It's been 5 months as a non-smoker.

I can hardly remember what is the feeling of enjoying smoking. And feels like the smells of smoke are disgusting when somebody smokes aside of me.
I admit that during these several months. I tasted several cigarettes passing by my friends. It feels like the time when we began to learn smoking. No joy, no release, just feel disgusting, no desire to smoke more. So I dropped them quickly after a few inhale.
I fully know that I'm a non-smoker now. Because my nerve in the brain has completely detached from nicotine. So the addiction disappears.
I like the feeling now of fresh-air-in-every-breath.

Sport is better than medicine

If you ask me what is the most effective way to quit smoking, I would recommend sport. As a smoker, we could easily notice that we don't regularly take any exercise, especially those which require more than 45 minutes or even longer, such as running for a coupon of miles, a one and half hour tennis, or an intensive 45 minute fitness class. And we also find that those people who do sports 2, 3 times a week, seems never smoke. Our smoker friends don't take regular exercise either.

Why? Sports and smoking are born to be enemies. We find without surprise that, after an intensive exercise, the desire for taking a smoke reduces a lot. Even if we take one because of habits, the cigarette does not taste good, not as much as after we take a meal. The taste is somewhat like when we first take a smoke -- no pleasure, hoping to stub out soon. Nicotine effect is restrained after a sport! On the other hand, if you smoke a lot per day, you will hardly have the energy to do exercise.

So the easiest way to quit smoking is to regularly do exercise. At the beginning, it is better to take exercise multiple times per day, each for half an hour. You will find that you don't smoke as much as before. Maybe you will only consume half of the cigarettes, or even consume 0 after a while, naturally, without any pain or any ambivalence.

QUIT SMOKING MILESTONE - 3 MONTH

Happily, I announce, that I have successfully stopped smoking for exactly 3 months. And I don't see any reason that I will resume smoking in the future.

Congratulations to Qsmoking!

Smoker is slave

Have you ever realize that you are not enjoying the smoking, but are slaved by the cigarettes? Let me clarify this by a story.

Paul Getty, an oil business man and the richest in the U.S. in the last century, was a heavy smoker. He woke up one night in a small inn, and hoped to take a smoke. Unfortunately, he didn't have one. He was so heavily driven by the desire that he decided to walk 6 blocks to the rail way station to buy a pack. It was rainy and dark outside. So he geared up with the rain coat and got ready to fight with the rain for the small pack of cigarette. He stepped out the door, slogged in the downpour, thunder and darkness. He suddenly found that how ridiculous his behavior was. How could he sacrifice so much to just take a smoke? He realized that he was totally a slave of the cigarette. Indeed, smoking is the best master that every smoker takes the slavery as an enjoyment!

Guess what, Paul Getty laughed at his own stupidness and got back to bed without smoking, and never smoked since then.

He is clever and lucky that he finally got to know the truth of smoking. He found the path through the thick mist, though it is hidden so well.

Quit smoking is not hard at all, if you see the truth through the mist as well.

We are at the end of the smoker's era

There are eras in the history that people took in some poisoned stuffs. About two thousand years ago, in China, emperors took pills containing heavy metal such as mercury, to hope to live longer. Around 1500 years ago, some other chemicals which are extracted from stones are very popular. People ate a combo of them because it made them high. They all disappear now. Smoking, no difference to their ancestors, will disappear in the future for sure. And what is more encouraging is that the time is coming soon.

The smokers are 25% of total people in the U.S. now. But they are mostly people above mid-age or even older. In universities, smokers are rare among students. It is also estimated that in 2025, smokers in the U.S. will be less than 10% of the total population. It is apparently that we are on the tail of this smokers era that lasts for a hundred year or even more.

It is good that policies are applied consistently, which will push the era to its end faster.

Besides the tax-raising for cigarettes, here is another one:

"The U.S. senate recently approved tighter control over cigarettes and related tobacco products. This decision will empower federal health officials to strictly regulate smoking. The FDA is now expected to impose stricter controls over the manufacture and marketing of tobacco products, which kill about 50% of regular users."

