Out of all the reasons to smoke, there is one that most people don’t even consider – and then once they’ve quit they realize it as a pleasant surprise. No matter how you look at it, the fact is that smoking costs money – and if you’re a smoker that means you’re burning a hole in your pocket to fund your addiction on a daily basis. But have you ever stopped to think how much your addiction is costing you?

Most smokers never do. Just as any other addicts, they find ways to fuel their addiction by hook or by crook and never want to be held accountable. Some smokers may occasionally wonder about how much they’re spending, but most will avoid actually doing the math to find out because that would mean that they’re going to have to face the horrible reality that they’re spending a small fortune on cigarettes!

Let’s just say that the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes costs about $2.50 on average. Sure, it might be cheaper or more expensive in certain places – but that’s about the average for the United States anyway. If you’re smoking a pack a day, that means that you’re forking out $2.50 on a daily basis in order to fund your addiction. That doesn’t sound like too much… does it?

However, let’s think about how much you’re spending in a year. At $2.50 a day, that would mean that you’re spending $892.50 on a yearly basis on cigarettes alone. Add to that the fact that you probably smoke slightly more on certain occasions such as nights when you’re out drinking and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that you’re probably forking out about $1,000 on a yearly basis to pay for your cigarettes.

That sounds like quite a lot more, doesn’t it?

If you quit smoking, you’d have an extra thousand dollars lying around every year to do with as you please. Imagine the places you could visit, or the things that you could buy with that kind of money.

Of course, this is assuming you’re living in the United States. If you’re living in the United Kingdom, things are much worse, since a pack of cigarettes is about 5 pounds, which translates into spending 1,785 pounds on cigarettes alone on a yearly basis. That is a lot of money (basically about $2,500 in US Dollars)!

As you can see, cigarettes are an expensive habit, and if you quit you’d probably be healthier, and happier considering you’d be able to do so much more with the extra cash!

Nowadays, everyone knows that smoking is bad for them. Quite frankly, it is almost impossible not to know that smoking causes a lot of ill effects. However, despite the fact that many people have a rough idea about the downsides of smoking – few really understand exactly how bad smoking is, and exactly how many side effects you could end up facing eventually if you continue to smoke.

There are many ill effects that come hand in hand with smoking. Undoubtedly, you already know that smoking causes lung cancer – but the truth is that it can cause many other types of cancer including mouth cancer and throat cancer. In fact, there are studies that have shown that smoking increases your overall chance of developing cancer even in organs that are not directly linked to smoking, such as the pancreas, kidneys, urinary tract, and bladder. So if you thought that you only had to worry about lung cancer… think again!

Apart from increasing the risk of cancer within the lungs, smoking also directly damages the lungs due to all of the tar and carbon monoxide that you’re inhaling. At the start, the only signs that you’ll see of this lung damage will be an increased production of phlegm that eventually causes a smoker’s cough. Given time however, this damage can actually even become permanent – and once that happens you’ll have tremendous difficulty breathing and may even find yourself immobile!

Furthermore, smoking has also been shown to be a major cause of heart disease. This is largely due to the nicotine content within cigarettes that constricts your blood vessels and makes your heart work harder. Unfortunately, this is a double whammy since your heart requires more oxygen to work harder but because your lungs aren’t exactly in tip top condition they’re not going to be able to provide it!

As you can see, the ill effects of smoking really can manifest in many ways. If you’re a heavy smoker, you’ve probably already noticed the early signs of some of these effects, and even if not you probably do feel generally less healthy, and may even suffer from headaches. Smoking also ages your skin, and so you might find that you’re far more wrinkled than you were before you started smoking.

All things said and done, it is indisputable that smoking is bad for you. This is unfortunate, but it is a fact. Frankly, if you want to live a long and healthy life then you need to quit – now!

Of all the numerous devices that have surfaced over the years to purportedly help quit smoking, electronic cigarettes are the latest – and possibly one of the most exciting alternatives. While it might seem counterproductive to some to replace actual cigarettes with electronic versions, that certainly isn’t the case – and as you’re about to find out, electronic cigarettes can actually be more helpful than you think!

Basically the idea behind electronic cigarettes is that they closely resemble regular cigarettes – and you smoke them too! Some even emit smoke in order to provide a more authentic ‘feel’ to smoking. However, you’re not actually inhaling any smoke, but instead you’re just inhaling nicotine that is supplied to the cigarette via cartridges!

Due to this, the truth is that an electronic cigarette is more like a nicotine patch than an actual cigarette!

The advantage of smoking an electronic cigarette over a conventional cigarette is simple – you’re not going to be inhaling tar and carbon monoxide. As such, the damage to your lungs is going to be lessened, which is a big part of why cigarettes are so dangerous. However, despite that advantage, the truth is that electronic cigarettes aren’t really all that helpful as a tool to help quit smoking. In fact… they aren’t even as helpful as nicotine patches!

