The Myth Of Tapering To Help To Quit SmokingWhen many people make the wise decision to give up smoking, they unfortunately choose the method of gradually tapering the number of cigarettes down to help to quit smoking. That is just not the way that it should be done. If you try and bring down the number of cigarettes that you smoke, you will, all the while, still have the mindset of a smoker, and that does not help matters at all. 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? Is it tension, excitement, anxiety, problems, the need to unwind, stress? Can we ever free ourselves from any of these? Of course not. So the next time you hit one of these, that becomes your green signal for you to whip out that pack, light up 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 invariably, you will soon be back to smoking the same number of cigarettes you were smoking before. Let’s 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 taper. The number just never becomes zero. I have met many people who say, “I used to smoke 6 packs a day but now I'm down to just 2 packs a day.” I don’t say anything to them, though the message on my face is, “but you are still puffing away like a steam engine aren't you?” Many people will also switch to low tar and low nicotine cigarettes thinking that there will be lesser harm done. This is again a myth. The point that such people are missing out is that they continue to smoke because the body or the brain has started demanding its daily doze of nicotine. Nicotine is what the body wants and nicotine is what harms the body most. So no matter what you smoke you will try to give you body the nicotine that it has become used to. You cannot reason with the body. You accustomed it to a particular dosage of nicotine and when it doesn't get that, its starts to complain. At such a tie even if you switch to a low nicotine cigarette it is not going to be of much use. The end result will be that you will start taking stronger pulls on these cigarettes, may increase the number of cigarettes that you smoke, or you might take more puffs per cigarette. Nicotine is a venomously addictive substance and once you get used to it, there is no bringing it down, there is only stopping it once and for all. The message here is loud and clear--cutting down on cigarettes or switching to a low tar brand will do absolutely nothing to help to quit smoking. Any number, or any kind, of cigarettes is bad, so don't even consider them as possibilities if you really intend to quit. |