Introduction

It is my greatest privilege to have you as a visitor to this site. I am guessing you might belong to one of the below categories.

. A smoker who is bothered about his/her attachment to the cigarette
. A smoker who is terribly addicted and looking to quit
. A non-smoker looking to get info on smoking
. A non-smoker who has a cigarette addicted husband, wife or a friend

If you are a smoker you must quit as soon as possible. Now would be the best moment of course. Delay can get fatal. You may love your life or you may hate it, but unless you are suicidal you wouldn't want to risk it. I hope you agree. So I guess we have already agreed upon something within such a short acquaintance, that's a good start.

Relax and read slowly, there is no hurry. If you are in a hurry, take a print out and read when you are relaxed. This site is built with the purpose of helping smokers quit smoking forever. It's a very important responsibility that I have taken upon myself, because I am responsible for your time and trust.

I am neither expert nor have experience in counseling, or writing motivational articles. I am not a therapist, neither am I a doctor of any sort. I am a human resource practitioner who has been a slave to cigarettes for the past 14 years of my life.

All through out this site I will talk to you assuming that you are a smoker. It's easy that way. If you are a non-smoker please don't mind my false accusation.

Quit smoking and you will gain access to life you had before you got addicted. There is no such thing as a casual smoker. There are just addicts and non-smokers. Even one cigarette per day is an addiction. You gain nothing from cigarettes. I know you will not agree, neither would I 14 years back. It's a fact though, cigarettes don't give you anything. They don't give relaxation. They don't give pleasure. They don't get rid of boredom. They don't relieve you of stress. They give you one thing though, an addiction. Addiction gives the illusion of pleasure.

I was able to quit because I saw through the illusion. I read several websites on the subject and I could figure out a pattern. Once you see through this illusion yourself then you will quit without any effort. You will never smoke again in your life. That's a blessing straight from heaven. I sincerely hope that you will quit my friend. You have no idea what a dreadful life you choose to live by getting addicted. It was not your fault though, no smoker ever wants to get addicted. Cigarettes have a different agenda though. They get you addicted, whether you like it or not.

If you are a smoker the chances are that you are unaware of several facts relating to the harm cigarettes do to your body. Cigarettes kill and there is no getting around it. It is important to understand that cigarette is a slow killer and hence its effects are deceptive. A smoker may not even realize significant negative changes in his/her health until there has been a permanent damage.

The Futility of Statutory Warnings

Let me share with you my take on the statutory warnings written on cigarette packs. It's a joke. All smokers know that cigarettes are injurious to health.

'Smoking kills', how many times have you read this on the top of your cigarette pack but does it ever make you think twice about putting the stick to your mouth and lighting the other end? I don't think it ever does. The whole point of putting a statuary warning on cigarette packs is a big joke. Cigarettes would count as the only commercially available product, beyond liquor, which blatantly states that its consumption will cause death. The manufacturers of cigarettes don't mind putting this warning in order to abide with the government rules, because they know that no smoker would ever heed to it. A statutory sign stating smoking is injurious to health can never threaten a smoker

It’s Not Just A Cancer Stick

I am sure you know that cancer is last thing you need to worry about while smoking. It's a long-term thing for most of the smokers. Smoking has other ways of killing you before you even contract cancer. Cigarettes attack your heart by working on your arteries. That's the major killer. Heart attack induced by smoking has claimed 60 times more lives than cancer. It happens fast. Within just a couple of years of heavy smoking you can afflict your arteries badly. Some people have good immunity while some don't. If you are a smoker just pray that you have a great immune system. If you don't then it won’t be long before people pray for you. I am not being funny here.

If you knew what each puff was doing to your body you would not touch the stick let alone become addicted to it. There is a lack of education among people about the actual ill effects of smoking cigarette. The only disease which most people associate with smoking is "Cancer" but the fact is most smokers die way before they contract cancer due to the other harmful effects of smoking which are not common knowledge yet.

The Purpose of This Site

To get you rid of your addiction, that's the final goal. If I get you thinking about quitting it will be a great starting point. I don't want to scare you with horror stories of what cigarette does. I do want to give you the facts about how smoking affects your health. You might already be aware of several but there is no harm in getting a clearer picture. Ignorance is not bliss, it's a fool's paradise. Learn to live in reality and nothing would ever gully you. Somewhere along the way cigarettes gulled you. It’s human to make mistakes. Stop living in a mistake though. Rectify now before it gets worse.

I was a hardcore smoker (approx. 30 sticks everyday on weekdays and close to 45 sticks everyday on weekends) and I know smokers don't quit just because someone advises them to. I used to laugh at it and I am pretty sure you do the same. The only situation where even the most addicted smokers quit is when they are faced by a life-threatening circumstances.

There are lot of sites, which advocate counseling, hypno therapy and some advocate using nicotine patches. If it helps you quit it’s great. If this site acts as a starting point for you to consider options of quitting, I will feel very happy. You can quit completely just by understanding each article I have written. You wouldn't need anything else beyond this source to quit. I consider this site as a final portal to quitting. More importantly these articles will give you deep insight into your addiction. You will never fall prey to addiction after quitting. You will not make the mistake of a relapse. So I urge you to read all the articles on this site. Read them slowly, try to understand what I am trying to convey.

Maybe you have no intention of quitting presently. I am not asking you to quit. You can even smoke while reading these articles at your own pace. I just want you to relax and read with an open mind. I ask for nothing else. There is no use quitting without being clear about why you should quit. Quitting through sheer force does not work. You will have a relapse sooner or later. By reading these articles you will slowly understand the various behaviors of an addict. You will be able to see those aspects in you. It will slowly negate certain delusions you had about smoking. It gradually cut at the strings of addiction. Finally it will get you clear about why you need to quit. With that I will leave you on your own because you will not need any more assistance from me. If you understood the crux of these articles you will quit. You will not need the assistance of therapy or nicotine patches. Cure the mind and the rest is taken care of. I always believe that your internal state determines your external conditions. So don't depend on external aids completely. You have the power to take control of your addiction. It's your life at stake here. I am just here to help you clear your mind. An addict's mind is a slave to the drug. It's important to get rid of this slavery by denting the mind patterns that aid addiction.

Like I said before, I feel very responsible for your time and trust. I will not let you down. I need your assistance though, I want you to keep an open mind while reading. Also it’s important to read slowly and reflect upon certain points.

Do Smokers Choose to Smoke?

No more than a cocaine addict chooses to take cocaine. The first time a youngster tries flirting with a drug it is a conscious choice. After that each intake is a desire instigated by the drug and is no more conscious than saying "I am hungry". In retrospection, as an addicted smoker, if you look back upon your life, did you ever want to feel this way? Was it a conscious choice on your part to get addicted to a substance, which creates a craving every time you have to do without it? No person dwelling in sanity would have ever made such a choice.

Any smoker would obviously justify his/her habit by saying that it’s his/her personal choice. But a smoker really has not more choice than a cocaine or heroin addict. Its time to face the hard reality, without the sugar coating it, smoking cigarettes or in other words being addicted to tobacco is no less severe than being addicted to heroin, marijuana, cocaine, or any other narcotic drug known to mankind. Tobacco is a drug and a smoker is a drug addict, he/she is as helpless as any other substance addicts when it comes to the choice of whether he/she should smoke? He/she has to smoke because nicotine makes him/her smoke.

Smokers never really realizes the power that nicotine wields on them and hence think that they are, and always will be, in conscious control. Any average smoker will have you believe that they are smoking for the enjoyment of it, the truth is far from it and every smoker inherently knows this. Does smoking really give you pleasure? Or did it create the craving in the first place and each smoke just causes the craving to subside for sometime, before triggering it again in a while? Smokers are just fulfilling a craving and the craving was not generated consciously, the craving got generated after the first few cigarettes that they tried, after that each cigarette was just to "scratch that irritating itch" which develops due to nicotine addiction.

A smoker feels that a cigarette is his/her reward and feels that a non-smoker lives a drab life devoid of any such rewards. But the fact of the matter is that a non-smoker does not feel the need for such a reward. A non-smoker does not feel the craving for a cigarette whereas a smoker does. A smoker is obviously not in the privileged position of having access to a tool of reward, which non-smokers don’t have, but it’s the other way round. The smoker has gotten himself/herself addicted to a craving which a non-smoker does not have and he/she just disillusions himself/herself by believing that every time he/she fulfills the craving it’s a reward. Can you really enjoy a craving, something which you have no conscious control over?

Digging The Smoker’s Pit

A smoker once has gotten addicted is comparable to someone who is made to live their lives in a pit or a jail as a prisoner, who is let out to enjoy the open world every few minutes or hours later. Let me explain this more clearly. Let’s say there is this one person who was living a free life, enjoying his/her freedom doing what he/she pleased. One day this person decides to dig a pit for himself/herself and chains himself/herself to the bottom of the pit. After every few minutes or after an hour or so this person would unchain himself/herself and get out of the pit. He/she enjoys the freedom outside the pit for 5 to 10 minutes and then returns back to the pit. He/she then chains himself/herself to the bottom of the pit and waits agonizingly for another hour before he/she can get out. After sometime his/her life pattern becomes something like this

. Gets out of the pit for 5 minutes ( compared to having a smoke)
. Get back into the pit and chains him/her up and waits desperately to get out (compared to the period when he/she is not smoking and waiting to smoke)
. Get out the pit again after a small period (a period which keeps getting smaller and smaller with time) and start again from step 1

If you are a smoker then this is your way of life. I am sure you agree because if you don’t you are just disillusioning yourself. You live like an addict because you are addicted to a substance called tobacco, nicotine present in the tobacco to be more specific. A smoker who says that he/she enjoys his/her cigarette is actually stating that he/she was banging his/her head against a stone wall for sometime and feels relieved when he/she can stop for a few minutes. Why did you start banging your head against the wall in the first place (withdrawal symptoms is what banging your head equals to)? Non-smoker live their lives without banging their head against a stone wall and you as a smoker live the same life for a few minute and return to the head banging routine. Do you still think you are more privileged than a non-smoker because you have the 5 minute break from your head banging? Don’t all smokers actually look at non-smokers in pity thinking about how difficult their life must be without the pleasure of a cigarette? The fact is your life, as a smoker, has become miserable because of your addiction and all you are doing is giving vent to an addiction, non-smokers don’t have that bane in their lives. Don’t feel any pity for the non-smoker, that’s ridiculous! A non-smoker never knows what it means to enjoy a smoke because he/she is not addicted to it and hence is not feeding a craving.

