Quit Smoking: A Former Smoker's Guide to Breaking the Habit

I'm sharing my experiences of quitting smoking with you to save your life, and possibly your sanity as well. I hope to make this guide as brief and tightly written so that I can capture - and hold - your attention on what finally, finally worked for me. My hope is that it will work for me. I lived - and possibly could very well have died - by the cigarette.

I'd been a smoker for nearly half of my life, twenty-seven years to be exact. I had started as a teenager for two reasons: it looked 'cool' and make you appear to be sophisticated, and it seemed to be a great way to control my weight. When I was feeling hungry, I whipped out a cigarette, which took the edge off of my hunger until it was gone. Stupid, stupid me. I thought I looked pretty hot as a young woman, cigarette in hand, as I worked or I wrote.

My father was a heavy smoker who died from a heart attack in his late sixties. Our childhood home always reeked of smoke and these dainty, pink plastic ashtrays that were always full. My mother never smoked, nor did anyone else in our family, actually. But this was back in the '50's, before the real dangers of smoke on an individual - and the effects of second-hand smoke on others, especially in close quarters - were as widely known as they are now. The fact that my long-suffering mother never spoke up for herself or us, her children, didn't help matters. But the past is the past - remember that phrase.

My first husband wasn't a smoker, but his parents were. As long as I smoked outside of the house, my habit was okay with him. Again, I was very, very slim and active at the time. So long as I 'looked good', I honestly don't think he gave a damn. My second husband was what you could call a 'social' smoker. He would have perhaps one, two at the very most, cigarettes a week. (I hate him for that. Actually, I'm more jealous than anything.) About five years ago, he just decided to up and quit - and he did. He hasn't had a cigarette since. It does not bother him in the least. But once he had quit, the battle began for me to stop. And like all wars, the battle was really, really ugly.