It includes:

• ban the tobacco flavorings, which lure the first-time smokers;
• change the color of the ads to black and white;
• ban the tobacco ads in the vicinity of playgrounds and schools;
• further raise the price;

and more.

Quit smoking injection, sounds crazy to me

An innovation in quit smoking research is what called quit smoking injection. What is it? Basically, your body is injected with some chemicals, which can remove your response to the nicotine. My understanding is that you need to give up some of the functions of your neurons to kick off your smoking habit.

"It is a shot of scopolamine that is given to the individual who wishes to quit. It is generally used as an anesthetic as well as to make motion sickness better. It is also used as a temporarily treat Parkinson’s disease. It is basically a chemical that affects the brain.
This chemical that in injected helps in blocking the neuro-receptors that respond to nicotine in the brain. Due to this, when an individual smokes after being given this shot, the pleasure areas in the brain are not activated. This is because the chemical blocks receptors and so the brain is unaware that nicotine is in the body. This makes the act of smoking less and less enjoyable every time the individual smokes. Eventually, the individual can quit as there is no motivation to continue."

Side effects are as follows:

• Dizziness
• Blurry vision
• Difficulty in urination
• Dry mouth
• Fever
• Delirium and hallucinations
• Sensitivity to light

Jesus! Why not just cut off my fingers, then I have to quit smoking because I can not hold the cigarette between my fingers any more? Are we really so helpless that we need to sacrifice so much to quit smoking? No! Of course not. If you understand why you smoke and master the real technique, quit smoking is the easiest thing, just like how I quit. On the other hand, if you have not fully understood, even if you quit temporarily, later sometime, if the reason upon which you quit disappears, you will light up a cigarette again. In this injection case, what if later someday, the respond to nicotine comes back, and you by chance decide to take some smoke? That chance exists if you don't get rid off smoking habit from your subconsciousness.

So, be rational and find the right way to quit smoking happily.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy?

What is the most popular smoking cessation method you saw on ads? It is probably nicotine replacement therapy.

It includes:

• Nicotine gum
• Nicotine patch
• Nicotine spray

and more...

Firstly, I personally don't believe in those fancy products. It is like chicken wings in different sauces, e.g., hot sauce, BBQ sauce, sweet sauce, garlic sauce, etc. The versatile sauces are only used to attract customers. In terms of nutrition, you can hardly say that hot sauced wings are better than BBQ sauced. Similarly, I believe if Nicotine replacement is effective, whatever products such as nicotine gum or patch would be roughly same effective. If you find any product works, just stick to it. There is no need to change to a newer nicotine replacement product.

Secondly, I don't believe in nicotine replacement. It is simple to me that if I'm addicted to heroin powder, will heroin injection help me to quit? If taking McDonald make me fat, will moving to KFC makes me skinny? The answer is no! You must entirely stop taking what is harmful to you, to get rid of it.

As I talked in smoker's psychology, without fully understanding the essentialness of smoking, those methods are useless. On the other hand, if you deeply know why you smoke and why you need to quit, withdrawal symptom will become very trivial. And there is no need to use any nicotine replacement therapy.

The last cigarette

You will successfully quit smoking if you drop "the last cigarette".

As a frequent smoking quitter, we always have the thought like, "after the last cigarette, I will quit". Then we smoke the "last cigarette" thoroughly, in an attached emotion. We feel like we are leaving the best friend. Later, for sure we pick up smoking again.

"Last cigarette" is a good example of the confusing of what nicotine tells you, and what your real thought is. The "last cigarette" illusion is what the nicotine creates in your mind, to let you feel that you are sacrificing some benefit, say smoking, to exchange for your health. But the truth is, you are not sacrificing anything by quitting smoking. It is easy if you consider nicotine addiction as an illness. For example, will you feel that you sacrifice something when you recover from a bad headache? Will you try to seriously feel the last piece of headache before it is totally removed from your head? Of course not. The only difference is that headache doesn't bring you the addiction but nicotine does.

