For so many years I used to think that smoking was merely a bad habit. A habit that I was having a very hard time breaking. I thought that if I were to find different habits to replace my smoking habit then I would be able to quit smoking. Unfortunately it did not work because I was dealing with much more than a bad habit, I was dealing with a very powerful addiction.

We all have habits, good and bad, that we do each and every day. Drinking coffee in the morning can be a habit. If you are to miss your morning coffee you may find it more difficult to get going but you are able to overcome and the rest of your day is not contingent upon whether you had your morning coffee or not. The point is, habits dont control our lives. They are things that we have grown accustom to doing which may help or at times hurt us. Smoking can be viewed as a habit but it is not the habit of smoking that makes it difficult to quit smoking.

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. When quitting smoking it is important to realize that we are not trying to break a bad habit but in all actuality overcome a powerful addiction that is controlling our lives. We dont smoke because the voice in our head is telling us we need to be holding a stick in our hand or needing to hang something in our mouth. If that were the case we could find less harmful things to achieve this. The voice in our head is due to the nicotine withdrawals we go through. People who smoke suffer from these withdrawals several times throughout the day. That is why we smoke. That is why we plan our day around when we can have our next cigarette. There is a reason why there are 20 cigarettes in a pack. Typically that is the amount of cigarettes one must smoke to satisfy the daily nicotine withdrawal urges.

Tobacco companies werent ignorant when they introduced cigarettes to society, neither is the government. The fact is both are making money off the sale of cigarettes, a lot of money. If the government was so concerned with our well being then why dont they remove a product from the market that is proven to kill people who use it? This may be a bit extreme but it is true. Cigarettes are designed to get people addicted to them, they serve no benefit to anyone that uses them. The only people that benefit from cigarettes are the ones that make money off them. Even the pharmaceutical companies are cashing in on our nicotine addiction. Many of the over-the-counter quit smoking aids contain nicotine. By using these products you are still feeding that addiction in one form or another.

When quitting smoking it is important to understand that smoking is not simply a habit, it is an addiction that is being capitalized on by many. Dont trade one form of addiction for another. Start with your desire to quit smoking and educate yourself on the effects of nicotine addiction. You dont have to be a smoker your whole life. You can quit smoking and regain control of your life.