Stop smoking: Step 2 - How?

There are a couple of ways on how to stop smoking. If you do your research, you'll find that there are drugs/medicine that will help you to stop smoking. But there are no better ways to stop than good ol' self-motivation.

The week before I stopped smoking, I started that e-cigarette. I used RoyaleSmoke.com set. Bought it for RM 200, then I bought 2 sets of cartridges at RM 20 each to last me for 1 week plus. It lasted me for 9 days. e-Cigarette is a pretty good way to stop smoking, or at least to cut down on your smoking habit. Instead of tar and other dangerous gasses, you'll inhale nicotine and food additive. It feels awkward when you first started smoking e-Cigarette, but it will grow on you. Soon, it will replace your real cigarette, and you will start depending on it instead.

That's the thing. You'll still be dependent. Don't you see how pointless it is? Yeah, it's cheaper than smoking real cigarette. Yeah, it's safer. Yeah, there are no major side effects. But you'll still be dependent on another stuff. For me, it defeats the whole purpose of trying to quit smoking. I realized that a few days after I've started smoking that e-Cigarette. And then I told myself repeatedly: It's just nicotine. How bad can it hurt me?

So, how did I stop smoking? I think the e-Cigarette helped me. It helped by cutting down my addiction to the real thing. In that 9 days, the craving to hold a real cigarette was gone. Not completely, but significantly lower than before. I used the same method as Taubat (repenting) in Islam. Let me educate you a little bit on Taubat.

Taubat in Arabic means "coming back". There are 3 components in Taubat:

• Determined not to repeat and leave the committed sins
• Regret and hate of the committed sins
• Leave all other related sins

Similar to Taubat, you can apply to smoking as well:

• Determined not to repeat and leave the habit of smoking
• Regret and hate the habit of smoking
• Leave all other related actions leading to smoking

Trust me, it helped. And encouragements from your friends and family members are also needed. Some friends won't be supportive, I'm sure of that. But luckily in my case, all of them are very supportive.

So I quit cold turkey after substituting to e-cigarette for about 9 days. Well, not really cold turkey, but I tried softening the blow. And hey, it worked because it gave me the strength. I didn't know if I can live without cigarette before. But after I've tried that e-cigarette, life without cigarettes isn't that bad. Changed my perception of cigarettes. I know it's a lot of drama to just quit smoking, but it's a big deal to me and I needed to plan and foresee the impact to me and to my loved ones. My advice is, if you're really scared of quitting cold turkey, try e-cigarette first. It helps by giving you a preview of how life is without cigarettes. And if you're comfortable with it, jump ship with me!

That's the end of step 2. Next, I will share the side effects from my attempt to quit smoking