Live Life Team
There are two basic ways to stop smoking: cold turkey or gradually. Giving up gradually is the most appropriate option for someone who has a considerable amount of willpower and a limited support system.
When you want to stop smoking gradually, you must decrease the amount of cigarettes you smoke each day. For heavy smokers, the amount of time this takes will be longer than it would be for a light smoker.
A good place to start is to count the total number of cigarettes you smoke in a day. The following day, smoke no more than that amount. The day after that, reduce the number by one cigarette. Stay at this number for two to three days, and then reduce the number again by one.
Slowly reducing the number of cigarettes in this manner allows your body to slowly adjust to the reduced amount of chemicals in your body. When you have been smoking for a while, your body begins to recognise some of the additives in cigarettes as normal. Once this happens, your body will go through withdrawal symptoms when you quit smoking.
As you continue using this method, you will have to ensure that you only have the total number of cigarettes you are allowed for that day on hand. To accomplish this, consider locking all of your cigarettes in the trunk of your car except the ones you are allowed for that day.
An alternative to this is to portion out your cigarettes. Place the appropriate number of cigarettes for each day into a zipper top bag that is labelled with the consumption date. Once the cigarettes are gone from that bag, you are done for the day.
Regardless of how you distribute your cigarettes from day to day, scheduling your smoke times and amounts may be helpful. For example, smoke half a cigarette before a meal and then the other half after.