Accept Your Reality As A Smoker

If you are a smoker accept the reality that you are an addict. Whether you are smoking 40 cigarettes per day or 5 cigarettes per day it’s the same. You are an addict! Smokers who smoke 5 cigarettes a day and feel good about their low intake ought to realize that they are living in the same pit as the smoker who smokes 40 cigarettes. It’s just that the period spent in the pit varies. The smoker who smokes 5 cigarettes per day is no more strong willed than a smoker who smokes 40-50 cigarettes, it’s just that he/she is either not able to afford it or is scared to death about the health problems associated with smoking. There is also a possibility of their bodies not being able to take more than 5 cigarettes’ poison. Each person has a different smoking capacity. At any moment the 5 per day smoker can change into a 10 per day smoker because there is no difference.

Addiction, once it sets in, stays put. After every cigarette you smoke you can only look forward to the next. How quickly you have your next depends on your excuses. If you are worried about your health then the fear would cause you to delay the next cigarette for a few hours, but during those few hours you will mostly be feeling out of sorts waiting for the time when you can put a cigarette to your lips and light it. Like staying in a pit, you are just waiting to get outside for a while. It’s not a life of a free person but a caged life of an addict.

See this for yourself in your pattern of living, if you are smoker. Isn’t this how you live your life, day in and day out? There are instances when a smoker (male) would rather get the love making done with as soon as possible so that he can have a relaxed smoke (a smoker starts despising the prospect of having sex after a few years of addiction, soft erections, impotence, lack of stamina, lack of sexual drive and feeling of lethargy due to lack of oxygen in the most vital organs). Do you really want to feel this way? Everything in your life stops having meaning beyond the next moment that you can light up, is it not so? For a smoker his/her next cigarette is the only hope towards living a good life. He/she wants believe that he/she is enjoying his/her life thanks to cigarettes but that’s a totally delusional viewpoint. He/she is not enjoying life but has made cigarettes the meaning of their lives and this is not a conscious decision.

The nicotine addiction started by the cigarette smoking spree takes decision in your life from here on. You are a slave to nicotine, to put it in a nutshell. If you don’t realize it right now and are basking in the glory of thinking that you are in control, it won’t be long before the harsh reality dawns upon you. You don’t enjoy cigarettes but just fulfill a craving generated by the last cigarette.

Does Smoking Ease Stress?

This is a classic. Smokers are usually seen to head for their smoking pits in a state of agitation or stress, usually in the office. A non-smoker might think that a smoker is able to relieve stress by smoking because of the obvious body language depicted by the smoker. There’s a deep inhalation proceeded by a release of a cloud of smoke with the smoker’s eyes glazing in contentment. Anyone would believe that smoking is a huge stress reliever. In fact most smokers find it scary to quit smoking due to this very reason, they are fearful of how they will manage stress situations without their trusted companion alongside. This whole thing about stress relief and smoking is one big illusion. Smokers don’t see it for what it is, a drug addiction, for obvious reasons and the non-smokers obviously have no reference to know because they have never smoked.

Truth Behind The Illusion

If you go by medical evidence it just increases stress by causing a huge spike in your blood pressure. But I will not be quoting medical evidences here. Let’s just go by your own experience as a smoker and I have the authority to talk about smoking experiences, having been a smoker for 14 years. I am talking to smokers here, do you feel that you get relief from stress after you have a smoke? Be honest about it. Let’s say you are in a stressful situation at the office. You head for the pantry/staircase and light up a cigarette, take a few deep drags and feel good about it. You return back to the same stress again after you are done with the cigarette, in fact you even feel a bit lousy and fogged. But you did feel good for that 5 minutes while you were smoking, so obviously the cigarette helped you beat stress correct? You are wrong, because it’s just your illusion speaking.

The reality is that you are suffering from two kinds of stress here

. stress at the office due to a situation which needs your attention
. stress within yourself because of the nicotine craving (which increases during stress, I will explain why)

So when you go for a smoke this is your mental state

Mental state = stressed = stress because of office work + stress because of nicotine craving

When you are having a smoke
Mental state = stressed = stress because of office work

This is why you feel relieved of stress because when you are smoking you take care of the stress caused by nicotine craving and hence feel a reduction in your stress levels. You need not have felt this stress if you were a non-smoker in the first place and hence its ridiculous to claim the smoking relieved your stress.

After you have finished smoking
Mental state = stressed = stress because of office work + stress because of nicotine craving + stress due feelings of negativity owing to your smoking habit + stress due to health consequences of your smoking habit.

Back to square one as soon as your finish your cigarette. In fact now you have a couple of stress factors added to your previous list, not a very useful stress buster now is it?

Fears That Plague, A Quitter

If you are a smoker inadvertently you would have tried to quit smoking at least once. The fact that you are still a smoker just validates that point that you are actually no where close to being in control of your habit. People who tend to quit depend on their will power to help them get through the phase of withdrawal pangs. Unfortunately the whole mentality of "I am sacrificing a thing of pleasure" only fuels the desire to get back to cigarettes and detest life for putting you in position where you have to decide between the two. Every smoker secretly hates life for creating the dilemma between health and smoking. If only cigarettes where good for your health what a utopia it would be, every smoker dreams of such a utopia. Nature works on the principle of survival of the fittest and wants health for you. Indulgence in anything that harms your health will put in a position of misery so that you finally quit, you can’t really beat this natural way of things. Coming back to the topic at hand which is "fears that plague, a cigarette quitter", I believe the below points will well encompass most of the major ones.

Fear of Leading A Boring Life After Quitting

Most of the smokers live in the percept that smoking gives enjoyment to life. Life per se is boring if cigarettes are removed from the picture, for any smoker. As a non-smoker it would be impossible for you to believe that such a state can exist in anyone, but this is the truth. A smoker is an addict who believes that his/her addiction makes his/her life beautiful. A quitter would usually spend a lot of time delving into the future and imagine living through his/her entire life without smoking again. For most of them this thought is unbearable, almost dreadful, and hence they get back to smoking. Just remember that there is no truth to this thought. You were living a normal life before you started smoking, you did not consider your life boring. It’s just that after you start smoking your addiction makes you think that life is boring without the substance that feeds the addiction. Just shows how badly nicotine gets you hooked.

Fear of Not Being Able to Enjoy A Party

A smoker usually enjoys his/her evening out with lots of cigarettes and booze, or if he/she is not an alcohol consumer then smoking is the single point of having fun while partying. A smoker tends to believe that a party is incomplete without relaxing to a smoke. Just think about it, did you feel the same way before you started smoking? Does smoking really give you a lot of enjoyment during a party or it is just something you have started doing unconsciously as a habit? Some smokers don’t know how they would deal with social situations without their friend, the cigarette, to give them refuge. If you were socially awkward before you started smoking, it’s a given fact that you will be social awkward even when you smoke. What has smoking got to do with feeling comfortable socially? If you are not socially comfortable maybe you are a person who likes his/her personal space more, being an introvert is not a bad thing at all its just a way of life similar to being a extrovert. Smoking will not make you an extrovert by any means. Just the opposite is true, now you will have to avoid non-smokers at the party or the other way round.

Fear of Not Being Macho (Male)

It’s ridiculous but true. Smokers, several of them, derive their sense of masculinity from their smoking habit. I found it extremely macho to drift smoke through my nostrils and make smoke rings out of my mouth. The acts of inhaling and letting out smoke like a factory chimney made me feel macho. The fact of the matter is that being macho is just an attribute, some people are macho while some are not. People who are macho would never need something external to validate the point and people who are not macho would not become so by smoking. Lot of kids took smoking just to show that they have matured or grown up. It’s mostly the movies and peer influence. Kids can be excused for not being mature enough to understand what maturity really means. An adult would behave childishly by believing that smoking gives him a sense of machismo is deluding himself. You can be macho by building the strength of character not by becoming addicted to a substance. If you did not feel macho before you started smoking, do you really think smoking fixed the problem for you? Be honest. Smoking is no panacea for character building.

Fear of Deprivation

The withdrawal pain is dreadful, it’s horrible and I won’t be able to tolerate it. That’s what a smoker believes. It’s just the nicotine talking, nothing else. Your addiction is controlling you and of course like any addiction it has the power to control your thoughts. The fact of the matter is that withdrawal is not painful. It’s not even close to being as painful as feeling acute hunger. I quit smoking cold turkey, I did not feel any withdrawal pangs except a few moments when there was a craving for a smoke generated by the nicotine addiction. You have tolerated worse pains in your life than the pain of nicotine craving, believe me. Nicotine craving is nothing if you don’t keep thinking about it day in and day out. The actual craving does not last for more than a couple of weeks after you quit smoking, even in the case of the worst smoker. After that it’s just your mind conditioning that acts up. If you feel you have sacrificed a pleasure and keep feeling bad about it then it won’t be long before you find yourself opening a cigarette pack. It’s simple, when you quit knowing that the addiction served no purpose except centering your life around feeding the addiction, or in other words when you understand the futility of living a life of feeding an addiction, it’s a cinch that you would not give into the nicotine craving which would exist for while. In either case the craving in itself is not painful, dreadful or anything close. The mind of course is dominated by the addiction and continuously keeps thinking about it, to overcome this compulsive thinking it important remind yourself why you quit in the first place. That’s why it’s important to be free of all illusions of smoking before quitting. That’s what this series serves to do.

