subject: Stop Smoking Methods That Do Not Work And Should Be Avoided [print this page] There are a number of reasons to stop smoking cigarettes and the cost of smoking a pack a day can be extremely expensive. Most smokers have a typical pack a day habit and at $5 a day on average, that comes to over $1,800 a year; if you live in an urban area and you smoke a pack a day, the cost can get up between $3,000 and $4,000 a year... just to do something that's likely to be responsible for your early death.
Tobacco cigarettes contain as many as 4,000 chemicals and at least 60 of them are known to cause cancer, but it isn't the fact that tobacco cigarettes contain carcinogens that will get you in the end. The main source of the health problems with tobacco cigarettes is the fact that you are inhaling newly combusted material into your lungs. Any type of smoke can do this level of damage to your lungs if you breathe it all day, every day for decades. However, pharmaceutical companies would have all of us believe that the nicotine is the sole source of the addiction and if the nicotine can be eliminated, then quitting smoking is possible.
The fact is that nicotine is only a small piece of the quit smoking puzzle: the nicotine doesn't do nearly as much damage as just inhaling the smoke does and nicotine replacement therapies like gums, patches, and lozenges just don't help 95% of the population quit smoking. They only succeed 2% to 5% of the time and for someone who is already spending a fortune on cigarettes, trying to quit using NRTs can be costly and extremely ineffective.
Something else that doesn't work for a lot of people are pharmaceutical stop smoking medications that can be prescribed to you by your doctor; unfortunately, these so-called aids have a number of side effects and can include suicidal tendencies.
The largest portion of the smoking problem can be attributed to the need to have something to rely on when you get into stressful situations and the habit of holding something your hand. What's the first thing you reach for when you're stressed? A cigarette. Learning how to get through stressful situations without having to reach for a cigarette is the first step toward a smoke free life. The best thing to do is acknowledge that when you want a cigarette, that's exactly what it is: a want. Not a need. The first 10 to 20 minutes are typically the worst, but the craving will subside after that.
