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Smoking in Your Life

All smokers have different smoking experiences, just like all people have different life experiences. Your love of smoking may have developed at a young age. Your affection may have been immediate, or it may have taken years to cultivate a "loving" relationship with smoking.

Before making the decision to quit smoking, take a personal inventory and explore how smoking has become part of your life. This will reveal some useful information about your addiction. For example, you may learn that stress or boredom makes you reach for a cigarette. Or you may discover that you need a cigarette as soon as you wake up. Identifying the situations that make you want to smoke (your "triggers") will help you build a better plan of attack to change your behavior and quit smoking.

It's possible that you may decide that smoking is so integrated into your daily life that quitting may not be appropriate for you at this time. Or maybe you'll identify patterns that may be easier to break than you thought.

Questions To Ask Yourself

At what age did you first start smoking?
How many years have you been smoking?
How many cigarettes/packs do you smoke a day?
Has your cigarette use been consistent, or has it increased over time? If it has increased, can you identify when and why?
At what times of the day are you most likely to smoke?
Do you always smoke when you drink coffee or have a soda?
Do you use other tobacco products in addition to cigarettes?
When do you smoke? Do any of the following apply?

... When with friends
... When hungry
... When angry or upset
... When feeling stressed
... When feeling sad
... When tired
... When bored
... When drinking