Let me tell you my quiting story. I have the last cigarette left in my pocket when I was reading Allen's quit-smoking book. I was so inspired by the book at that moment and decided to quit. I held the last cigarette in my hand and thought, I will finish the last one enjoyingly then quit. However, I suddenly realized that THERE IS NO NEED TO SMOKE THE LAST ONE if I want quit. It is ridiculous that I decide to quit but insist to take the last one. How could the thought of smoke-the-last-one come up in my mind? Of course, it is what my nicotine in my body tells me. Then guess what, I threw my last cigarette in the trash, and feel very relieve. You can never get that kind of relief if you smoke the last one.

Smoking the last one will put something in your subconsciousness, that you are not actively quiting smoking, but are separated with smoking habit, your best friend, by some external force, say the concern to your health. But trashing the last one will make you feel that you actively leave smoking habit, instead of pushed away by some others.

Just trash the last one. After that you will be amazing of the whole new feeling that you never experienced before immediately after you quit, the feeling that is not depressing or losing something as you frequently felt in the past. It is a feeling of fulfillment and rebirth.

Go feel it!

Common excuses a smoker uses when he wants smoking

There are only one real reason: nicotine.

The following are common excuse:

• I feel stressful.
• I need take a rest.
• Smoking a cigarette makes my meal complete.
• This is my last cigarette.
• Smoking the first third of the cigarette will do minimum harm to my health.
• I have quited for a while, I think taking this one will not make me resume smoking, why not try one. (This is the most stupid excuse!)
• I will enjoy smoking for now, I believe I will quit later some time.

Story of Bryan Lee Curtis

On the day of Bryan's death, June 3, wife Bobbie and son Bryan keep a bedside vigil.

Bryan Lee Curtis, then 33, holds son Bryan Jr., 2, in this March 29 photo. Curtis would die about two months later.

Here is a tragic story I copied from http://rokok-tobacco.blogspot.com.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Cigarette smoke hangs in the air in the room where Bryan Lee Curtis lies dying of lung cancer.

His head, bald from chemotherapy, lolls on a pillow. The bones of his cheeks and shoulders protrude under taut skin. His eyes are open, but he can no longer respond to his mother or his wife, Bobbie, who married him in a makeshift ceremony in this room three weeks ago after doctors said there was no hope.

In Bryan's emaciated hands, Bobbie has propped a photograph taken just two months ago. It shows a muscular and seemingly healthy Bryan holding his 2-year-old son, Bryan Jr. In the picture, he is 33. He turned 34 on May 10.

A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sit on a table near Bryan's bed in his mother's living room. Even though tobacco caused the cancer now eating through his lungs and liver, Bryan smoked until a week ago, when it became impossible.

Across the room, a 20-year-old nephew crushes out a cigarette in a large glass ashtray where the butt joins a dozen others. Bobbie Curtis says she'll try to stop after the funeral, but right now, it's just too difficult. Same for Bryan's mother, Louise Curtis.

"I just can't do it now," she says, although she hopes maybe she can after the funeral.

Bryan knew how hard it is to quit. But when he learned he would die because of his habit, he thought maybe he could persuade at least a few kids not to pick up that first cigarette. Maybe if they could see his sunken cheeks, how hard it was becoming to breathe, his shriveled body, it might scare them enough.

So a man whose life was otherwise unremarkable set out in the last few weeks of his life with a mission.

* * *

Bryan started when he was just 13, building up to more than two packs a day. He talked about quitting from time to time, but never seriously tried.

Plenty of time for that, he figured. Older people got cancer. Not people in their 30s, not people who worked in construction, as a roofer, as a mechanic.

He had no health insurance. But he was more worried about his mother, 57, who had smoked since she was 25.

"He would say, "Mom, don't worry about me. Worry about yourself. I'm healthy,' " Louise Curtis remembers. "You think this would happen later, when you're 60 or 70 years old, not when you're his age."

He knew, only a few days after he went to the hospital on April 2 with severe abdominal pain, how wrong he had been. He had oat cell lung cancer that had spread to his liver. He probably had not had it long. Also called small cell lung cancer, it's an aggressive killer that usually claims the lives of its victims within a few months.