Fear of A Relapse

The once a smoker always a smoker syndrome. Most smokers find it futile to trying quitting when they know that at some point in the lives they will get back to it. It’s like, why should I stop smoking now and spend a few days in misery when I know I will get back to smoking later? Quitting for a lifetime would seem like an enormous task, an almost impossible feat. Nicotine’s talking of course. The truth of the matter is that quitting is simple and once you quit for the reason of not wanting to be an addict, to stop exhibiting the behaviors of an addict day in and day out, you will never want to get back to smoking. There is no fear of relapse because you are clear about your purpose of quitting, which is not test your will power or anything but just a simple need to stop being an addict. If you quit to prove a point to yourself or under the duress of fear of health, there is a possibility of relapse. When you quit knowing that cigarettes don’t make life enjoyable, but work towards the contrary, it’s a cinch that you won’t smoke again. Quitting for a week or so is all that it takes to get over the nicotine pangs, which again is not at all tough, as discussed above. After that life just becomes normal, you will not be living each moment of your life craving a smoke. Just quit for the right reason after understanding what it is that you are quitting. You are quitting an addiction that has started to control your life and health.

Fear of Personality Change

A smoker derives his/her identity from the habit after sometime. He/she cannot imagine a situation devoid of a cigarette. While having coffee, while taking a walk, while hanging out with friends, after making love, after having lunch or dinner or breakfast, after getting up from the bed, while taking a dump, while reading a newspaper, while drinking beer, while driving your car etc. You get the picture. Smoking has claimed invasion into every aspect of the smoker’s life, or so the smoker believes. If you face the reality, smoking has nothing to do with the way your life is. It’s your constant need to feed your addiction. Think about it this way, you personality is as it is but now you are living with an added burden of performing a substance addiction activity along with your normal chores. Once you quit smoking you will still be the same person doing the same things (in a more energetic manner) just that you are now free of addiction. If being an addict is a figment of your personality its something you can do without, don’t you agree? You become an addict and for goodness sake it has nothing to do with personality.

Fear That You Won’t Be Able To Handle Pressure

A smoker starts depending on his/her cigarette to get him/her through pressured situations. Think about how you dealt with pressure when you were not smoking? Were you incapable and needy when you were not a smoker, with respect to handling stress and pressure? I don’t think so. In fact you did a better job at it than without a foggy mind which is strewn with nicotine craving. Smoking does not relieve stress. You have added an extra burden, of relieving your addiction craving, on top of the usual stress and pressure of day to day living. You will do just fine with dealing with pressure situations without the added baggage of addiction. I remember dealing with office politics by puffing on cigarettes for hours to get over my anger and frustration. Obviously it did not make me cool or solve any situation. In fact in most cases I felt I was not clear headed and hence was not able to express myself properly when needed. After smoking a lot, my brain got too tired and body too exhausted of oxygen lack to care about anything. If that’s a stress buster for you then I don’t think there will be many takers.

Fear of Not Being Able to Concentrate on Work

Some smoking addicts relate their work efficiency to their cigarette power. It doesn’t work that way, as I mentioned before smoking adds extra baggage. It disrupts your focus and concentration by plaguing you with addiction symptoms every time you lay off smoking and sit to work. Smokers are known to be less efficient than their non-smoking counterparts for most cases. The smoking breaks you take not only disrupt work flow but leave you more tired and oxygen deprived than you were before. How can that benefit your concentration? As a student I used to study for hours at a stretch, I had the power of suppressing restlessness. After I was a smoking addict I couldn’t work for 30 minutes without fighting the unconscious urge to light up again. Problem solving was a pain because it involved focus, for an addict focus can never shift completely from his addiction.

Cigarettes cure none of these fears. You have to deal with all of these fears only because of your addiction to smoking. Nicotine has claimed a stake on your life and it pretends to provide you with solutions to the problem it has created. Stop kidding yourself that your life is better with cigarettes in it. All of these fears are baseless and are the outcome of your addiction talk, there is no reality to it. Quitting smoking or getting rid of the nicotine addiction is not tough by any means, it’s only too easy when you know that you are living like an addict and want to stop doing so. But I am sure you as a smoker don’t believe me right now, in fact my saying that quitting is easy might take away your last excuse for not quitting. It’s all that there is, it’s an excuse generated by addiction. You can hate me for saying this but that is the truth, quitting is just too easy if you believe it’s easy. It can be a death wrath if you believe quitting smoking is dreadful.

If you have to quit (under force of natural reaction, like a heart attack or stroke) then you will quit and not feel any problems with it. Addiction is simple to overcome, your mind plays games with you which you need to be careful of. Overcome your addicted mind by being clear about why you want to quit and the rest is easy. You will find that these articles will clear your disillusion by showing you the truth behind the illusion created by your addiction. It is easy to quit, trust me on that, I’ve been a smoker who has quit without problems, I will help you do the same purely by discarding the illusions created by your addiction and that of other smokers around you.

How Do Youngsters Get Hooked to Smoking?

Their first cigarette is of course the anchor for the hooking to take place. This is a no brainer of course but it’s important to understand that youngsters try a cigarette knowing that one cigarette cannot harm them. As a parent if you think you can scare your kid into not smoking, by telling him/her that a single puff of cigarette can cause cancer, then forget it. In fact the possibility that they detest their first smoking experience is pretty high, and then they see people all around them enjoying their smokes and what comes to their mind? They feel the need to reach a point where they can also start enjoying a cigarette because many people seem to be doing so including their parents. I did not have this problem with cigarettes, for some reason I did not even have a coughing bout when I inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs. I did not find the scent of tobacco repulsive, on contrary I liked it.

In fact I remember my first experiment with drinking whiskey. I poured a generous amount of water to a 90ml glass of whiskey and drank it down. I nearly puked on the floor. This was at the age of 16, but then I had seen men drink whiskey like water and I wanted to be like one of them. I fought my revulsion to taste of whiskey and I practice drinking it daily. It was not long before I acquire a taste for it. I even started drinking whiskey neat without water or soda. I had my problems with drinking which I was able to manage with age. The point I am making here is that even when a youngster has a bad experience with his/her first smoke, it’s a cinch that they would try again and again till the art is perfected. Stubborn and resolute kids even try their best to become a smoking artist by learning to puff out smoke rings and learn to inhale longer than normal. Extremely dangerous practices but then when you are kid you don’t think too much about danger. Asking a kid to not smoke is like asking him to stop riding his car or bike at break neck speed. Kids don’t learn through advice, if you are a parent with an addicted kid you know what I am talking about.

If a youngster decides to give smoking a try it’s a given that he/she will become a habituated smoker with time. He/she might grow up to be mature enough to know that he/she is creating a hell for himself/herself through the addiction and go through the process of quitting later in case he/she is lucky.

How Do You Stop Youngsters From Smoking?

Not by scaring them of cancer, that’s for sure. Of course educate them about the afflictions caused by smoking but don’t depend on it to ensure that he/she will not give smoking a try. Risk taking and the belief that no harm can befall me is an essential ingredient in most of the youngsters. The only way a youngster would avoid smoking is through a value system. A value system is not built instantly but is a work of patience. Good parents rear kids with good values. A kid with good values usually grows mature enough to know what’s good and what’s bad for his/her being and for people around him/her. Lack of love and respect from parents is usually one main driving force towards losing respect for oneself. Identity is then gained through a pseudo source like cigarette addiction.

Most of the youngsters are abused in subtle or blatant ways in today’s society. It is difficult to find families who inculcate a sound value system into their children. Character is built from childhood. A youngster who lacks the strength of discipline and character can easily be tempted towards an addictive substance as he/she believes it to be a panacea for the pain inside. Teach your children to deal with life circumstances by depending on their inner source of strength rather than an external source like cigarettes, cannabis or alcohol. Unfortunately, damage once done cannot be rectified. If you failed to provide a good value system to your kids then you cannot expect them to behave in a responsible manner once they grow into their teen years or post teen years. A youngster brought up with a lack of good value system would end up living a life that reflects the same, adding on vices becomes their identity. Alcohol addiction, drug abuse (which includes cigarette smoking) and careless money spending would be a part of their lifestyle.

Do ‘Smoking Horror’ Commercials Worked?

As a smoker you can answer this for yourself. When you started out smoking as a youngster were you not aware that it leads to different forms of cancer, with lung cancer being the primary one? I am sure you did and in no uncertain terms either. You would have seen commercials on TV talking about how smoking causes death through cancer. Maybe you were not aware of the more obvious consequences like heart disease, impotence, nasal problems, throat congestion, asthma attacks, stomach and mouth ulcers, limb amputation (serious cases) and strokes. Cancer in itself should have been a deterrent but was it? Were you really scared of acquiring cancer when you lit up your first cigarette? It’s a far chance. Once you became addicted you, of course, felt worried about the prospect of acquiring cancer but by then were too powerless to control your addiction, in most cases, and the fear in itself seemed to push you to smoke more.

You cannot scare people into quitting. Most of the articles I wrote from the medical perspective was to provide you with factual information knowing that it won’t make you quit but will act as one element in this process. Getting your facts right about the health disasters of smoking will help you stop being so complacent about lighting up a cigarette. To quit is a completely different ball game especially once you are hooked. Your mind is dominating you and the addiction is dominating your mind. Horror commercials, which depend on scare value, have little power over addicted smokers except giving them added fear which try to suppress through smoking. Youngsters are too reckless to fall for horror commercials. A good population of youngsters’ die on road everyday due to rash driving and drunken driving, recklessness is in-built in most of them. No amount of advice or commercials will make them stop.

A Good Value System

The bottom line is that if you want to ensure your kids don’t end up trying on addiction or indulge in a behavior which is considered irresponsible towards their well being, then rear them with love, respect and a good value system.

