Skier, you are definitely on the right track by educating yourself on the nicotine addiction. Congratulations! and Hooray for you! Whyquit.com is an excellent source of information. I know when I first started the steps to prepare to quit it scared the heck out of me. But I found the one thing that has helped me and continues to help me. When I sat down and made the list of why I really wanted to quit, I had to really look at WHY. Not why my children wanted me to quit, or my boss, or society, but why I wanted to quit. And the truth was I wanted to run. Yep, I was always envious of those athletes and people who could run. See as a smoker, even in middle school, I didn't run. My addict brain would tell me ahhh who wants to do that, have a smoke instead. At 50 years old and 2.5 packs a day, running was definitely out of the question. In fact walking on some days was a challenge. Well I took a good long hard look at the truth and where I would end up if I continued on the path I was on. I read everything I could about smoking, about addiction and about running. I started looking at athletes I admired. The first thing I did was made the commitment to walk. I signed up for the Susan G. Komen 3 day. At first I could only do half a mile. I'm up to 15 miles now. That is the amazing thing. How quickly my body started recovering. I am also training to run my first race in September! I guess my point is that if you find YOUR reason to quit...It will work. Please Please believe the people on here who have done it. We all know what you are going through, and we have all been there. It is SO worth it.
