Why it is Not as Difficult to Stop Smoking as You Think it is

Copyright (c) 2008 Mike Row

If you have ever had the idea that you wanted to stop smoking, chances are you had all kinds of people tell you how hard it is. But the simple fact of the matter is that giving up smoking is not nearly as difficult as living with a cigarette constantly thrust between your lips. By smoking, you alienate yourself from others, you cost yourself and your family thousands of dollars a year on a useless product, and you constantly damage your health with every puff. Quitting the habit is not easy, but it is not very difficult either--especially when you have friends, family, and various natural anti-smoking products at your side to help you along.

A few decades ago, the only way to quit was to go cold turkey. One day, you tell yourself you're not going to smoke anymore, and so you don't. Now that was a hard way to give up a highly addictive habit like smoking. But it worked for many people. Mind over matter as they say.

The problem is that nobody is willing to endure any amount of discomfort that people even thirty years ago had no issues with. Quitting cold turkey was effective for many people, but it came with a variety of problems. Some people were more susceptible to returning to smoking somewhere down the road--but yet more people had problems where they could never get through a couple of days without their nicotine fix. For that simple reason, quitting cold turkey is rarely advised anymore. People these days just aren't willing to do anything that may make them feel uncomfortable.

However, the best thing about cold turkey is that it is really the only way to stop smoking where there is any amount of discomfort involved. There are lots of better ways to stop smoking now where you don't have to worry about any headaches, weight gain, or other side effects that usually come from getting off of nicotine packed cigarettes.

But if there aren't any major side effects to giving up the habit, why do people still claim that it is really tough to quit smoking? Part of the reason is that they like smoking--but the people they are with don't. After all, smoking tends to come along with a type of oral fixation where you always have to have an object in your mouth. Like sucking your thumb when you were a child, you grow accustomed to having a cigarette hanging out from your lips. And breaking that habit is more difficult for some people than actually getting down off the nicotine.

Furthermore, because most people quit at the whim of their spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, parents, or other person who holds some significance in their life, quitting becomes difficult because the smoker didn't really want to quit at all. They were just fine with their smoking habit. They enjoyed it. And by trying to quit when you don't really want to, it creates a whole world of problems because you end up not channeling as much energy into it as you should.

So what is the secret to successfully stop smoking without having to deal with any of the negative side effects? First, you have to want to quit yourself. Second, you have to have the support of those around you. It can be extremely difficult to quit when many other people are still smoking near you. And third, you need to use some kind of natural anti-smoking assistant that can help you deal with your addiction as though it was never there to begin with.