patterns of thinking will give you an extra edge.
Remember, if you don't succeed at first try again, you can do it.