While it seems unusual to the Curtis family, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa, Bryan's oncologist, said he is seeing more lung cancer in young adults.

"We've seen lung cancer earlier and earlier because people are starting to smoke earlier and earlier," Paonessa said. Chemotherapy sometimes slows the process, but had little effect in Bryan's case, he said.

Bryan also knew, a few days after the diagnosis, that he wanted somehow to try to save at least one kid from the same fate. He sat down and talked with Bryan Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter, Amber, who already had been caught once with a cigarette. But he wanted to do more. Somehow, he had to get his story out.

When he still had some strength to leave the house, kids would stare.

"They'd come up and look at him because he looked so strange," Louise Curtis said. "He'd look at them and say, "This is what happens to you when you smoke.'

"The kids would say, "Oh, man. I can't believe it,' " Louise Curtis said.

In the last few weeks, Bryan's mother has been the agent for his mission to accomplish some good with the tragedy. She has called newspapers and radio and television stations, seeking someone willing to tell her son's story, willing to help give him the one thing he wanted before he died. Bryan never got to tell his story to the public. He spoke for the last time an hour before a visit from a Times reporter and photographer.

"I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9 a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the diagnosis.

Bryan Lee Curtis Sr. was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg on June 8, a rare cloudy day that threatened rain.

At the funeral service at nearby Blount, Curry and Roel Funeral Home, Bryan's casket was open and 50 friends and relatives could see the devastating effects of the cancer.

Addiction is more powerful.

As the graveside ritual ended, a handful of relatives backed away from the gathering, pulled out packs of cigarettes and lit up.

Several ways to help you quit smoking

Remember, fully understanding the truth of smoking and smoker's psychology is the crucial part and determinate factor to successful stop smoking. Please read the posts in smoker's psychology as your first step.

During your first couple of weeks without cigarettes, try the following techniques to make you feel better:

1. Avoid participating in activities which involve with a lot smokers, such as party.

2. Tell your family and friend you are in quiting smoking, and please don't pass you cigarettes.

3. Drink more, whatever pure water or tea. It can help to export nicotine.

4. Breathe deeper several times in a day for a couple of minutes, especially at the moments you smoked before, such as after a meal, or after bath.

5. Deep breath in the early morning, feel the pain in your throat and lung.

6. Eat more fresh vegetables and fruits.

Don't envy those who smoke less

As a smoker, we always envy those who only smoke 5 or less per day. We think they can enjoy smoking but not hurt too much by the harmful materials. However, the truth is as following:

1. Smoking is not an enjoyment. If you really quit smoking, you will not envy those who smoke less. It makes sense because a normal sighted person will not envy the shortsighted ones, only the blind envy them. You envy the less-smoking-per-day smokers because you have not freed from the nicotine slavery.

2. Most 5-per-day smokers are even suffering more than the 1-pack-per-day guys, both mentally and physically. Because they consume less cigarette , they need to inhale more and deeper for every smoke, which is much more harmful to their body. Also, they always need to fight with the thoughts of lightening up a cigarette if it is not the time. So for most of the time in the day, they are just waiting anxiously for the next releasing moment, just like the prisoner waiting for the routine exercise.

If you are a smoker and tried to smoke less per day, you should have felt what I mean above. And you must find that smoke less or gradually stop smoking is not an efficient way to quit.

You must quit entirely when you decide to stop smoking. Don't lie to yourself by taking less. It only means you don't want quit. Smoking less is just an excuse for continue smoking. You know that.

Do you really like smoking?

Sometimes when you failed quit smoking by lighting a new cigarette, or you tried not to quit smoking, you always use the excuse: I do like smoking, I enjoy the tastes, and the feeling when the smoke burns my throat. Is it true? Do you really believe the words in your excuse? Actually, you clearly know that they are excuse. The truth is that you want to take some nicotine to release from your addiction, just like those drug-user. The truth is you don't like smoking at all, for real.

There are several questions widely proposed which can help you to clarify this:

1. Do you enjoy your first cigarette?

No. Most people find their first cigarette choked and hard to swallow. They tried a long time to get used to it. I never tried long time to fall in love with tea, music, or tennis. I like them from my first encounter to them.

