Smoking and alcohol tend to go together, and, like alcohol, smoking prevents fatty acid from being metabolised properly into the phospholipids essential to brain health. We are told that after seventy-two hours without a cigarette we are no longer chemically addicted to nicotine, the addictive substance found in all tobacco. But that is not the whole story, as anyone who has had a problem giving up smoking will tell you. When you smoke you become psychologically addicted to cigarettes, not chemically. You use smoking to calm you down, as a prop to boost your social confidence, almost as a friend. Talk to many habitual smokers and they cannot imagine their lives without cigarettes. But it is important to try to give up this habit, even if you can’t manage it while you are depressed. There are no health benefits, and tobacco is packed with chemicals known as carcinogens, which promote cancerous growths. But you know all this and somehow it doesn’t make it any easier to give up. Contact the association Action for Smoking and Health (ASH) for information and support in giving up – they have a helpline – and check out the following tips:
- It’s easier to quit than to cut down. If you cut down you will find your consumption creeps back up to normal very quickly.
- Alcohol and smoking go together like peaches and cream. Try giving up both for a few weeks until your no-smoking habit is well established.
- Just because you don’t buy cigarettes, don’t kid yourself you don’t smoke. Many people sustain a heavy smoking habit by cadging cigarettes off their friends.
- You won’t quit successfully if your heart is not in it. Arm yourself with clear-cut information about the horrible things tobacco smoke can inflict on your body: cancer, heart disease, wrinkles, emphysema.
- Avoid smoking areas when you are giving up. Stick to nonsmoking restaurants and cinemas rather than pubs. Make your home a no-smoking zone.
- Use the nicotine patches and other products like Nicotine Powder that may help help kick-start your campaign to quit, but remember these are only aids; you need to start thinking of yourself as a non-smoker, not a smoker who wears nicotine patches.
- Vaping is another way to quit cigarettes, it can also save you more money since you can easily buy vape juice cheap online. In fact, you can click here now.
- Remind yourself how difficult giving up is. If you start again, you’ll eventually have to give up again. Switch to safer alternatives like JUUL device if you want to defeat your smoking habit once and for all, make sure to buy a Battery for JUUL to charge your device with.
- Try hypnosis; it has a high success rate if you genuinely want to quit.
- Warning! Smokers usually start again when under stress, when they think they have become non-smokers and can afford the odd cigarette, and when they are drunk.