by Emma Willey

Created on: January 04, 2010   Last Updated: January 06, 2010

How to Quit Smoking

I have written many articles on how I quit smoking, how it  worked for me.  I wonder how many people who smoke are willing to listen to anyone who tries to help them stop the nasty habit of smoking.  If they don't listen to what they read, it will do no good.

I once wrote an article about how I stopped smoking.   Some of my relatives begged to read my instructions because they said they really wanted to quit.  But after they read my article, they just said, "I'm not ready to quit yet."  So I believe  unless a person decides for himself he wants to quit, no amount  of writing articles or talking will help that person.

I had smoked for 35 years and was almost a chain smoker.  What made me stop doing it was   the way cigarettes ruled my life.  Everything I did depended on whether I could smoke or not while doing it.  I couldn't go anywhere where smoking was forbidden.  Everywhere I went, there were more and more No Smoking signs posted.  It got harder and harder to be a smoker, and I didn't know how to live without my nicotine.   I had an addiction that wasn't easy to get rid of.  But finally, I    got fed up and with being controlled b such a silly little  object that meant nothing to anyone.  I had lost the respect of my parents, my peers and all my friends who had managed to rid themselves of the habit years before.  AA bunch of shame and insecurity fell upon me and I knew I had to do something to rid myself of that little white thing that was controlling my every move.   I wanted to be in charge of my own life .

So I picked up a pen and a notebook and I started writing.   I carried it with me day and night and every time I had the urge to smoke, I wrote.   I wrote about my feelings, how badly I wanted a cigarette, and also how glad I wanted to be without them.  I gradually wrote about my  life and before I knew it, my memoirs were written and in the process, I had stopped smoking.

It took a long time of writing , scolding myself for wanting to smoke and patting myself on the back for not smoking.  It took writing my lifetime memoirs to make a free person out of me.  It took all that time to convince myself I no longer needed the crutch to carry on my life.  The day I decided to quit smoking and start writing was the best day of my life.  Thirty years later, I have never lit up once and don't intend ever to put myself in that terrible place again, to lean on a drug to get me through each day.  My drug now  is freedom, the most wonderful thing to have in my elderly years.

The end

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