Some quit smoking techniques I have tried

I started smoking when I was about 17. I started smoking because my girlfriend smoked and kissing her tasted terrible, the only way to kiss her and it didn't taste bad was to start smoking myself. After a while, like most people I became addicted to cigarettes.

After a few years of smoking, one morning I woke up and reached over to turn off the alarm clock - instead I put my hand in a dirty ashtray. Needless to say that wasn't the way I wanted to start my day and I was discusted with smoking, so I threw away all my cigarettes and ash trays that very minute.

After a few years of not smoking I went through a real nasty breakup with a woman I cared about. I woke up the next morning hungover with half a pack of cigarettes left. I've been smoking again ever since.

I did try the patch at one point, but it simply wasn't strong enough when compated to the cigarettes, at least not for me. After a few days on the quit smoking patch I gave up and started smoking again. I tried the zyban to quit smoking too, but it didn't help at all, so I gave up on it too.

The one things that seemd to work good for me and was the cheapest tool I found was a small digital timer. What I did was set the timer to go off once an hour, when the timer wnet off I could have a cigarette. I followed that plan for about a week, and then set the timer to once every hour and a half, slowly weening myself off cigarettes.

After about another week, I switched to once every two hours, a week later every three hours. I did this until got got myself down to three cigarettes a day, one in the morning, one around lunch and one later in the evening.

I continued at three cigarettes a day for a couple months and after a short time I noticed that I would even skip a planned smoking time here and there. I got 99% of the nicotene out of my system and was quite conten with smoking only once or twice a day.

Sooner or later I'll quit competly, but I am still very proud of my progress!