All things said and done, nicotine patches provide a nicotine fix while weaning people off the oral addiction of having a cigarette in their mouths. Electronic cigarettes don’t even do that. Instead, you’re simply going to be replacing your regular cigarettes with them and getting your nicotine fix directly.

Needless to say, nicotine itself is bad for you – but the fact of the matter is that electronic cigarettes don’t even help to rid you of the desire to smoke really.

Many people who have tried to quit by using electronic cigarettes have found that as soon as they run out of cartridges and need a nicotine fix they go right back to smoking anyway. Quite frankly, it would be more accurate to classify electronic cigarettes as a replacement for cigarettes, rather than an actual tool to help people quit smoking.

If you just want to be able to get your nicotine fix while not having to worry about tar and carbon monoxide, then electronic cigarettes are a great way to do so. However, if you’re hoping to ditch smoking entirely, then you’d best look at other methods that would be far more effective.

Nicotine and smoking go hand in hand, and always have. Basically, nicotine is a byproduct of smoking tobacco that is released and absorbed by your body with each and every puff that you take. Although the content of nicotine in cigarettes is relatively small, it still plays a huge role within your body and is responsible for a lot of the trouble that you have with quitting smoking!

Essentially, nicotine is an extremely toxic substance, and if you were to consume it in high doses you’d end up dead. Within cigarettes however, the quantity of nicotine is so small that it doesn’t act as a toxic substance, but rather simply acts as a stimulant. By interfering with the activity within your brain, nicotine is able to cause you to feel a mild euphoria, and to generally feel more relaxed. It also causes the release of endorphins that give you a further ‘high’ and it is these feelings that you end up becoming addicted to.

Unfortunately, nicotine is also responsible for other issues, including raised blood pressure, increased heart rate, shallow breathing, relasing more glucose into the bloodstream, and inhibiting insulin. All of these things can cause various health problems – which is part and parcel of the downside of smoking.

Despite the ill effects however, because of the sensations caused by nicotine, smokers find that when the nicotine content in their body drops below a certain level they feel the need to ‘replenish’ it with another cigarette. This is why smokers find themselves ‘needing’ cigarettes throughout the course of the day, as the constant craving for nicotine essentially pushes them to smoke!

This is what leads to chain smoking. The majority of smokers end up smoking about 20 cigarettes a day so that they’re able to maintain a high enough level of nicotine within their body. Some others actually go a step further and end up chain smoking throughout the day in order to get their nicotine level high enough to satisfy themselves.

It really is a vicious circle. With every smoke, you’re really just paving the way to the next smoke because you’re going to feel the craving as a direct result of the nicotine that you’ve taken in. All in all, this is the hardest part about quitting smoking – because kicking that craving is not easy and it will take time before you’re completely free of it.

Now that you understand exactly what nicotine is doing to you however, you at least should stand a chance.

Ever since the public became aware of the fact that smoking had numerous ill effects on their health, a lot of effort has been put into finding various aids that can help people to quit smoking. Of all of these aids, the most dominant one over the last couple of decades has definitely been the nicotine patch, and today it is common to find numerous former-smokers who have used it to help kick the habit of smoking completely.

As the name implies, nicotine patches are simply patches containing quantities of nicotine. When placed on the skin, the nicotine will be absorbed and thus you will feel the slight euphoria and relaxed sense that comes with smoking. It will also satiate any cravings that you might have since your body will be getting its nicotine fix and thus you will find that you’re able to go without smoking for quite some time.

However, despite the fact that nicotine patches can stop you from smoking, they are far from an ideal solution.

What nicotine patches do is give you a method of acquiring nicotine without smoking. Thus, you’re not going to be inhaling tar and carbon monoxide, so your lungs won’t suffer. However, nicotine itself will still affect your heart, and your brain – so not all of the ill effects of smoking are going to be avoided simply by slapping on a patch!

The idea is that because you’re using patches instead of smoking, you’re going to stop feeling the oral addiction of smoking (i.e. the need to have something in your mouth) and so you can then gradually wean yourself off nicotine patches entirely without relapsing and starting to smoke again. Unfortunately, this very often isn’t the case, for the one simple reason that the minute you start to deprive your body of nicotine you’re going to start to feel the cravings once again.

When you do feel the cravings, you will be able to satiate them through two ways: Either by using nicotine patches, or simply starting to smoke again.

More often than not, people actually end up going back to smoking simply because it seems like the easier option. Some may stave it off for a while and satiate their cravings with nicotine patches, but many smokers remark that it ‘just isn’t the same’. This is the reason why despite the fact that nicotine patches appear to be helpful, for the vast majority of heavy smokers they don’t fully work to help kick smoking completely.