2. Will you smoke some bad-tastes cigarettes when there is no other?

The answer is YES. In fact, the hobby of smoking is totally different from drinking tea, taking sun bath, etc. I cannot imagine I would take some scraps out of the shredder and boil it to drink, just because I have no tea in hand! I would also not grill myself under a burning sun just because I feel I must take sun bath every hour! I will definitely not collect the tails of shrimp from other's plates and eat up the little remaining meat because I love shrimp. But a smoker will pick up a butt without knowing who used it and happily light it if he doesn't have a cigarette in his pocket.

3. Do you always experience that the strongest desire for smoking coming right before you light it up, then after you take several sucks, your enjoyment weakens a lot, then you are just suffering from the rest smokes but insisting to consume it entirely, to not waste it?

When I eat something I like, the good feeling never weaken during almost the whole meal. I enjoy my every bite equally.

4. Do you really decide to smoke for the rest of your life?

I could say that I would drink tea, play chess, tennis, and listen to music for the rest of my life. But for smoking, most people think that they will quit some day. Why? What the smokers don't want to admit but the truth is that they don't really like smoking, they are just caught and slaved by the cigarette.

Why physically, stop smoking is easy.

Smoking is not as addictive as you think.

I want to clarify this statement by several instances:

1. Do you have experience that during a long exam, say 3 hours, you never have the desire of smoking?

2. Do you often wake up in the mid-night by the withdrawal symptoms?

See? The withdrawal symptom is not strong at all. If you forget the thing "smoking" in a long period, due to whatever reason, you will not be suffering. Suffering emerges only when you realize that you need to smoke and you can get some cigarettes without much difficulty, say from your pocket or a nearby gas station.

So physically, there is no such thing called "withdrawal symptom", or not as strong as you think, it only comes above the water when you realize it, and tell yourself the "withdrawal symptom" is coming.

Quit smoking hard? Quit smoking easy!

I believe every smoker had the experience trying quit smoking, and 99% of them failed. We think quit smoking is hard but we never know why it is hard. We often heard people saying: Mr. X quited for 3 weeks then resumes smoking. We are surrounded by quit-smoking medicine, nicotine substitutes, psychotherapy, cigarettes' tax-raising, world's no tobacco day, etc. It makes us believing that there is a war happening between the world and the tobaccos, a very difficult war.

However, we never realize that proposing the war makes it so difficult to fight. It is the over-emphasize on the difficulty makes quit-smoking so hard. It is like a monster, that we beat it harder, it gets stronger. The only way to defeat the monster is to leave it alone. Sounds contradictory? But it is the truth.

An old story is inspiring: A traveler visited an ancient tribe decades ago. One day when he left, he got all people in the tribe together and told them: Don't try to remember twelve strange monkeys, they are curses to you guys. The people around him all laughed and replied: what a joke! What the hell is "twelve monkeys" and why would we remember that? Several years later, the traveler revisited the tribe, and find without surprise that the only thing the people were doing there was to try to forget "twelve monkeys". What is your take away from this story?

We should also learn from a famous Buddhism story in China, in which there are two monks, presenting their understanding of Buddhism to their tutor. The first versed: Clean it frequently so as to get rid of the dust. While the second said: As there is nothing from the beginning, where does the dust collect itself?

In terms of quit smoking, we should study from the spirit of the second monk. We should not "fight" with it, that will only make our opponents stronger, make the claim "quit smoking is hard" more impressive in our subconsciousness. The only truth is that: Quit smoking is easy, both physically and mentally, we think it is hard because of our self-brainwash and social teaching.

The more you use those complicated methods such as nicotine substitutes, psychotherapy, and the more the media publish those quit-smoking-now-otherwise-you-will-something articles, the harder the war against smoking will be. You will fall deeper in to the trap and recognize the "difficulty" of quit-smoking in your subconsciousness, which does not exist from the very beginning.

I would also recommend a book "The easy way to stop smoking" by Allen Carr. You can get it from any book store for several bucks, or even freely from internet. I quit smoking by reading that book.