Are There Physical Pains During Withdrawal?

None at all. I can give that to you in written that you will not face any physical withdrawal pains. I am sure you have seen movies in which drug addicts are shown writing in pain during rehabilitation. Don’t worry, nothing of that sort is gonna happen to you. Even for the drug addicts in rehabilitation the pain is more mind-induced than physical. Mind-induced fear during withdrawal is your addiction talking. Nicotine has a strong hold over your brain and it will take time to free your brain from it, maybe a couple weeks maximum. There are no physical pains to deal with here. You will be completely functional as long as you don’t keep dwelling upon how pleasurable it was to smoke. Quitting through sheer will power without a foundation of a value system or in other words without really knowing why you want to quit, is going to be a failure in most cases. Will power based quitting is about beating yourself down, it does not help. Your mind will make you feel undignified for being rude to yourself and will come up with an excuse to help you have a smoke, as a small reward for all the pain you have gone through. Get your reasons right, be ware of all the illusions meted by your addiction and quitting is a cinch because your mind loses its excuses.

Are There Headaches to Deal With?

Nicotine addiction withdrawal will manifest as a headache if you keep thinking about it. You don’t need to worry about it, the headaches caused during addiction withdrawal have more to do with your mind working up situations to get you to smoke. It won’t be a throbbing mind numbing migraine based headache but a casual one which you would have felt even while smoking. A dose of aspirin would take care of it in a moment.

Will I Start Feeling Restless?

For a couple of weeks you will face some small nicotine addiction withdrawal symptoms like mild restlessness or the need to sleep more. Follow your body, if it wants to sleep more then sleep more. If you don’t feel like talking much then don’t. If you don’t feel like working much then do some light work without exerting yourself. All this is only for a couple of week under the worst case scenario. Human body is highly intelligent and learns to cope with change instantly. Within a week you might not even feel the mild feeling of craving of nicotine kicking in. Most of the problem is just in the mind. The mind keeps talking about how uncomfortable you are, but physically you won’t feel any discomfort. You would not see things like your body shaking or nerves twitching or anything of that sort. Small withdrawal symptoms like mild restlessness are a given but only for a few days. Rest, relax and avoid undue stress during this period and you will be just fine.

Will I Feel Constipated?

Most smokers develop the habit of having a smoke before indulging in a bout of bowel movement on the pot. Majority of them smoke while sitting on the pot. They swear that smoking helps in bowel movement. It’s just a mind thing, a habit which has developed. Some people drink coffee or tea before taking a dump. There is no concrete evidence that there is any help provided to the bowel by these activities. On contrary there has been evidence against it, but I am not getting into medical studies here. After you quit it might feel a bit odd to be inside the bathroom without your cigarette friend. It takes a little getting used to, I agree. You will not feel constipated or anything because of not smoking but just the habit of taking a dump while smoking would make you feel a bit odd about just sitting on the pot with nothing to puff onto. You developed a bad habit and within a few days you will replace it back to its original state. You did not need a cigarette to take a dump when you were a non-smoker right?

Quitting Through Willpower Does Not Work

I am sure a lot of smokers would chide at this statement. Will power was always the excuse you laid back on stating "I can quit when I want, that’s the kinda will power I possess". Here I am stating that will power will not help you quit. The reason is simple, it is impossible to maintain a constant level of will power unless you are inhuman. All humans have varying moods, varying emotions and situations. Let’s say you are extremely superior in will power wielding, as compared to the entire human race, and still there is a possibility that you would fall back to smoking when you are mightily drunk or faced with a highly depressing situation. You need will power to swim across the Pacific, because it’s very painful. There are few that possess such will power and most of them are professionally trained. Normal humans without superior and professional training would find it impossible to wield such a will power.

It is possible to quit smoking when you are put in a prison for a year while depriving you of cigarettes. You will stay without smoking for a year, nicotine would have completely lost control over your mind with a few weeks, so here you are in a prison for a year without smoking and you survived it. Great willpower? Not really, just those circumstances were such that you did not have a choice. Now let say you come out of the prison, what is the first thing you would want to do? If are being honest you would say go to the nearest tobacco selling shop and get me a pack of cigarettes. Go outside the shop and smoke at least ten of them in one shot. That’s what will power quitting does for you. It will help you imprison yourself and torture you into not smoking but there will come a moment when you feel a little liberated and will head right back to smoking.

Why Does Willpower Fail to Help Quit?

Its quite simple, you are trying to beat yourself up to quit based on a reason like "smoking is injurious to my health". So you are quitting against your desire to smoke. You desperately want to smoke but you avoid it through sheer will power. You are fighting your own mind by numbing it through force. When the force is slightly lifted, and it’s bound to happen sooner or later, it won’t be long before you find yourself smoking. Even if you stay quit for a year or more under will power it’s a given that you would end up smoking the moment you let your guard down. If you quit under a severe fear like the fear of acquiring a heart disease, lung cancer or living with impotence for the rest of your life, then there is a possibility of staying quit forever.

Force of Fear

Fear is a strong force in some people. The fear of becoming impotent can make the most blatant smoker quit when he realizes it to be true for himself. Imagine a smoker who starts getting soft erections and is unable to pleasure himself or his wife/girlfriend, if he wants to regain his potency he has to quit and stay quit. Sometimes the damage is permanent. Knowing this to be a fact is a strong reason to quit. Fear based quitting can lead to a relapse though. Lets say you decide to become celibate and hence the fear of impotence no longer plays a role in your life, now that’s an extremely example but I am just giving you a scenario where fear based quitting can fail. When the fear is lifted the quitting goes for a toss. Will power based quitting can be for health reasons or because you promised your son/daughter. It won’t last in most cases as addiction transcends relationships.

Willpower Entails Sacrifice

Remember the last time you decided to quit and stayed quit for a few days. What was your mind state? Weren’t you continuously bragging about this feat you were performing? Every friend and relative got to know that you had taken the supreme step of self-sacrifice by quitting. Humans are inherently selfish, and it’s not in a negative connotation that I use the word. Selfishness is the reason why we survive, we hold our lives and our needs to be very dear to us and that’s the reason for our evolution. Sacrifice is always a selfless behavior if done for others. At times we sacrifice things for our own good. In either case sacrifice is about leaving a good thing and living with it. It works for sometime but the moment you see that your sacrifice is not being acknowledged any further, you will go back to what you sacrificed because it does not seem to be worth the effort. At the crux all I am saying is that it’s impossible to force or beat you mind into quitting.

Quitting Through Fear As Opposed to Willpower

Fear of death is a strong motivator as is the fear of disease. This fear is ingrained in each of us since out most important priority is to survive. Quitting through fear will work in most cases. You will go through a lot of anger and frustration, you will feel that life is extremely unfair and detest life for being this way. A smoker who starts becoming impotent and desperately quits to regain his erectile functions would hate every part of his life. It is seems unfair that something which was giving so much pleasure had to be sacrificed for the sake of health or relationship. But it works, you will stay quit as long as the fear lives and eats into your mind. You won’t be a very happy person but you will stay quit. Will power or forced quitting based on a promise you made, or a resolution you took up without a concrete base, is very short lived. You would have broken umpteen promises to yourself and to your close ones in the bid to continue smoking. You will power does not have a chance since your mind becomes your enemy.

Smoking Has Become Anti-Social

It’s a sight to see smokers huddling towards one corner of a pantry lighting and puffing away while the non-smokers stand a distance apart. The smokers obviously feel camaraderie among themselves. I felt extremely close to my smoking friends than to my non-smoking friends more because they did not make me feel bad about my addiction. It felt good to make some new friends based on the common interest we shared in terms of smoking. It seemed like I was getting better at being social.

Security Among Smoking Addicts

The truth of course was that I was only feeling attracted to the notion of being among addicts so that I feel normal. Smoking in today’s society is considered an abnormality or an anathema. Aren’t you surprised to see that in your office you and your pal might be the only two smokers around? Maybe there are more in your office but I am sure you are seeing a sudden reduction in the smoker population. It’s like people jumping off a sinking ship leaving the ones who are still onboard to feel even more outcast along with the knowledge of their impending death. Smoking was a social thing to do some years back but not anymore.

Snuff Is Out of The Window, So Will Cigarettes

In fact during the days of my dad it was common to see most people smoking various forms of tobacco and some inhaling snuff. Snuff is presently considered disgusting to say the least. If you are a snuff inhaler it’s a cinch that you catch a lot of people looking at you with disgust as if you were inhaling dirt. Society has changed, people have started valuing their health and they are better educated regarding the pollution caused to our lungs inside and the environment outside through vices like smoking.

Social Dinners and Smoking

Nowadays if you go to someone’s house for dinner you will need to seek permission to light up after dinner, the hosts may allow it but with a facial expression showing that they would rather that you don’t. It’s insulting to have someone ask you to not smoke inside his or her car but it would be more and more common. Society does not respect or admire smokers. There was time when most men smoked but that’s not the case now. If you are a smoker the chances are that you will have to stand in a different section of the pantry, alone like a leper, while people throw disgusting looks at you. Given that you wouldn’t care for any of, neither did I when I smoked, but still it will ride on your mind that you are now in a society where the possibility of becoming a minority is increasing day by day.

Growth of Non-Smoking Locations

The non-smoking points have increased. Smoking in public places, like the stations and offices, have been banned in Malaysia. As an addict you will feel outrage against the society for plotting against you but the fact is that you are in a minority now. Smokers are now well aware of the fact that smoking is very less popular among the crowd. There are instances where a family can ask you to stop smoking even in a smoking section of a crowded restaurant. You will have to oblige them else you will face an opposition from a majority present. Smokers realize well enough that smoking is anti-social and far from being cool in today’s society.

