What is it that makes us smoke? The secret is quite simple: tobacco smoke contains nicotine (0,8 to 3,5%) which exerts a pleasurable excitatory influence on the smoker’s nervous system. Besides excitatory and, consequently, exhilarating effect, nicotine causes a specific euphoric action. In other words, each cigarette gives us certain “rush” artificially raising our mood and creating a short-time sensation of seeming “energy surge”.

Moreover, continuous ingress of nicotine into the body causes addiction on a physical level and without constant smoking a lot of body functions start getting upset. First of all this includes  various nervous system disorders, such as: hyperirritability, irascibility, or quite the opposite: a state of drowsiness and languor throughout the whole day, sweating, increased appetite and thirst, excessive salivation, derangements of digestion, fluctuation of arterial blood pressure, etc.

When you try to quit the vicious habit, you begin to experience withdrawal symptoms which inevitably last for a certain period of time (not more than 3 weeks) and which you will have to endure. The fact of the matter is that if you have been smoking for many years, you will hardly be able to quit abruptly. Most often, only those who have been smoking less than a year, and quite moderately, manage to quit abruptly. There are other ways for heavy smokers: taking special medicines to ease the withdrawal symptoms or gradually decreasing the number of cigarettes smoked each day and frequency of smoking. These ways will be discussed in more details hereafter.

How to Get Rid of Cigarette Slavery on Your Own

If you are determined to overcome this vicious habit, the first thing you have to do is to calculate the number of cigarettes you smoke per day and determine what causes you to take a drag again.

Possible causes:
1.    a wish to invigorate yourself after waking up early or hard mental or physical work;
2.    a need to reduce perception of emotional stress: unpleasant news, a difficult conversation, etc.
3.    boredom and low spirits;
4.    social smoking;
5.    cravings to smoke after drinking strong coffee or alcohol;
6.    having a smoke automatically for no particular reason, and much more.

Be ready to spend a few days making a list of your smoking triggers – it is extremely important for you. After the list is ready, the first thing you have to do is to get rid of “unnecessary” cigarettes during the day. For example, a cigarette break after a hard two hour meeting was very desirable for you while smoking on the way home was an automatic ritual you could easily do without. You might not imagine so far how to do without a traditional smoke break after dinner but during a telephone conversation you smoked five cigarettes without noticing it.

Thus, the first step is to abandon unnecessary smoke breaks. Very often such a measure allows you to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke per day by half or even more!

Another tip is to replace the kind of tobacco you smoke with the one you like least. It can also have a good effect. At first, you will need to find a more or less suitable substitute for tobacco smoke such as sugar candies, chewing gum, athletics and cool shower, a captivating book or an interesting TV program! All you need is to find something for yourself and start using it.

A psychological secret for breaking any bad habit is that your thoughts have to be formulated in a positive form. It means that if you are dwelling on the thought “I will not smoke”, it makes you think about smoking all day. You will get much more impressive results if you think “I want to breathe fresh air”.

When at last you have managed to reduce the number of cigarettes significantly, all you need to do is to move on calmly in the same direction. Do not smoke a whole cigarette; stub it out half way through. Find more situations when smoking is not “vital”. Do not dwell on the thought that you will never smoke again, it is unnecessary. You’d better say to yourself, “I will leave smoking over until tomorrow”. And trust me, it will take effect.

Thus, it is much easier to abandon some unfinished cigarettes during the day than to stop staying in clouds of cigarette smoke at once. Good luck!