Relapse Experience

Many smokers try to quit without any preparation and education on quit smoking issue. They try just to "NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF". This is route to nowhere. You need to change your attitude to smoking at first. If nicotine addiction secure itself in yours mind, you have no chance to success. If you still thinking that smoking is pleasure or help you to relax or to concentrate, it will be too hard for you to stay smoke free.

Let us talk about relapse experience. You had some cigarettes while quitting and no withdrawal symptoms after it. This is not strange - you just did not get what you think you should get from these cigarettes - pleasure. It was disgusting experience instead of pleasure expected. The key moment is that somewhere inside you, your soul is waiting for some joy and pleasure from smoking. You should say STOP to these feelings. Smoking will never give you any value. If you know it for sure, you will never have reason to check this out with one, two cigarettes or even the pack.

Change Your Mindset

In the long run cold turkey is the easiest, quickest, least expensive and most effective technique of quitting smoking. It only takes 3 days before your blood becomes nicotine free and the symptoms of physical withdrawal reach their peak. There are over one billion ex-smokers on earth today and almost all of them quit cold turkey.

To quit smoking successfully using cold turkey method, simply ensure that you are changing your mindset while you are still smoking. You have to fall out of love with smoking, you have to know why it is a bad habit, you have to know why you do not need it, and you have to know why it is not a part of you. You need to answer all these questions to quit the habit for good, and ensure that being an ex-smoker isn't a day-to-day battle for the years to come.

Do not debate with yourself how much you want a "cigarette." You don't crave a cigarette any more than the heroin addict craves a needle. The cigarette and needle are simply drug delivery devices. What you want is the drug inside. Be honest! Truly, see yourself as "addicted to nicotine" because you are! Just one puff and you will either immediately or shortly thereafter experience full and complete relapse back to your prior level of nicotine use or higher. Do not look at it as taking just "one" puff, look at it as taking all nicotine addiction back.

Never Take Another Puff

Find a smoker who once quit smoking for a large period, say one year or longer and then relapsed. Ask him how he liked not smoking. Ask him how he now likes smoking. Then ask the main question, how did he return to smoking?

Probably answers will look like the ones below. "Not smoking was great. I hardly thought of cigarettes any more. I felt healthier, happier, and even calmer. Cigarettes smelled disgusting. The thought of smoking at my old level was odious." To the second question, how do you now like smoking, the answer will typically be, "I hate it, I smoke as much or even more than I did before. I feel more anxious, do not have as much energy, and generally feel like a fool when smoking in public. I sure wish I could quit again." The answer to the third and most important question of how did he return to smoking is almost always the same, "I took a cigarette."

It may have happened under stress, at a party, or at home alone with nothing-special going on. Whatever the cause, the result was the same - addiction to nicotine and cigarettes smoking. Learn from others' mistakes and not your own. Your smoking friend is folded in powerful and deadly addiction arms. Maybe he will get the chance and strength again to quit smoking; maybe he will smoke until smoking kills him.

You have successfully broken free of the nicotine addiction. While your smoking may have been a potential risk to your life in the past, now your risks are dropping down to that of a person who never smoked. As long as you stay off cigarettes, you never will have to worry about the physical, psychological, social and economical risks of smoking again as long as you follow one simple practice...

Ripe for a smoking cessation product

Two-thirds of regular smokers have tried to quit and failed. Furthermore, nearly 40% of these smokers have tried to quit more than four times but failed every time. Everyone knows quitting smoking is hard to do, but many people do not realize how hard it actually is. The majority of current smokers have tried to quit, but they haven't been successful.

The overwhelming majority of adults who successfully quit smoking (74%) said they did so by going cold turkey and just stopping the habit. Another 8% reported using nicotine replacement products such as the patch or gum to quit. Six percent successfully quit by slowing cutting back on cigarettes, and just 4% said they quit with the help of an oral prescription medication.

This research points to cold turkey as the most successful way to quit smoking, but cold turkey is also smokers’ most commonly attempted method for quitting. 81% of people who quit or attempted to quit tried going cold turkey. Only 21% attempted to quit using a nicotine patch, while only 16% tried nicotine gum.

Manufacturers need to find new creative ways to get more people to try their nicotine replacement products. The market is definitely ripe for a smoking cessation product or method that helps people learn to live without cigarettes for the long term.

Nearly one in five Americans (28%) smokes cigarettes, despite health warnings, rising cigarette prices and local anti-smoking laws. Cigarettes and tobacco products accounted for over $103 billion in sales last year, while smoking cessation products only pulled in $536 million.

Tips to Help You Quit Smoking

Below, some tips to help you quit smoking are listed. First and foremost, set a quit date and quit COMPLETELY on that day. To prepare for that day:

- Identify the times you are most likely to smoke. For example, do you tend to smoke when feeling stressed? When you are out at night with friends? While you are drinking coffee? When you are bored? While you are driving?

- Keep a diary to help you determine such risky times. Record each time you have a cigarette, including time of day and what you are doing.

- Make a plan about what you will do instead of smoking at those times that you are most likely to smoke. For example, drink tea instead of coffee -- tea may not trigger the desire for a cigarette. Or, take a walk when feeling stressed. Remove ashtrays and cigarettes from the car. Place pretzels or hard candies there instead. Pretend-smoke with a straw.

- Let all of your friends, family, and co-workers know of your plan to stop smoking and your quit date. Just being aware that they know can be a helpful reminder and motivator.

