Quitting smoking will not kill you, that puts the message into perspective, great stuff

Thanks Terry for the posts, all valuable info.

As ex-smokers are fond of saying, cigarettes travel in packs. Research shows that ex-smokers have an increased likelihood of a smoking relapse when there's greater exposure to other smokers in social situations, work, or at home.

If you decide to go ahead and smoke just one, chances are you'll be back to smoking as much as you used to before long. Don't kid yourself that you can control nicotine once you get a taste of it. It just doesn't work that way for nicotine addicts. The only way to keep the beast at bay is to keep nicotine out of your system.

Verywell Mind

There Is No Such Thing as Just One Cigarette

What will happen if you smoke just one cigarette after you quit smoking? This is a warning sign of a relapse. Take steps to stop your addiction.

Read more from Verywell Mind

Most, if not all long-term smokers, have a love/hate relationship with cigarettes. From the moment we awake in the morning until we lay our heads down on the pillow at night, cigarettes punctuate each and every activity of our daily lives.

When we decide to quit, untangling the associations we've built up over a lifetime of smoking takes conscious effort; something that  smoking cessation forum member Zoe illustrates beautifully below.

In her list of pros and cons, Zoe stands back and takes a critical look at her old smoking habit. A powerful exercise in stepping out from behind the smoke screen that nicotine addiction forces us to live behind, a pros and cons list allows us to uncover the truth about our relationship with smoking. From there, the work of healing can begin ... as it did for Zoe.

The Pros and Cons of Cigarette Smoking

From Zoe:

I made a list of what I liked about smoking vs. what I hated about smoking ... and though I really missed it at first, looking at this list made me see that I didn't like smoking as much as I thought I did.

What I Liked about Smoking:

• The bonding I experienced with other smokers.
• The feeling of creating a ritual.
• Watching the cigarette burn and watching the smoke swirl.
• Momentary gratification.

What I Hated about Smoking:

• The after-smell on my clothes, furniture, car, house, everything. Yuck.
• Not being able to breathe properly.
• The constant nagging cough. All day, all night.
• Lots of phlegm, lots of throat-clearing and losing my voice mid-sentence.
• Painful heartburn every night and every time I drank coffee.
• Feeling winded after extremely mild activity.
• Severe throbbing headaches, occasional migraines.
• Lingering colds and bronchitis.
• Racing heartbeat, more sweating.
• Increased rate of hypertension.
• Dizziness after smoking too fast or [having] too many cigarettes.
• Nausea from smoking too much.
• The constant coppery, ashy taste in my mouth.
• Yellow skin, teeth and fingernails.
• Scaly, unhealthy-feeling skin.
• Anxiety from the fear about what I was doing to myself and the consequences.
• No relaxation, always feeling in need of something. A constant feeling of not being satisfied.
• Mini-withdrawals throughout the day.
• Feelings of shame while spending time with nonsmokers.
• Not accomplishing tasks because of wasted time smoking.
• The late-evening/middle-of-the-night trip to the gas station.
• Going out in bad weather to smoke alone.
• Feelings of inadequacy and substance dependence.
• Driving my cat out of the room every time I lit up.
• Dry mouth and constant feelings of thirst.
• Coughing so hard that I made myself sick.
• Trembling hands and fingertips.
• Fear. Of being unable to quit, of dying an untimely, painful death.
• The stinging feeling in my lungs when I tried to take a deeper or slower breath.
• Getting smoke in my eyes.
• Burning my lips on the filter.
• Trying to light short butts and feeling my eyebrows singe. Ouch!
• Re-lighting a previously torched cigarette, so I don't "waste" any tobacco.
• Overflowing ashtrays, ashes and dust everywhere.
• Burn holes in my car upholstery and on my clothes.
• "Will I fall asleep smoking?"
• "Will I catch something on fire?"
• Dry, chapped lips.
• The cost. All that money wasted on ruining my health and well-being.
• My nails and hair grew very slowly.
• Smoking fueled my compulsiveness relating to other bad habits, such as nail-biting and binge-eating.
• Having to reapply my lipstick after smoking.
• The filthy taste of cheap tobacco.
• Having to crack the car window in the pouring rain. Wet leg, wet arm, water in my eyes.
• Tar build-up on windows and furniture.
• The way my hair and skin smelled.
• Limited motivation and energy.
• Spilled tobacco in my purse, on my dresser, on my computer desk.
• Lighting the filter end by mistake...
• Dropping a cigarette while driving.
• Trying to tap my ashes out the car window ... while the window is rolled up.
• Dropping hot ashes or losing the tip of a cigarette.
• Oops! Tapped ashes in my drink.
• Feeling "exiled" in the smoking section/smoking room.
• Dulled sense of taste and smell.