The Uncool Idea of Impotence

Smoking is no longer a manly thing to do as it was in the olden days, in fact with the onset of impotence, and the awareness among people about this disease as related to smoking, the notion of manliness and smoking is gaining very less credence. It wont be long before all the cigarette packs are instructed to come with the warning sign of "smoking leads to impotence", some brands have already started putting this warning in China. Imagine the kind of looks you get from people, girls in general, when you are smoking with this knowledge. I have seen the trend changing and know that it will continue to go against smoking from here on in leaps and bounds. Smoking is a slow suicide and people are well aware of the fact now more than ever.

The Myth of Smoking Relieves Boredom

Smoking relieves the dullness or boredom of the moment, it is a common argument made by a pro smoker. It’s a baseless argument to start with because boredom is caused by a situation and usually is just a state of mind. Smoking a cigarette as an activity is performed with the only intention of relieving the nicotine craving. The activity of smoking may take up time and attention but so would any other activity. That does not mean that smoking alleviates boredom. The concept of boredom itself is just a mind state where a person feels disinterested in anything around him. The need to have a smoke arises from this boredom because the nicotine craving is felt more acutely in this state. This lead to a smoker lighting up and claiming that it helps getting rid of boredom. Once the cigarette has been finished the smoker returns to his boredom again. Smoking is just an addiction staving activity and it has no capacity to relieve boredom. The only purpose served by smoking is to alleviate the nicotine craving, which was generated by cigarettes in the first place.

Isn’t It Relaxing to Smoke When Bored?

When your mind is indulging in an interesting activity you will not feel the need to smoke or may even become unaware of your nicotine craving, am sure you have noticed this. During circumstances when you are performing an uninteresting work, something monotonous or stress, your mind seeks to do something stimulating and easily wanders into what is lacking at the moment. It senses nicotine craving immediately since a smoker is usually in the state of withdrawal after his first cigarette. Hence the need to light up during boredom. It was certainly my favorite excuse to smoke and I don’t blame any smoker for feeling this way because that’s how I felt myself. If I was stuck doing something boring, it was an extremely attractive option to light up. To walk out to the pantry or terrace and smoke a stick of cigarette was entertaining and seemed to relieve boredom. Just that once I got back everything was just the same and now I felt lethargic from the carbon monoxide in my blood stream. Smoking does not alleviate boredom because it’s just an activity of alleviating an addiction craving. It obviously feels good to alleviate a craving for nicotine but how does it help overcome boredom?

Smoking Feels Like Nothing With Time

There comes a time, usually in a matter of a few months, when smoking feels like nothing except an unconscious habit. After smoking you don’t feel good about it but feel a need to smoke in sometime. While smoking you don’t know why you are smoking at all because it does not feel good. You feel the obnoxious smell of tobacco add a stink to your breath and have no idea why you keep lighting up. Your previous cigarette generates a need to smoke again, to get some nicotine in, but in a while the nicotine content is well saturated in your blood stream and you still continue smoking for no reason, as it happens with chain smokers. It becomes an ingrained habit, which is not in the least enjoyable. It is just something you do and the worst thing is that it is killing you in the process.

Sitting Alone Without A Cigarette

A smoking addict would feel threatened at the very idea of considering sitting alone without smoking. When you were a non-smoker you did not feel the need to do something with your hands and mouth when you were sitting alone. A smoker compulsively feels the need to drag smoke while walking or driving or doing anything, which is considered boring. The reason is simple, and this is true not only for smokers but for non-smokers as well. When you are performing a non-stimulating activity like walking alone, sitting alone, working on a dragging project or just watching a boring movie alone, there is a tendency to find something stimulating to do. A non-smoker would usually end up putting on some good music or something along those lines while smoker might end up puffing on a cigarette to do something stimulating. When you can kill boredom with a harmless activity why would you indulge in a health deprecating activity? Answer is simple, because you are addicted to that health sapper.

Alternatives to Beat Boredom

There is nothing even remotely engrossing about smoking. In fact after a couple of puffs it is quite usual to start thinking about the reason why you lit up. If you are continuously in the state of restlessness or boredom the problem is deeper and is at the mind level. Maybe your job is not satisfying you, maybe you are not happy with your relationship or maybe it’s just a passing phase of depression. If it gets acute you can consult a doctor and ask for some prescription drugs, which can uplift your mood or serve to equalize the imbalance caused due to a chemical lack. Smoking is no medication and neither does it serve any purpose. Nicotine is a stimulant and it increases the blood pressure apart from becoming an addiction. It is not known to release any endorphins (feel good chemicals) in your body.

The excuse of smoking kills boredom is ridiculous, it just fulfills a craving. The sooner you understand this concept, the easier it is to understand the crux of quitting without any force.

Is Smoking a Habit?

Let’s define habit first. Habit is a routinely performed activity, which gets ingrained into our neural network and helps us perform this activity without any conscious intervention. Habits are performed unconsciously. Let’s say you are in the habit of getting up 10 am in the morning on daily basis. If your new job requires you to get up at 8 am then it would get difficult for a couple or days or maybe a week but eventually you will relax into the new habit of getting up at 8 am. Is it uncomfortable? Not really, just takes getting used to. Is it difficult to break the habit of getting up at 10 am? No, it just took a couple of days. All habits are similar. They are an unconscious mind pattern and once we are required to change it we become conscious of it.

Smoking Is Not A Habit, It’s An Addiction

Once we are conscious of a habit it does not take long to replace it with a new habit. Some people are in the habit of working out every morning but if they were to end up in a hectic project which did not allow them to work out for a few weeks it would not bother them. So habits are harmless in that they feel natural when they are around and we get used to it once they are not. So is smoking also a habit? Not at all, if you go by the above definition and properties of habit then it absolutely does not fit into the slot of a habit. Habits can be broken easily but quit smoking seems like a Herculean task. Habits can be lived without for a few weeks if required but a smoker would find it self threatening to stay away from smoking for a couple week at a stretch. So obviously smoking is not a habit, then why are smokers hooked to? Because it’s an addiction, a nicotine craving and a smoker follows the patterns of a regular addict.

Treating Your Addiction as A Habit

There is nothing routine about smoking. A smoker lights up a cigarette to fulfill a craving for nicotine and this can happen at all times. The smoker might smoke once every 10 minutes for sometime and then once every 5 minutes and at times without any break. It’s not a habit, it’s an addiction and that’s why it seems so difficult to break it. If you try breaking your addiction the way you break habits, it just won’t work. A smoker might understand his tendency to smoke every too often without even being consciously aware of lighting up when he understand what addiction means. Your mind has gotten so wired to this chemical called nicotine that it has acquired a separate neural network, which makes you behave in a certain way to keep feeding the addiction either consciously or unconsciously.

Smoking Aids Concentration Myth

Have you heard of the stories where smokers spin about being able to concentrate better at work while smoking. What if I told you that a smoker can only achieve the levels of concentration he was capable of before he became smoker no matter how many cigarettes he smokes. Worse his level of concentration declines with every smoke since the carbon monoxide content in the blood increases reducing the oxygen supply to the vital organs of the body including the brain, leading to severe energy sapping lethargy.

Imagine the Whole Conundrum of Concentration and Smoking As Below

Before becoming a smoker: concentration level = A
After becoming a smoker: concentration level = A – (concentration sapped by nicotine withdrawal pangs)
After having a smoke: concentration level = A (for a few minutes till the nicotine pang starts)
After a few smokes: concentration level = A – (energy loss due to oxygen deprivation) – (nicotine withdrawals pangs)

What Did You Really Achieve by Smoking?

Nothing. Your concentration levels never increased, in fact they reduced after you started smoking. Now with this reduced level whenever you smoke all you achieve (during ideal conditions) is the same state of concentration which you already had before you became a smoker. But it feels as if your concentration has increased, of course it has but the stupidity of it is that it reduced first and then became normal and this normal state is what the smoker claims to be a state of high concentration. It’s just an illusion.

The Dosage Keeps Increasing

After a few smokes, as is the case with any drug, the doses fail to achieve the same level of satisfaction and there is a permanent feeling of lack. The body reaches saturation and the cells are extremely fatigued due to loss of oxygen. The lethargy that sets in makes it impossible for the smoker to focus on any activity, anything that requires a good amount of brain involvement like solving statistical problems. The brain actually becomes incapable to indulging in puzzle solving or any work that involves serious gray cell indulgence. You are as good as what you would usually feel towards the end of a tiring day when you were a non-smoker. You have managed to achieve that state within a few hours from starting your day, and you actually believe that to be an achievement of sorts attributing the gain in concentration to smoking when cigarettes where the reason for the drop to start with.

Cigarettes are a pretty clever contraception aren’t they? As a smoker you never blame the cigarette for anything, but believe that all the good things happening to you are because of the cigarettes. It’s just an illusion, there is no good thing happening. With smoking you get nothing, you just lose what you already had and try to compensate somehow.

The Flawed State

Your body was perfect, your concentration was flawless the way it was (your normal state), your stress handling capacity, your disease handling capacity, was all at the optimal level. Then the cigarettes came along. They introduced nicotine into your blood stream. From here on there was a new craving to feed along with your hunger for food, now there was your hunger for nicotine. An added burden got attached to your life and this burden was always never seen for what it was because of the clever disguise.

Towards the end all the behaviors depicted by the smokers are the ones of a drug addict. As human being, injecting drug initially creates a want during the withdrawal from the blood stream, injecting or inhaling the drug fulfills the want for a small period of time and with time the want keeps on increasing and caused the addict to increase the drug dosage. There comes a point that no amount of drug dosage gives the required satisfaction, panic sets in and the smokers start the process of chain-smoking in a desperate attempt to feel normal.

It’s ironic that the smokers believe that non-smokers where missing out on something, I was one such joker who believed that. Non-smokers never feel deprived of an addiction and hence never feel the need to feed it. A smoker on the other hand creates an addiction or a want inside him and then goes about fulfilling the craving with cigarettes believing that the state achieved is a good state (which in fact is just the normal state of any non-smoker). Create a lack and fulfill it or just stay fulfilled, which option seems sane to you?

