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If you are a smoker and love them and if you are thinking of quitting I hope that my experience will help you.

The Background, my DAD smoked until he was told that he was going to die from the effects - he was 39 years old and he gave them up. He held a packet of cigarettes in the drawer of the sideboard for the next 13 years untill he died, but he never touched a cigarette again. He died far too young, he was only 52 years old. Did I learn anything - no - I did not - because when he died I was 19 and already smoking for almost 3 years. I loved cigarettes and continued to love them for the next 40 years. I mean I loved everyone of the cigarettes I smoked, everyone of them. I enjoyed smoking.

Then July 2007 - my husband was told that he would have to have bypass surgery - he needed six bypasses and we were scared. I decided that I would have to stop smoking to help him stay off cigarettes. I had two weeks to prepare and stop smoking. I smoked my last cigarette on the 6th of August 2007. It was a Bank Holiday and I stubbed the cigarette out at four minutes past six in the afternoon. Within an hour I was crying - the berevement has begun.

I did not expect the reaction that I had. I was terrified. I quit without any aid. I want to tell everyone that there is a physical, a mental and an emotional reaction/process that takes place within you and you can't control it. It is the most unbelieveable battle - I think that it is the hardest thing anyone could face. Now, almost 14 months later, I still want a cigarette every day (several times a day) but it is a little better than at the beginning of the struggle. You better believe me when I say I would sneek a cigarette if I could, but I have the most awful fear that it could lead to having to start the battle all over again and I know I would not be able to face that. I just could not go through the terror of the past 12 months ever again. I just would not be able to find the courage even for the most presious reason.

Even as I write this I feel a little ill and I am crying again. The sense of bereavement is unbelieveable and that feeling makes me feel like a fraud. But it is a genuine feeling. It is a genuine loss. I can find nothing to replace it and sometimes I feel very, very weak, because I can't control my feelings, my cravings, or my sense of loss. It is the lack of control that is most terrifing - as an adult in your 5th decade you think that you have establised some controls or normalities in you life, only to find

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