Still – it is better than nothing!

One of the most common ways that people try to quit smoking is to ‘cut down’ gradually. What this means is that from smoking 20 cigarettes a day, they might smoke 15 instead, and then a week later maybe 10, and then 5, and so on. Different people tend to develop different schedules for ‘cutting down’ on smoking – and while this might seem like a reasonable way to quit smoking, the truth is that it doesn’t really work as well as most people seem to think it does!

On the surface, cutting down gradually does seem to be a good idea. This is because of the fact that if you can get your body used to having less and less nicotine in it on a gradual basis, its going to be a lot less painful to you as you won’t feel the burning urge to have a smoke all that often, and at the same time you’ll slowly be working towards quitting smoking completely once your body has gotten used to having little or no nicotine around whatsoever.

Unfortunately that is almost never the case.

In reality, even if you do somehow manage to whittle down your smoking habit to maybe one cigarette a day – the truth is that you’re going to be waiting and craving for that one cigarette practically the whole day. So when an excuse pops around for you to let go and smoke more – you probably will. In essence, that means that you’re going to end up going back to square one sooner or later.

Most people who try to gradually cut down don’t even get that far. The majority find that they reach a certain point where they’ve cut down to about half of their regular smoking quantity, and then they find that the temptations just keep getting greater and greater. Some even start to develop a denial of the fact that they’ve stagnated – and end up using excuses such as the fact that they were drinking so they smoked more, or they were in a situation where everyone else was smoking so they smoked more, and so on.

Needless to say, the reasons why you were smoking don’t really matter. What matters is that you were smoking – and that is distinctly counterproductive to your efforts to quit!

Admittedly, there are a few people who have managed to quit by slowly cutting down. However, there are many more who turn into casual smokers instead that smoke from time to time at pubs, bars, or social functions. Social smokers are really just smokers who are constantly on the edge and could quite easily fall back to being regular smokers instead.

So if you’re thinking about quitting it is probably best for you to try other methods instead of just ‘cutting down’.

Many people associate their failure to kick smoking as a result of nicotine withdrawal. While it is true that all addictions have withdrawal, the truth is that nicotine withdrawal really is quite literally all in your head, and you should be aware of that fact. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that nicotine withdrawal is not like the withdrawal from hard drugs, despite the fact that many people seem to think that the two are really similar.

While it is true that nicotine is very addictive and is nearly as addictive as hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, the mistake that most people make is to figure that withdrawal symptoms are directly linked to the addictiveness of the substance. This isn’t the case at all, and if you’ve been a hard drug addict in the past (which hopefully you haven’t been!) you’d know the difference almost at once.

When you try to kick a hard drug habit, you’re going to find that withdrawal symptoms are really something else entirely. More often than not, withdrawal from hard drugs includes actual physical pain – and that is the worst part of it all. Nicotine withdrawal does not provide any physical pain whatsoever, and so the only real withdrawal symptoms that you’re going to face will be the ‘cravings’.

Despite what many people think, ‘cravings’ really aren’t physical at all. In fact, they’re all just in your head. Because you’ve probably been smoking for so long, your mind has become used to the sensation of smoking and feels the need to have a certain amount of nicotine in your body at all times. This need creates the craving sensation, and as you can readily see it is all just manufactured within your mind.

As such, the only way to overcome nicotine withdrawal is by conditioning your mind to do so! There are many methods that are used, ranging from psychotherapy to hypnosis. Some people even opt to simply rely on their own sheer willpower. Whatever the case, the fact of the matter is that your withdrawal symptoms are really mild in comparison to some of the other withdrawal symptoms out there – so count yourself as lucky.

Although nicotine withdrawal is really all in your head, the truth is that it isn’t easy to deal with. Very few people really know how to deal with addictions, and fewer still know how to recondition themselves so that they’re no longer plagued by the temptation of nicotine.

If you’re going to kick the habit – you need to learn how!

Of late, one of the newest methods of helping people to stop smoking that has cropped up is hypnosis. In truth, hypnosis has been gaining a lot of popularity in a number of areas, including weight loss and stress management, so it isn’t too big of a leap to see why it would apply to smoking as well. Still, for the skeptics among us, there is bound to be a lot of misgivings as to whether or not hypnosis actually works, or whether it is just a hyped up method that is destined for failure.

The rise in hypnosis as a method of stopping smoking is in tandem with the development of a style of psychotherapy known as Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP). Essentially, the line between hypnosis and NLP is very fine, and nowadays the two methods are used interchangeably or in tandem with one another in most programs.

