yournamehere

<b>myMHz</b>,
Congratulations on taking the first step - really wanting to quit. Without that, you're doomed to failure. Most people that fail to quit smoking just really didn't want to quit badly enough.

I stopped after 25 years of smoking (and many attempts at quitting). That was 5 years ago, and I would never consider lighting another cigarette.

For me, the patches were a godsend - they really reduced the physical addiction, and let me concentrate on the psychological addiction. They really worked for me - I hope you have as much success.

Some advice: First of all, if you hang out with a lot of smokers, STOP. You've got to remove any temptation to smoke again. If possible, convince one of your friends to quit with you - everything's easier on the buddy system.

Join a gym - do a lot of aerobic exercise - it'll purge the poisons from your body faster, and your lungs will constantly be telling you "WTF did you do to me!?" - the positive reinforcement is knowing you're stopping the damage - and knowing it'll get better over time. Also, going to a gym will help reduce the amount of weight you're going to put on (and you will - the psychological aspect of smoking is going to have you putting whatever food you can grab into your mouth - that hand-to-mouth habit is hard to break)

The urges:
Long after you lose the physical addiction to nicotine, you will still have frequent urges to smoke. I always compared the urges to that carnival game where monkeys (or whatever) pop out of a bunch of holes in a table in front of you, and you have to bonk them in the head with a hammer before they disappear. The quicker you "bonk" the urge, the sooner it goes away. But be prepared - like the carnival game, you never know where or when the urge will surface - just mentally kill it, and get on with what you were doing. The good news in all of this is - the urges get less strong and less frequent over time. Some people say they never completely lose the urge to smoke, but that is not true in my case. Anyway, the urges get controllable very quickly.

The trap: Never, I mean <b>NEVER</b> "reward" yourself with a cigarette for "doing so well." As soon as you light that first cigarette, you've lost the battle.

You said you've got daughters - keep a picture of them close by at all times. Every time you get the urge to smoke, look at the picture and try to tell them that <i>this one cigarette</i> is more important to you than they are. Will they understand?

There's a lot of good advice on this thread, and I'm sure there will be a lot more. I hope my 2 cents helped.

Edited later to add: Just one more thing: If you want to increase the amount of replies to this thread, I would suggest adding the word "smoking" to your title - if people know exactly what it is you've decided to quit, you'll get more replies from ex-smokers

__________________
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