- Prior to your quit date, start reducing your cigarette use, including decreasing the number and strength of the cigarettes. However, DON'T do this simply to make your diary "look good!" Get rid of all of your cigarettes just prior to the quit date and clean out anything that smells like smoke, such as clothes and furniture.

Smoking is a global problem

It is estimated that one in three adults smoke, with over 1 billion people smoking worldwide. The majority of these smokers reside in countries on the low end to the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum. Of this majority, about 80% live in low and middle-income countries. The total number of smokers worldwide is expected to keep on increasing each year.

The worldwide popularity of tobacco use varies by social class, historical era, and culture. Historically, smoking had been a pastime of the rich. However, this trend has changed dramatically in recent decades. It appears that financially advantaged men in wealthier countries have been smoking less in recent times.

The World Health Organization has been studying smoking trends and statistical patterns across the globe and has uncovered the following statistics:

1. Eastern Europe has a particularly high rate of smoking, with up to 59% of adult males smoking. In addition, significantly more women smoke in Eastern Europe than in East Asia and the Pacific Region.

2. Most people who smoke, begin smoking before they are 25 years old. Worldwide observations suggest that people are stating to smoke at a much younger age. World Health Organization studies reveal that the majority of smokers in affluent countries; begin in their teens.

Smoking In the US

How do Americans compare to the rest of the world when it comes to smoking? It may come as no surprise to hear that Americans are no better than anyone else. According to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics:

3. In the US, it is estimated that 25.6 million men (25.2%) and 22.6 million women (20.7%) are smokers. These smokers face a higher risk of heart attack and stroke. Here are the latest estimates for smokers’ aged 18 and above:

4. Studies reveal that smoking popularity is significantly higher among people with 9-11 years of education (35.4%) compared with those with more than 16 years of education (11.6%).

5. There appears to be a correlation between a country's standard of living, level of education, and income and the number of people who have quit smoking. The more and better-informed people are, the more likely they are to quit smoking.

6. People living below the poverty level (33.3%) are much more likely to start smoking.

7. Among whites, 25.1% of men and 21.7% of women smoke.

8. Among black or African Americans, 27.6% of men and 18% of women smoke.

9. Among Asians, 21.3% of men and 6.9% of women smoke.

10. Among Hispanics/Latinos, 23.2% of men and 12.5% of women smoke.

11. Among American Indians/Alaska Natives, 32% of men and 36.9% of women smoke.

12. A shocking…one out of every five five deaths is caused by tobacco.

13. It is estimated that Tobacco is responsible for 400,000 deaths in the US every single year.

14. Cigarettes are responsible for about 25% of deaths from residential fires, causing nearly 1,000 fire-related deaths and 3,300 injuries each year.

15. Tobacco is blamed for many serious cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases

16. Nicotine and tobacco are some of the most potent carcinogens and are responsible for the majority of all cancers of the lung, larynx, trachea, esophagus and bronchus.

17. Smoking tobacco is known to produce cancer in the pancreas, kidney, bladder, and the cervix

18. Because tobacco reduces blood flow, nicotine addiction has been proven to cause impotency.

19. If you smoke, the risk of respiratory illnesses is high. This could lead to pulmonary diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia, which are responsible for some 85,000 every year.

20. Children and adolescents who are active smokers will have increasingly severe respiratory illness, as they grow older

21. Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage and fetal growth retardation. It also causes about 5-6% of prenatal deaths, 17-26% of low-birth-weight births, and 7-10% of pre-term deliveries.

If you do not want to quit smoking after reading these shocking figures, you really need to get your head examined.

Cold turkey to replace methadone for addicts

Heroin addicts will be ordered to undergo "cold turkey" treatment rather than receive methadone* under a Government plan to tackle Scotland's chronic drug problem.

The radical move follows recent research which found that three years after receiving methadone only 3% of addicts remained totally drug-free.

Despite the poor effectiveness of methadone, £12m a year is spent doling out the heroin substitute to 52,000 users. The wider healthcare and crime-related costs of this army of addicts is far higher.

However, backers of methadone insist that it is also a solution, pointing out that less than half of those who go through rehabilitation programmes succeed in coming off drugs.

Bill Nelles, the general secretary of the Methadone Alliance, said recently: "For the people who do respond to methadone they should be able to access methadone for as long as it can be shown it is helping them."

* What is Methadone?
Methadone is an opiate that was first introduced after World War II as an alternative to morphine. Methadone was originally thought to be less addictive because of its extremely long half life. Today, methadone is used as an analgesic for pain management and more popularly as replacement therapy for heroin and other opiate addictions. Methadone is a cheap alternative to other opiate based medications which outweighs it potency when prescribing.

Smokers' Hope

Every smoker knows they face an increased risk for serious health problems from cigarettes and cigars. We know smoking causes heart disease, lung cancer and emphysema. None of this is earth-shattering news.

As smokers, though, we learn to effectively ignore the particulars about smoking-related disease. We gloss over, tune out and otherwise distract ourselves whenever possible. Looking too closely can cause a head-on collision with realities of the damage we're inflicting on our bodies and turns smoking 'enjoyment' into a guilty, fearful experience.

All smokers harbor the secret hope that they will be spared the disease and death that follows nicotine addiction. We tell ourselves we'll quit in time and somehow dodge the bullet that smoking is.

But with four million people dying every year due to tobacco use around the world, the odds aren't in our favor. Put another way, a smoking-related death occurs somewhere in the world every eight seconds, 365 days a year.

The sooner we remove the blinders and look carefully at nicotine addiction and the damage it causes, the sooner we can begin pulling away from the lies.