Basically the idea that hypnosis or NLP can help to put a stop to smoking is an easy one and it revolves around the idea that smoking is a habit. So deep within our brain there is something that is causing us to crave nicotine, and desire to smoke. Because hypnosis and NLP both purportedly can influence the subconscious, it makes sense that they would be able to help to stop these cravings, and put an end to the desire to smoke. Needless to say, for any smoker this would be extremely helpful indeed.

But the question is – does it work?

Unfortunately, both hypnosis and NLP are embroiled in their fair share of controversy. Although mainstream psychotherapy generally does not acknowledge either, the fact of the matter is that the results they obtain are making them harder and harder to ignore. Studies have shown that both hypnosis and NLP can help to alter habits, including smoking – and this is supported by the numerous people who have undergone this form of program and claim that it has stopped their smoking entirely.

While there is still quite a bit of doubt about the authenticity of these methods, the fact that there are so many people out there who have experienced good results is certainly a great form of social proof. It may simply be that faith in the method itself is helping them to stop smoking – but even if that is the case, it is surely a good thing.

If you’re intent on quitting smoking and have found that the other methods that you’ve tried don’t really work for you – this could be the answer that you need!

If you’ve read any of the common resources that give advice about how to quit smoking, one of the most often quoted pieces of advice is to think about the negative effects of smoking. This is supposed to make yourself disgusted by what you’re doing to your body, and the effects that you could potentially get if you continue to smoke and as a result should help you to stave off any temptation.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case and many people find that it doesn’t work for them.

Truth be told, thinking about the negative effects of smoking can be helpful. Knowing what smoking is doing to your body, and wanting to avoid it, is probably one of the main reasons why you’ve decided to quit in the first place. As such, constantly reminding yourself of those reasons and the repercussions of failure is definitely going to prod you in the right direction.

However, it does not always work simply because many heavy smokers eventually become ‘immune’ to the psychological effects that thinking about the negative effects of smoking can cause. The most apparent case of this is where graphic images have been placed on cigarette packets in order to constantly act as a reminder to smokers about what they’re doing to themselves. While such images are often shocking at first, over time people tend to ‘get used’ to them, and eventually many smokers tend to not notice them at all.

This is the same thing that happens when you think about the negative effects of smoking. While initially you may be disgusted and repelled every time you think about what you’re doing to your body, over time you’re bound to develop a resistance to this method. If you’ve tried to quit before and tried this method in the past, you’ll find that the next time you try to quit it isn’t nearly as effective. For people who have tried to quit multiple times, they’re going to find that they’re almost completely immune.

All things said and done, this is the one fault within this method itself – and so you might not find that it is as effective on you as it would be on someone who has never tried it in the past. Frankly speaking, it is going to be a lot more effective if you find constructive ways to motivate yourself to want to quit, rather than relying on the disgust caused by the ill effects of smoking to do so.

At the end of the day, positive motivation can be far more powerful than reverse negative motivation!

Do you remember a time in your life when you were a lot healthier than you are now? That’ right – we’re talking about a time in your life before you picked up smoking, and when you probably used to play sports, or at least were a lot more active than you probably are right now. During that time you probably even never thought of smoking… and do you know why?

Exercise is truly one of the best weapons to combat smoking, but unfortunately it is one that most of us use far too rarely.

Basically, we end up being addicted to smoking because our bodies crave nicotine. And the reason our bodies crave nicotine is because nicotine causes the release of endorphins that gives us a temporary ‘high’. Needless to say, most of us like to feel high, and therefore our brains automatically want to constantly retain that feeling. Unfortunately this would mean smoking more and more cigarettes in order to continuously have a certain amount of nicotine in your body.

If you’re wondering how exercise can help that… well, the fact of the matter is that nicotine isn’t the only thing that releases endorphins. Physical activity releases endorphins too, which is why many people become ‘hooked’ on exercise. Needless to say, being addicted to exercise isn’t a bad thing (unless taken to extremes) and so you will find that you’re able to get somewhat the same results as you would from smoking by simply exercising.

In a nutshell – what if you were to replace your smoking habit with an exercising habit?

Many people are already doing this, and the result is that if you were to start to quit smoking and start exercising at the same time, you’d find that because your body has extra endorphins due to the exercise, you aren’t as susceptible to the nicotine cravings as you would be if you just decided to quit and then sat back and did nothing. Because your exercise is going to dull your cravings, you’ll find that you’re a lot more likely to not give in to the temptation to have a cheeky smoke here or there.

At the same time, your body will also be getting healthier – which is definitely a plus.

All things said and done, exercise isn’t exactly going to solve all your problems when it comes to quitting smoking, and you can rest assured that there will be times when you feel tempted to smoke. Still, at least by dulling the craving somewhat you’re going to find that you’re less likely to really fall off the wagon than otherwise.