Bringing Down the Number

  This again is another pitfall. There is often a misconception about quitting. Many people believe that instead of stopping at just one go; they should try to bring down the number of cigarettes that they smoke. Wrong! That is not the way that it should be done. If you try and bring down the number of cigarettes that you smoke, you will still be smoking and that just doesn’t help.

It is a very tricky thing indeed to fix on the number that is safe for you. If you are still carrying cigarettes with you then you are in fact tempting yourself. You might have brought down the number but since you still have a packet with you, you are in fact waiting for the slightest provocation and that number will shoot up again.

What is it that makes you smoke? Tension, excitement, anxiety, problems, the need to unwind, stress? Can we ever free ourselves form any of these? So the next time you hit one of these then that becomes your green signal for you will just whip out that packet, light one of them and start puffing away to glory. The excuse that will be reverberating in your mind is that “it’s just this once, just to get over this small problem.”

And then before you know it, you will be back to smoking the same number of cigarettes.

So let me emphasize that point again, you have to quit once and for all if you are really serious about quitting. It just does not work if you try to bring down the number. The number just never becomes zero. I have met many people who say, “I used to smoke 6 packets a day but now I’m down to just 2 packets a day.” I look at them out of the corner of my eye and I do not say anything to them though the message on my face is, “but you are still puffing away like a steam engine aren’t you?”