Maybe you should sit down and make a list like this for yourself. It might give you the nudge towards where you know you want to be.

Zoe

Zoe is right: crafting a list of pros and cons is a great way to open our eyes about what smoking means to us and build motivation to kick this killer addiction to the curb once and for all.

There is no time like the present to make the changes you dream of a reality in your life. Don't give another day of your precious life over to smoking -- quit now.

Thanks Terry,

There are some useful lessons in this article that I needed  to be aware of.

Kind regards

Anthony

Hello...I have decided to quit smoking 

Congratulations on making that decision Matipa, Do you have a plan? I am using patches (NRT) works well for me, read everything you can get your hands on about quitting and post often the support is wonderful here-non-judgmental.

Take care

Kind regards

Anthony

Welcome and congratulations Matipa.  Read lots and you will understand that we all struggle to get through this.  Read the articles, there are some great people on here and some great ideas.  Check in regularly and let us know how you are doing.  Have you set a date yet?

Hello lubbercat thanks a lot for your welcome...am definitely sure am in a right place!!i have actually started my smoking cessation today.wish me luck 

Thanks for letting me know you've found something helpful there, Anthony. :-)

T.

Answer: Think for a moment of your life as a tightly woven piece of fabric. Each thread represents your life events and experiences. And running alongside all of the many "life" threads are threads of a finer gauge. They are so fine in fact, they're impossible to see with the naked eye. Those threads are your smoking habit, and they've become so thoroughly interwoven in the fabric of your life, you find you can't do anything without thinking about how smoking will fit into it.

The associations that we build up over time between the activities in our lives and smoking are closely knit. Once you quit smoking, your job becomes one of unraveling those smoking threads, or associations, one by one. How does that happen? And how long does it take?

Practice Makes Perfect

Recovery from nicotine addiction is a process of gradual release over time.

Every smoke-free day you complete is teaching you how to live your life without cigarettes. Bit by bit, you're reprogramming your responses to the daily events that trigger the urge to smoke. The more practice you get, the less cravings will plague you. Over the course of your first smoke-free year, you'll encounter and have a chance to clear most of the events and situations in your daily life that you associate with smoking.

Seasonal Triggers

Some smoking triggers are seasonal in nature and can create strong urges to smoke months into your quit program. For instance, if you quit smoking during the winter and you're an avid gardener, you could find yourself craving a smoke break the first time you're out digging dirt the following Spring. Thoughts of smoking may hit you with an intensity you haven't felt in months. Don't worry. Once you make your way through the trigger smoke-free, you'll move on with ease.

The first year is all about firsts...experiencing the many daily events in your life smoke free for the first time. And it's all about practice. You built your smoking habit through years of practice. Now, build the nonsmoking you the same way. Practice is a necessary part of recovery from nicotine addiction, so try to relax and let time help you. The more of it you put between yourself and that last cigarette you smoked, the stronger you'll become.

Attitude

There's another step in finding permanent freedom from nicotine addiction that is just as important as practice and time. It involves your attitude. I'm sure you've heard about people who still struggle years and years after quitting. They're the ones who say they "still miss smoking" 20 years down the road. That's a frightening thing to hear, but don't let it throw you. The reason they are in that position has to do with the fact that they never did the work to change what cigarettes meant to them.

Along with using patience and time to help you reprogram your associations with smoking, you must also alter the way you think about your cigarettes. The path to permanent freedom has to do with changing the relationship we have with smoking, and the way to make that mental shift is through education.

As the saying goes...

Knowledge is Power!