Are Cigarettes Really Relaxing?

The movies will have you believe that Michael Corleone, of the Godfather fame, worked up his cigarette during stressful situations. In fact several movies or ad sequences show cigarettes as the best thing to accompany a relaxing scene. A couple who has just finished love making is shown to light up and feel the after glow of sex, a couple of guys are seen to be sitting by the beach with beer and cigarettes in total relaxation, a sophisticated CEO is seen to suck on the cigarettes while dealing with his clients. Hollywood actors are known to chain smoke, giving the idea of cigarettes relieving their work stress.

Are We Missing A Point Here?

Are smokers more relaxed than non-smokers? What does your gut instinct say?

. Do you see a smoker get frantic about getting out of a non-smoking zone?
. Do you ever see a non-smoker head in a hurry for the smoking pits before a crucial meeting?
. Do you see a smoker twiddling his thumbs and ruffling his hair restlessly, in a meeting which lasts for more than an hour?
. Do you see a smoker get agitated when he is asked not to smoke in a restaurant?
. Do you see non-smokers sit in a zombie state, the way smokers do when they are trying to quit?
. Do you see a smoker frantically searching the area for an open provisioning store at midnight if he runs out of cigarettes by mistake?
. Do you ever see a non-smoker take a break every 10 minutes with the pretext of refueling a nicotine addiction?
. Do you see a smoker heading for a smoke after a relaxing meal?
. Do you see a smoker dropping his cigarette ash all over himself and his car interiors while driving, burning his fingers at times and cursing about the whole thing?
. Does an addicted smoker look approachable while he/she is waiting for the next smoke?

The answers to all these questions are obvious. What do they point to? The smoker obviously lives in a reduced state of relaxation, filled with an anxiety to refill his nicotine addiction. The only time anything close to relaxation dawns on the face of a smoker is when he has taken a huge drag from his cigarette. Is this what relaxation is? That you live in a continuous state of irritation and want. The reason why a smoker feels relaxed while smoking is because of the nicotine craving, which he is fulfilling to reach a normal state. The normal state of a non-smoker is a state a smoker thrives to achieve on continuous basis by puffing on the cancer stick.

Return of The Lost Energy

The continuous onslaught on your cells, which you instigate, every time you flood your lungs with fumes containing cancerous toxins laced with huge quantities of carbon mono oxide leads to a sapping of energy. Getting up late in the morning with a fog-laden head, with your eyes resisting the wake up call, becomes a daily thing. You attribute it to your increasing age or cover it up with other excuses such as "I am too stressed out lately and I need a break", " I find office boring and hence feel the lethargy", but none of these excuses tend to explain the reason why you are feeling so out of energy. What is happening is that your organs are becoming increasingly weak, your nerves are not elastic anymore and are hardening due to plague deposits, your heart is tired of working with extremely impure carbon mono oxide laden blood, the arteries around the heart are shrinking and hardening at the same time making it difficult to pump blood to the body, your limbs feel weak due to lack of blood supply again due to hardening of arteries, your lungs perform at a lower efficiency due to all the tar or other waste deposited along its lining, there is a lack of oxygen due to the habit you have developed of shallow breathing, your brain is foggy because of the lack of blood supply and the low density of oxygen in the blood supplied, your blood has become thicker (almost brownish) due to increased carbon content and it coagulates or sticks faster making circulation even more difficult.

Smoking Is an Energy Killer

Sportsmen keep away from smoking for this very reason. You are no sportsman you claim, but look at how cigarettes have changed your lifestyle. If I could show you your clone that has not smoked through out his/her life, you will be surprised at the freshness and the energy levels in that clone. Your muscles ache like hell for every pittance of a physical work that you endure, is it not? Just points to the severe lack of oxygen in your muscles. The more you smoke the more lethargic you become. Your mornings are lazy, your afternoon in the office is slow and unproductive, your evenings are lethargic to say the least. Even if you are extremely active in the office owing to the stress factor you are just pushing yourself to the limit and the strain will have dire consequences on your body. Its better to be lethargic when you have sapped all your energy via smoking rather than be active during this phase else it can be deadly, you muscles and heart will not be able to cope with excess stress under this abnormal conditions that you have inflicted through your smoking addiction.

Getting Your Energy Back

After I quit smoking I could see a huge difference in my waking up patterns. While I was a smoker I used to get up at 6 am or more at times. I would get up foggy headed and with no energy to even head for the bathroom. One part of my brain would be aware of the fact that I was getting late for the office and I would scramble to find my pack of cigarettes. I would feel more awake after a cigarette, which was so stupid, but this was my normal state before I was a non-smoker. Just few weeks after quitting (after I had gotten out of the nicotine withdrawal phase, which was no even close to uncomfortable) I was getting up at 5 am in the morning, just the way I used to when I was a studious youngsters preparing for my exams, before the youngster had become a smoking addict. I had lots of energy through out the day and my thinking was very clear. I managed to work really fast and could see a visible increase in my memory. My concentration was at its peak, I did not feel the need to take frequent breaks to quench my nicotine hunger like I used to. Mornings are active, afternoons are full of energy, evenings are enjoyable and I feel sleepy at the right time every night. I have a peaceful sleep, compare it with the nicotine high sleep of my smoking days and it’s a like whole new experience.

What I realized was that smoking made me into a person whom was not even close to half as capable as the non-smoking counterpart. Why do we inflict such a state on our normal bodies? The answer is that we don’t. It’s like asking a heroin addict why is he injecting a hypodermic needle into veins. A heroin addict spends his life in two halves, one half is spent craving for the next dose of the drug and the other half is spend in a drugged state. What kind of useless existence? Would anyone in his/her sane minds want to live such a life? But isn’t this exactly what we are doing with our smoking addiction. Think about it, how different is a smoking addiction from heroin addiction? Not much, in fact it’s the same except the fact that nicotine withdrawal is not even close to 1/100 of heroin withdrawal. Heroin addicts are on the path to death and it’s very difficult to save them because it would be impossible for most to get out of the addiction mostly because they won’t be able to endure the withdrawal pangs. With cigarettes the scenario is no different, as long as you are an addict you live your life in that exact two phase as lived by a heroin addict. The first half is spent waiting for the next smoke and the next half is spent feeling fuzzy after the smoke or in most cases guilty after the smoke. Your life is centered on cigarettes without you realizing it. You will sacrifice a lot for to ensure that you keep feeding your addiction. If your wife threatened to walk out on you, if you did not quit, you might make a choice in the favor of cigarettes. It’s a cinch that you will do just that.

Why Do Smokers Take Risk With Death?

Any sane organism in our eco system would be opposed to the idea of injecting poison into its system. In fact that’s how survival works. Our bodies are tuned to keep poison out of our system. Have you noticed how you throw up every time you drink more alcohol than you can handle? This is a protection mechanism to ensure that your liver does not suffer or that you don’t become brain dead. If such a mechanism did not exist there would be no end to how much alcohol you would drink. Eventually the alcohol would play its part of depressing your nerves, inducing toxins into your blood stream, increase the bile content in your liver and when all of this happens at a high level you simply die. Each living organism has a protection mechanism, which ensures survival. In fact even when someone takes poison, as a step to commit suicide, the body tries its best to eject the poison through vomit. If the poison is too strong it overcomes the body’s protection mechanism and claims the victim.

Body’s Protection Mechanism Against Smoking

Have you seen how your body reacts to your first smoke. It makes you cough, there is a sick feeling in your stomach, you feel repulsed at the taste and the feeling of fumes entering your lungs. As a youngster you will ignore these signs from your body which says "don’t inject me with such poison". You would, on contrary, go on with the effort of learning to smoke. I remember it took me around a week or so to get my smoking perfected. There were several lousy days when my body reacted to such a gross practice on my part. I had throat pains, developed ulcers in my mouth, I felt sick in the stomach with a loss of appetite, I felt my sex drive visibly reduce. These were the initial days. I ignored all these signs and headed onto becoming a smoking pro. I learnt to inhale deep and keep the smoke inside my lungs for 30 seconds or more till I felt some kinda high (which was mostly due to the carbon mono oxide numbing my brain). With time I started smoking two packs a day and my body would react to it by becoming extremely lethargic and numb.

Human Body Is A Powerful Protector

Most smokers curse their body for not being able to handle a few volumes of smoke. The opposite is true. Your body does a great job of protecting you against the toxins present in the fumes. Consider the amount of smoke, which is filtered by your lungs, at the rate of close to 40-60 cigarettes per day I had lasted for years. If the body were weak some organ would have gotten stale by all the misuse that was inflicted. Can you imagine putting your mouth across the exhaust pipe of your car and inhaling all the fumes, which was emitted? If you feel disgusted at the idea, just know that this is quite what you are doing every time you smoke a pack of cigarettes. That’s a lot of smoke and a lot of toxins. Your body manages to live but it’s impossible to perform at optimal levels. You will live below par and always at a huge disadvantage compared to non-smokers. Compared to a smoker a non-smoker’s body has more time to devote to other activities than just filtering toxins day in and day out.

Why Does the Body Gives In?

It would be great if our bodies stayed at the level of efficiency they work at during our young days. The truth is that everything in nature is exposed to decay and our bodies slowly lose their vitality as we age and finally give in to death. No one can avoid death and no one can avoid the slow degradation of the body as we grow in age. Your lungs are not quite as strong, your digestion is weak, your bowel movement is awkward, your kidneys don’t function that well, your heart becomes weak and your brain gets fuzzy, welcome to old age. A non-smoker would get to see a slow degradation as he goes through life and enters old age. A smoker will get to see the same sign as he goes into middle age or even sooner depending on the cigarette intake. A good majority never enter middle age, their bodies cave in to the toxins.

