Five years free!

I smoked for 28 years and tried to quit many times by many methods including patches, nicotine sprays, cold turkey. I never lasted longer than six weeks. Finally I decided to think about the 10-15 cigarettes i was having daily and pick out the four I most enjoyed. These were the three daily meals and a bedtime cigarette. I cut down to these four. In between I would have cravings of course but I would say to myself 'if you still REALLY want one 20 minutes from now, you can have one' but I would always have found a distraction by then or the craving passed. After a few months I cut down to three per day (I ditched the lunch time cigarette), same '20 minute' rule. Three months later I was down to two per day, morning and evening. Finally got down to just the one before bedtime. I spent several months at each 'stage'. The night I realised that I was worrying more about contracting a smoking related illness than I was enjoying the cigarette and was still worrying half an hour later, that was the night I threw the packet in the bin and never went back. 6th December 2012. If I can do it, anyone can. I love that I don't smell of it, I'm not wasting money (lots of travel since then!) and I have a much better chance of not dying before my time.