SolveYourProblem eLearning Series: Smoking
I'd Rather Not Die From Smoking
Learn The Harmful Effects & Quit Smoking Now
( 27 pages )

Smoking Substitutes: Gum, Menthol, Spices, Cardamom and more

An Experiment

Now, I want you to try something. It’s a little gory, I admit, so I’ll apologize for that right up front.

Here’s what I want you to do...

While you are doing this breathing exercise and feeling all those cells perk up, just think for a minute about what happens when you’re inhaling the hot, fuming, toxic, carcinogenic smoke from a cigarette. Visualize the smoke circulating through your body and slowly killing all the cells that it comes into contact with. Watch as it slowly but surely pollutes your entire body, and then see yourself finally succumbing to it one day.

I know this experiment is tough to deal with, but it’s important that you understand the hideous crime that you commit against your body each time you smoke a cigarette, compared to the good you do your body by inhaling clean, natural oxygen.

Try Something Else: Gum, Toffee, Menthol, Mint Or Cardamom

When you get the urge to smoke, try using something else like a chewing-gum or a toffee. Try things that have strong flavors like menthol, mint or spiced with something like cardamom. It is even better if you can get your hands on spices like cloves or cardamoms; they really help a lot though you could burn your mouth if you take in more that a teeny weenie bit. You should not swallow these things immediately, but should bite into them and then let the taste linger in your mouth for a couple of minutes. You might experience numbness in your mouth but it helps take away the urge to smoke.

But please note that these things can be addictive too, so try alternating among chewing gum, candy, chocolate, spices and maybe even coffee.

Make a list of all the smokers around you who you know closely. And then what you have to do is STAY AWAY FROM THEM. Unless they too are trying to quit, keep a very safe distance from them. If you had a habit of smoking with them at fixed times, take special care to steer very clear of them at those fixed times.

Don’t Put It Off

Most people - in fact, I should say all of us - have a habit of putting off things for another day. This habit is called procrastination and it’s the guardian angel of smoking. As long as we have this habit of procrastination, we are never going to stop.

The funny thing about procrastination is that we only tend to postpone unpleasant tasks. The good things in life we try to do as early as possible and the things that involve hard work, giving up comforts, or a little bit of pain, we try to put off till the last possible date.

The dangerous thing over here is that in the case of most smokers there no real last possible date. Many people become serious about quitting after a first heart attack or stroke. Don’t tell me that you too are waiting for a real warning like that. If you are waiting for a doctor’s warning, then you can’t be too far from falling terminally ill. There is absolutely no sense in putting it off.

There is a law in Physics that was put forth by Sir Isaac Newton. It states that a body continues to be in a state of rest or of uniform motion until an external force is applied. This same rule is true in the case of smoking as well. Smoking is not a habit that can die a natural death all of a sudden. It is something that has to be worked on. It is something that involves a lot of restraint and control. The only cases in which I have seen a smoker stop immediately is when the doctor shook his head and said “I’m sorry but you have only a few months left to live.”

Come on, get a grip on yourself. You are much stronger than you think. So why do you have to postpone it any further. There is no better day than today. It is not something that you have to wait till New Year's Day to do as a part of your New Year resolutions. Do it today and increase your chances of succeeding and …gulp…surviving.

Just think about it for a minute. Did you really want to become a smoker? Was that really your ambition as a child, to grow up into a smoker? Chances are that you became a smoker as a result of habit. Look at yourself. You have a respectable job and you have people who you care about and who care about you.

If one of your friends were to approach you with a problem and ask you to think of the most sensible decision - wouldn’t you do it for them? Now if you would do that for a friend, shouldn’t you be able to do it for you as well? If you are capable of making sensible decisions for others don’t you owe it to yourself to make sensible decisions as far as your health is concerned? Of course you do, but then what is stopping you?

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