Not all human bodies come with high immunity, the survival of the fittest would get at work here. If you are extremely fit you might last your smoking till middle age or slightly more, but if you are not lucky enough to have a fit and immune body it’s a cinch that you will acquire a deadly disease by the time you hit middle age or sooner. Cancer can afflict you, if your genes are not resistant to cancerous toxins, within a year of smoking. The body gives in because it follows the law of nature "survival of the fittest". If your body is weak and you smoke, it will make it weaker and you die. If your body is quite strong but you make it weak through smoking, then it will die because you are no longer fit enough. The nature always wants evolution to give birth to stronger species. When you inflict your body with toxins and it becomes sub optimal then nature does not want you to breed since your body condition is weak. Hence it inflicts impotence within you. It’s logical if you look at it.

Give Yourself A Chance

We are all going to die one day, its better to live a quality life and die sooner than to live a long life which lacks fun? A very common, well-known and cliched smoker’s argument. Well it’s easy to counter it by the below questions.

. Are you saying that since we are all going to die one day you don’t mind dying early? In that case would intentionally take poison and kill yourself, because we are going to die anyway, eventually?
. Are you ready to step off a cliff and end you life (if I made you numb to pain through medication), because that’s what you seem to be claiming.
. Does a smoker really live a quality life? You have got to be kidding yourself or else it’s just the nicotine talking. You are living the life of an addict for goodness sake. Your existence is miserable, it’s not quality by a long shot.
. Do you think a non-smoker does not have fun or does not live a quality life? By not inflicting poison into their bodies they have a better chance of living a healthy life. A healthy life eventually allows you to enjoy more of what it has to offer. You will have more time, more energy, more love and more health to give to your close ones. Non-smokers don’t depend on an addiction to help them solve problem. Mostly importantly they don’t have addiction as a problem in their life.

Non-smokers are not addicts and hence they don’t have the symptoms of an addict, which is to crave a substance to feel good. They live a normal life and have more time to devote to more productive things. A smoker is an addict and hence needs the help of a cigarette to get him through life, it’s not even a normal, forget quality living.

This whole brainwashed idea of smoker lives a quality life has got to go. Thanks the ingenuity of the tobacco companies we have glossy ads picturing smokers as gods, while the opposite is true. The harsh reality of a substance addict is shown in the picture of basking glory. Time to wake up and understand that you need to stop living the life of an addict. Any normal human being wants to live long and enjoy life. A smoker actually lives in the fear of life, there is a continuous fear of acquiring a deadly disease. No one wants to die early and definitely not in acute pain in a hospital room, knowing fully well that there was no one responsible for your condition except yourself.

The reason why a smoker lives in fear is because of the knowledge of impending doom. The only way to react to such a fear, that the smoker is aware of, is to light another cigarette. This is the final blow dealt by your addiction. The fear of death is masked by the fear of living a life without your addiction. Your addiction has claimed more importance than your life itself. Is it not strange? Don’t you get the point still? The irony of the situation is that the fear of death or disease increases stress in a smoker and he beats stress by smoking another cigarette, which takes him closer to his coffin. It’s a vicious cycle and the smoker has his battle with his addiction. When you know the stronghold that the nicotine addiction has taken over your body and mind, why do you still live in an illusion of control?

Smoking is not for enjoyment, it no longer is. You smoke to satisfy your addiction, nothing else. You are certainly not having fun, you are living in the perpetual fear of acquiring disease, lung cancer is just a few smokes away, you might have started off a non-reversible disease already, your heart might give in and so would your limbs. You can sense your body weakening. Small things like a sudden chest pain or a nose bleeding will scare the hell out of you. The only way you can suppress this scare is by having a smoke. It’s a wretched life. Accept your reality as an addict, know that you are not enjoying your cigarettes. Give yourself a chance for your sake. The moment you realize that you are getting nothing out of smoking and that you don’t need a cigarette to feel good about life (you never did), you will quit smoking voluntarily. There will be no will power required because you are leaving something, which gave you nothing except suffering.

The Deception of Cigarette Ads

The tobacco company advertisers are very smart. Their job is actually cut down to a good extent owing to the properties of the product they are selling. Cigarettes cause instant addiction. The moment you smoke your first cigarette, nicotine enters your blood stream. After you finish smoking it starts leaving your blood stream, you experience a lack of something inside you and your body asks for "one more". It’s that simple. Smoking has nothing to do with enjoyment but everything to do with addiction. Smoking addiction is not enjoyable, ask any smoker. The problem is most smokers are not honest with themselves, they want to believe that they smoking out of conscious choice to enjoy themselves, nicotine has just claimed a permanent customer for the tobacco industries.

All that the cigarette companies need to do is get their prospective customer to have one smoke. Most smokers get hooked into a lifetime of smoking after their first smoke. For some it might take a few more but the first cigarette is usually the death knoll in most cases.

The Subconscious Conditioning

Cigarette advertisers understand the concept of subconscious conditioning. In a nutshell subconscious conditioning is all about the message which goes to your brain without your conscious knowledge. For instance, if I ask you to inject a small dose of heroin into your veins you step back in shock and put up an instant denial. Your mind immediately pictures the horrors of a heroin addict, the sunken eyes, the debased body, the punctured veins, needle stabs and the craving. How did this happen? Through the movies, ads, books, discussions and news. Do you actually remember reading anything about heroin addiction specifically out of your own interest? Maybe not, but still you have a very vivid picture of what a heroin addict goes through. For many smokers the idea of smoking marijuana is dreadful. They think about getting stoned and becoming a regular drug addict, the irony is that they got hooked to a substance more potently addictive than marijuana. Pot smokers everywhere know this to be a fact. Then why is it that you are scared of trying marijuana once? Because of your subconscious conditioning which has associated marijuana with a narcotic drug taken by drug addicts, which you think you are not. The cigarette ads developed by the tobacco companies have succeeded in imprinting this message into the minds of the populace the smoking cigarettes is cool, it’s not a drug, it’s a pleasure mechanism, it’s a man thing to do and boy they did succeed at their campaign. Most of us think that cigarette addiction is not an addiction at all, we don’t ever see it for its true face.

Cigarettes and The Subconscious Programming

The hero of a movie heads for the war zone, there is a calm on his face and he puffs a huge cloud of smoke as if he has just blown his fear away. The soldiers going to war, in the war movies, are shown to have a smoke before taking up their weapons, the message is not apparent but subconscious mind records it. The message it records is that smoking makes you feel calm and confident. There are ads, which show the smoking gives you a manly image, most movies picture this. The message is always hidden and is read by the subconscious mind. You see a bunch of men sitting by the bar and having fun, each has a cigarette in his hand. You see your college seniors puff smoke around with a reckless attitude and they are called the studs. The non-smoker is usually the geek or unmanly guy in any movie or ad shown in the TV. The message that goes to the subconscious mind is that real men smoke cigarettes and its unmanly not to smoke. You see a CEO go about his hectic schedule while continuously smoking in between, you picture a hardworking man and cigarette together. Your mind makes cigarette a hero.
Most of the ad campaigns are very subconscious, have you ever seen a blatant ad promoting cigarettes on your TV? If there was a blatant promotion of cigarettes then your conscious mind will catch on to the fraud, which is going on. Your conscious mind is not involved at all, everything is happening at the subconscious level. That’s why you feel clueless about why you started smoking in the first place. There are times when you smoke and find that you are getting nothing out of the cigarette, but then your subconscious mind reminds you that its manly and its supposed to give pleasure. You consciously know that it gives neither the feeling of being manly (the opposite is true, since it causes impotence) nor does it give any pleasure beyond an uncomfortable feeling of increased blood pressure and suffocation. What you realize consciously is the reality. Get beyond your subconscious conditioning feed by the cigarette manufactures and you will see it for what it is, a filthy addiction.

Cigarette Companies Suppress Facts

Are you aware of the annual turnover meted by a cigarette manufacturer? It runs in several billion ringgit. Almost 50% of it are usually invested in advertising. The governments are well aware of this but the profit made by the tobacco companies is so huge that it almost funds the national/state economies, no wonder the government is ready to play with the health of the youngsters than put a plug on smoking. I understand that we live in a democratic state and each person has the power of conscious choice. I am all for freedom of choice. If you want to smoke then cigarettes should be available to you, I completely support that, because we are not living in a dictatorship oriented society. But I hope you agree that to make a conscious choice you should be aware of all the pros and cons of the choice, isn’t it? You should be make aware of all the facts, even if they are really harsh.

You knew everything about heroin as a drug and you made a conscious choice to avoid it. Here are the things you know about heroin mostly

. Heroin is highly addictive
. It is usually taken intravenously, by injecting yourself
. If the volume of heroin is higher than normal it will cause death or paralysis
. Heroin is very expensive and its addiction leads to financial bankruptcy
. Heroin rehabilitation is extremely difficult and the victim goes through hell during withdrawal

Pretty lethal facts, no one in their right minds would take to heroin addiction when they are aware of these facts. So you made a conscious choice to avoid heroin. Mind you that if you really wanted to get heroin it is easily available, heroin smuggling is at an all time high and there are a few addicts around in your location, more than you actually think. So it’s not the availability but the facts that ensured that you did not opt to take heroin addiction as a part of your lifestyle. Fair enough.

Are the tobacco companies being open about all the facts relating to the drug they are selling, namely tobacco (I hope you know it’s a drug, just that its legally available for economic reasons). How many of these facts are you aware of

. Smoking tobacco is instantly addictive, nicotine is a strong addictive agent
. If the level of nicotine in a cigarette is condensed into liquid and injected intravenously it will kill you in an instant
. Tobacco contains close to 43 carcinogens or cancer inducing agents
. Nicotine plays havoc with your nerves and works towards hardening them
. In close to a year of smoking you can contract erectile dysfunction, impotence or soft penile erections.
. Smoking claims the lives of 60% of the smokers through heart disease way before they reach middle age (before the age of 40)
. Smoking is the main cause of asthma in smokers
. Smoking is not pleasurable but just an addiction, similar to heroin addiction. Cigarettes generate craving for nicotine and the pleasure is just the fulfillment of the nicotine craving in your body.
. Addiction to cigarettes is no different from addiction to cannabis, marijuana, cocaine, heroin or any other drug. Tobacco is far more addictive than heroin or marijuana and the addiction is almost instant (after the first cigarette)
. Smoking can cause permanent hardening of arteries and blockage which are not reversible. Leading to heart attack, permanent impotence for life (no more sex), limb atrophy (legs don’t receive blood circulation).
. Smoking lights have no advantage over smoking regular cigarettes
. Tobacco is laced with several other chemical to make it burn better. The names of these chemicals are not revealed by the manufacturers. There are more than 4000 different chemicals in a cigarette.

