You teach yourself how to quit. Actually, what you teach yourself is how you trap yourself into smoking again during each attempt to quit. You need to remember the lessons from one attempt to stop to the next. The best way to do that is, as soon as you can after a failed attempt, make another attempt. Keep them as close to back to back as possible. Eventually you find all the traps.
And, because the attempts are fairly close together, you're body slowly adjusts to doing without nicotine.
And, as AJ said, rules help. I went several years with a rule that I could only have one cigarette an hour. That gets you under a pack a day. Sometimes you screw up on this one too, but reinstitute it as soon as possible.
And the gum helps. I remember the Dr. was upset because I was using more longer than he liked. Yeah, but I ended up free of both cigarettes and the gum.
A former 25-year 2-pack-a-day smoker.
Oh, I quit 20 years ago. Had I still been smoking when I had a heart attack 5 years ago, I have little doubt it would have killed me. |
