How I Stopped Missing Cigarettes When I Quit Smoking For Good

I used to be a smoker myself and smoked 20 to 25 cigarettes a day. I often thought about giving up but I wasn’t really sure how to do it.

At first I tried hypnotherapy. I found the whole experience very relaxing and great for stress relief. I would lay on my bed every day and listen to my hypnotherapy tapes. But as soon as I sat up, I’d instantly feel like smoking a cigarette.

At the same time I also knew another person who was trying to stop smoking. She too tried hypnotherapy. She also read several books and tried several different courses. But to this day she still smokes.

I realized after watching her for several years that her problem wasn’t in the treatments and books she was using. Her failure was in the fact that she really didn’t want to stop smoking and instead was looking for that magic ‘something’ that would make her WANT to stop. She just couldn’t see that unless she herself wanted to stop, nothing was going to make it happen. She simply could never see herself as a non-smoker.

I too had looked into several different ways of giving up smoking while I continued to smoke.

Then my awakening moment came one stormy night in 1990.

It was about 6pm and my 6-year-old son and I had just finished dinner. Outside there was quite a storm raging. I had run out of cigarettes that afternoon and because of the bad weather, I tried to convince myself that I would be fine without a cigarette for the rest of the day.

But once our evening meal was finished I was “DYING” for a cigarette. But I didn’t have any, so I washed the dishes and told myself that I’d be fine.

Then about half an hour later I was thinking of getting my son ready for bed. But the thought of sitting on my own all evening without any cigarettes was worrying.

There was a petrol station about 5 minutes walk from our house so I decided to risk it and walk there (I didn’t have a car). After all, how wet could we get in such a short space of time? It was also a cold night so I dressed my young son and myself in our warmest coats and hats and put on our wellington boots.

Then we set off out the front door to get my cigarettes. We walked as fast as we could but the water was gushing down the road and over our feet and the rain really lashed our faces.

By the time we got home again we were soaked. We took off our hats and coats and hung them to dry. The rain was so heavy that it had penetrated our clothes too and our hair was plastered to our heads.

We stripped off our clothes and I started to towel my son’s hair. I saw for the first time how cold and wet he was and as I watched him shiver I burst into tears. How could I have been so selfish to drag the poor little boy out in such bad weather for something as unimportant as cigarettes?

I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t enjoy smoking the cigarettes that night. Every time I looked at the packet I was reminded of how self-seeking I’d been and I felt miserable that my need for cigarettes had been more important to me than my son’s well-being.

I knew at that moment that I no longer wanted to smoke. I knew that if I was a non-smoker I’d never drag my son out in a storm ever again AND we’d have more money to spend if I wasn’t wasting it all on cigarettes. I felt like a totally selfish mother and I was determined to do something about it.

So although I was feeling bad about what I’d done, I also felt elated because I knew that I was going to stop smoking. And I did.

I didn’t do it instantly. Instead I used a slow system of quitting so that gradually, over the next few months, I smoked less and less, till eventually I wasn’t smoking at all.

Other smokers that I knew were amazed how I cut smoking out of my life for good and they began to ask me the exact method I’d used.

So I began to help them all, taking them step-by-step and month-by-month through how I did it and they did it too.

Eventually I began helping more and more people to stop smoking and now I have decided to put my complete method in a book so that anyone can do it.

Becoming a non-smoker isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible. I know, because when I started to

become a non-smoker, although I was determined to do it, I still found it hard.

But my slow and steady system for getting cigarettes out of your life for good makes the whole process easy. In fact, you’ll hardly even notice that you’re stopping.

How I Stopped Missing Cigarettes When I Quit Smoking For Good by Ruth Barringham