Nicotine withdrawal is the easiest to overcome (the fortunate part, quitting is easy), though its highly addictive. You will not face any physical pain during withdrawal and the withdrawal period does not last more than a couple of weeks.

Just imagine if cigarettes came with the warning sign "Cigarettes cause impotence in men" or "Smoking instigates restricted blood supply to your penis". It would kill the sales of cigarettes almost instantly. Few men would continue smoking knowing that they are breeding the onset of impotence in them. Men love sex and their manhood, impotence is an anathema for any man. Cigarette companies have spent billions trying to fight court cases, buying media support, suppressing information, bribing the government with promises of improved economy and mass brainwashing campaigns to ensure that the fact of "smoking related impotence" does not become popularized. The moment this fact becomes well known they know their sales will dwindle drastically. "Cigarettes will kill your sex life by making an impotent man of you" imagine this caption (this fact) being advertised all over, most men will not touch cigarettes. Youngsters would become very wary of starting to smoking and the myth of "smoking is manly" would be a big joke.

The Awareness Is Rising

The brain washing induced through the years thanks to movies, ads and ignorant public will soon come to an end. That’s a good thing. It won’t be long before cigarettes are seen for what they are, drugs which get people hooked and addicted. Cigarettes are not manly, they don’t give you confidence, they stink badly and they are totally uncool. No girl would want to kiss a guy stinking of smoke, contrary to what is shown in the movies. More and more men are becoming aware of how their smoking addiction is killing their sex life. Becoming impotent at the age of 30 is hardly something any man would look forward to. The awareness of how smoking leads to several heart diseases is becoming rampant. Cervical cancer in smoking women is directly linked. Cigarettes are no longer a fashion statement that they were some 60 years back. People are seeing it for what it is, a filthy weed. No one wants to kill their bodies anymore and want to live longer, healthier lives. This is an era of health conscious people. Smoking bans are increasing in most of the public location and in several private firms. The cigarette companies are losing out and it wont be long before they start shutting down.

No Such Thing as Addictive Personality

Several smokers claim that they have an addictive personality and hence are stuck with being addicted. That’s rubbish because you have just given vent to an excuse, which will get you to never look at quitting. If you think there is something like an addictive personality then look at it this way, can you get addicted before you take a substance? You obviously can’t. Any addictive substance would get you addicted no matter what personality you have. That is the property of an addictive agent. The reality is that you are addicted, and now making up excuses for your addiction certainly gets you nowhere.

Some People Quit Easily

Now that’s a myth, because there is no definite proof, but you can only judge for yourself. Stop comparing yourself with others, which is plain irrational thinking. How do you know if you can’t quit just as easily if you keep thinking you are addictive personality? Your mind is playing games with you as usual, the only way to get around this unconscious pattern is to become conscious. Reason everything consciously.
These are some hard facts you need to face

Why Do I Smoke?

Because of nicotine addiction nothing else

Does Smoking Give Me Pleasure?

No, the sense of pleasure is nothing but fulfillment of a craving generated by your previous cigarette. It’s a cycle. You are an addict and behave like one. Addicts don’t get pleasure, they are just trapped in their addiction.

Why Is the First Cigarette in the Morning So Relaxing?

You were sleeping for 10 hours without smoking and hence the withdrawal pangs in the morning. When you smoke you fulfill a pang generated by long abstinence and hence you’re feeling a pleasure. Cigarettes don’t generate pleasure but fulfill a lack inside generated through addiction.

Abstinence Increases Pseudo Pleasure

By now it should be clear to you that abstinence for long time gives more pleasure (pseudo pleasure) when you finally light up. Why does this happen? The answer is simple, when we abstain for a long time the nicotine levels in your bloodstream reduce completely and the first cigarette after a long abstinence generates the feeling of fulfillment of a lack and hence the feeling of pseudo pleasure.

If cigarette gave any pleasure genuinely then you should feel the same level of exhilaration every time you smoke, even if it’s after every 5 minutes. All smokers know this to be true, cigarette gives more kick when taken after a period of abstinence. Just proves that the pleasure element is only a fulfillment of craving generated by your previous cigarette. Cigarettes in themselves do not have any content to give you pleasure.

Remember your initial experiments with smoking? There was no pleasure to be had, you hated the taste and the sensation but you willed yourself to learn till you got hooked. The pleasure came after you got hooked and that’s the pleasure of an addict. It’s the same pleasure experienced by a heroin addict when he injects a dose after long abstinence.

All Addicts Behave the Same

You are no special case, you are not an addictive personality but just another addict. Nicotine is highly addictive and get you hooked after the first cigarette itself. The surge of nicotine in the blood ensures that from first cigarette onwards you will have to fulfill a new hunger inside you, the hunger for nicotine. It is of course easy to quit after the first few cigarettes than to quit a year down the line when you have established clear patterns of addiction in your life. It’s easy to quit heroin addiction after the first few doses, even after a month of addiction but after a few months it is extremely difficult to get over the addiction. It is the case with nicotine. The only difference is that nicotine, luckily, has very mild withdrawal pangs, it is almost nothing. We are all aware of the kind of withdrawal pangs heroin addicts have.

Any Pro-Cigarette Argument Is Nocotine Talking

Once you are hooked, you will find several excuses to stay hooked. That is natural for any addict. Your mind will defend your need to obtain the addictive substance. Imagine a cocaine or heroin addict who sells off his car or house to fulfill his addiction, the addiction is so strong that it over rules logic and conscious thinking. Smoking addiction is along the similar lines, it will transcend friendships, relationships as well as your own survival instinct. Your relationship with smoking is more important to you than your relationship with the wife you love or your kids, whom you adore. Do you really care for the fact that they will go through all the misery in life after you have left them (when cigarettes cut you down?). Imagine the plight of your wife when she gets you admitted into a cancer hospital and spends all your savings on a treatment, which is futile. You addiction fogs you so badly that you push aside all these realities which you would end up facing eventually. Every time you feel nervous about what the future holds for you and every time you find yourself thinking about how badly hooked you are it’s a cinch that you will light up. You find it easy to transcend the fear of death, fear of leaving your loved ones, deserting your wife and messing up your job, everything a sane person would avoid. You transcend all these fear or rather suppress all these fear for a greater fear, "the fear of quitting". The addiction is so strong in you, and its normal for an addictive agent to behave this way.

Argument of "Life Won’t Be the Same"

Think about it consciously and you will know that this is the most ridiculous fear you can ever be wrapped in. Do you seriously believe that your life is good while you have an addiction on? Has smoking really given you a lot of plus points to ponder about in your life, beyond the pleasure of subduing an addiction every time the craving arises. You life wont be the same after you quit, that’s for sure. It will be a lot better.

. You will have your health back
. You will not go around smelling like stale tobacco
. You chances of acquiring deadly diseases like cancer, heart attack and asthma, at an early age, would reduce by a huge margin.
. Your immunity will increase by a hundred folds and you wont be suffering from the continuous bouts of coughing, sneezing, running nose and wheezing syndrome.
. You will be able to sleep peacefully
. You will get up filled with energy every morning
. You will enjoy a great sex life again
. You will have a lot more stamina
. Your productivity at work will increases by many folds
. Best of all you live long to enjoy a fruitful life.

Just think about all that you are sacrificing just to feed a filthy addiction. It’s a monster and its taken possession of you, generating hunger pangs every now and then. You live a life of hunger and deprivation like any other addict and find pleasure in the same? Don’t worry about how you life will be after you quit, it will be great. Your addiction has numbed you to the prospect of looking at how your life is right now, as an addict. Think about it, don’t you live like this:

. You get up every morning with a foggy head with no intention of getting up
. You cannot start your day without puffing upon cigarettes
. You have no appetite for breakfast or lunch and hence you starve your body further
. Your concentration has dwindled badly due to brain lethargy caused by lack of oxygen in the blood
. Your body feels tired by afternoon and you have no intention to carry on working
. The only thing you look forward to is the your fling with your cigarette
. You feel irritable all the time you are not smoking
. You hate people who ask you to quit even the ones you loved before you got addicted
. Your life expectancy is low and you know that subconsciously
. You live in the fear of acquiring lung cancer, throat cancer, pancreatic cancer, stomach ulcers, heart attack, stroke, asthma, bronchitis, angina to name a few. The chances of your acquiring them are increasing with every other smoke.
. Your sex life sucks. Soft erections, inability to maintain erections for long, lack of sex drive and with time the fear of impotence. You can’t get the same hard erection that you used get when you were a non-smoker. You blame it on the age or stress but you know that’s not true. Men are known to stay potent even at the age of 70, how old are you?

This is just a small list of how your life has started to suck ever since you got addicted to sucking on the cigarettes. It’s true that a smoker starts off sucking on cigarettes and with time cigarettes suck the life out of him/her. Is such a life really worth it? Are you really afraid of losing this life? You have got to be kidding yourself. Just know that the fear of "life wont be the same again" is just a fear of unknown induced by your nicotine addiction. Get rid of all your illusions and you will know that you don’t need cigarettes in your life. Once you quit with that understanding you will not be smoking again ever. There is a beautiful life waiting for you outside your addiction. Embrace it before the cigarettes claim yours forever.