Best way to quit smoking?!

Best way to quit smoking?

Liz picked up a smoking habit when she was 17, but a decade later she realized it was time to snuff it out. With the help of a smoking cessation program and nicotine replacement therapy, she's finally kicked the cancer sticks out of her life.

Liz's Story
"I thought that smoking made me feel relaxed and peaceful."
I started smoking when I was 17 because I felt like I wanted a vice, which is a pretty stupid reason to start smoking. Usually people start smoking because they think it's cool, but I just wanted to be bad. Before I quit smoking I was smoking a pack, pack and a half a day. It didn't feel like a lot, it just felt good.

"I had a runny nose for a year."
I was all congested, and it kept going down in my lungs, and I had to keep taking antibiotics over and over. I finally decided that something was wrong here and that I was not catching it from my environment. I was catching it because I as damaging my immune system, my lungs. I knew that I would be better off as a non-smoker.

"I just needed to breathe until the craving ends."
I have tried to quit smoking like 12 times, so of course I have relapsed, but the difference this time is that I was enrolled in a class at the health department. I was going to that every week and that provided accountability. It is important even if you aren't in a program to have a friend who you are accountable to ask you, "So, did you smoke this week?" and you can say, "No, I didn't."

I also had to come to peace with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to substitute sunflower seeds, glasses of water or fruit for cigarettes. I just needed to suffer though it and breath until the craving ends. You are never going to want to not smoke, you are always going to want to smoke, forever, but every time it comes up, I tell myself, "I am not a smoker anymore." It sounds silly, but when it pops into your head and you are like, "I'm going to smoke a cigarette" -- that will still happen because it is so routine -- I will have to say, "I don't smoke anymore."

"Nicotine replacement therapy is the way to go."
Your brain trains itself to think that it needs nicotine, and the easiest, most comfortable way to get away from that is to train your brain to say, "Now you need 7 milligrams less, and two weeks later than 7 milligrams less than that," until your body starts to accept that zero milligrams of nicotine is normal. That is where you are not having the shakes and the physical withdrawal symptoms. They say that nicotine is more addictive than heroin or meth -- if you were doing heroin you wouldn't be shooting up every two hours or every hour, but when you are smoking cigarettes you want to have one all the time. It is more addictive than people think.

"You have to smoke outside, you can not smoke in my car, I am not going to that restaurant because they are smoking, we have to leave because they are smoking."

"I am better off as a non-smoker because every moment of my life is not consumed with cigarettes."
I don't have to worry about, "Am I going to be able to stop soon so I can have a cigarette? Do I have to go to the store so I can get a pack of cigarettes? Where's my lighter? I need my purse with me so that I can have my cigarettes." My whole life is a lot more free and I am in control of it a lot more than when I was a smoker and I was being a slave to that cigarette.