The struggle is always against the first cigarette.

Prepare yourself for the struggle

1. Before you quit smoking: prepare at home a sufficient stock of vegetables, fresh fruit, dried fruit (especially prunes), mineral water, carbonated water and diet drinks, sugarless gum, low calorie candies, or anything else (not necessarily food or drink) to keep your mouth and your hands busy.
2. Your decision to quit smoking should be determined without any hesitation or doubt. Announce in the ears of whoever is willing to listen, that you quit smoking!
3. Share your cessation operation with your counterpart or close friend. Talk to them. Ask for their help.
4. If you're suffering from physical addiction to nicotine - use substitute nicotine. Go to your neighborhood pharmacy, and purchase the right pharmaceutical product for you. Ask the pharmacist which dosage you need (The method is based on supplying the body with substitute nicotine. During treatment the dosage is lowered, and once the body has gotten used to very small amounts of nicotine, its supply is stopped).
5. Think about alternatives, about substitute activities for smoking. What would you do the minute certain stimulus appears and you would "die" for a smoke?

On the first days of your cessation the following rules will help:

1. Try to keep your mind off the cigarette. Make yourself busy all the time. Don't sit and pity yourself - do something!
2. Every decisive "NO" makes the next "no" easier, and the desire to smoke lesser. Say to yourself: "I don't need a cigarette", "I don't want to smoke".
3. Look at smokers around you and feel sorry for them. Say to yourself: "They must smoke because they can't quit - I can!" (note: don't say "I can't smoke", but: "They can't break free from their slavery").
4. In a minute of desire for a cigarette, when you're "dying" for a smoke, say to yourself: "This desire will be over in a few seconds". "I quit smoking. I don't need a cigarette, and besides it will taste horrible. Soon I will be free of the desire to smoke".
5. Remember, every day of avoiding smoking makes the next day easier.
6. Treat yourself. You may allow yourself exceptional behavior on the first days of cessation: you don't have to work as usual. You may take a walk on the street, go to the movies to an afternoon show, buy yourself nuts, chocolate or anything else you like. At the end of the week - buy yourself a present.
7. Look around you. Look at the smokers: are they happy? Do they seem to enjoy smoking? Look at their faces, at the way they inhale the smoke. Does that seem "nice" to you? Now look at the non-smokers and their environment: fresh air, cleanliness, freedom. Say to yourself: "I passed from the smokers wing (that are minority) to the non-smokers wing (that are the majority). I got free!"
8. Remember the important rule: "Not one cigarette"! (and not one "sip", and not lighting a cigarette for anyone else).

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