QUITTING SMOKING

Dear Jellybean,

I have a really bad habit that wrecked one of my relationships with a guy! I once started smoking with my sis, then I stopped. And now I started with my friend and that got her (my friend) grounded for 5 months, so it's ruining my life!!! I really need help!!! I really want to get back 2gether with my ex-boyfriend. He dumped 4 that reason and now i feel horrible! Please help me.

Dear Reader,

Quitting smoking can be hard, but it is the best thing you will ever do in your entire life. I speak from experience - I quit smoking a few years ago (so you see, even a brilliant babe like me was stupid enough to take up smoking) and I am healthier and happier today than ever before in my life. I’m so glad you want to do this for yourself. There are several different ways to quit smoking, and what works for you is totally personal.

You can quit cold turkey, which means you pick a day you’re going to stop (say, January 15th) and then you smoke until that day, but on that day and forever more you stop just from sheer will power. Some people like that method because they can wake up that day and say "This is my first day of being a non-smoker."

Other people can’t do it cold turkey and they cut down gradually instead. Like if you smoke 10 cigarettes a day, you make a map of the next ten days that shows tomorrow’s number is 9, the next day’s number is 8, etc. So you smoke one less cigarette every day (you count them out in the morning and when they’re gone, you don’t get any more that day) and when the 10 days are up you are finished smoking forever.

Some people using Nicotine gum to quit. It’s a chewing gum that has Nicotine in it, and you usually need a prescription for it - you get it at the pharmacy. Other people have excellent success with the Patch. It’s a bandage that contains nicotine and you wear it on your skin instead of smoking, to help with the withdrawal from addictive nicotine in cigarettes. After a while, you stop needing to wear it. Again, this is something you get by prescription from a doctor. And another prescription cure for smoking that works very well is the medicine Zyban. You take one pill every day for about 2 months. For some people it just makes them forget all about wanting to smoke! Then you stop taking it, and you are pill and smoke free.

Talk to your doctor about your options for quitting, and which one is right for you.. If you don’t want to talk to your family doctor because he/she doesn’t know you smoke, go to a free community health clinic or a University student health clinic in your town. There is also lots of good anti-smoking and quit-smoking information available on the web. Just type "how to quit smoking" into any search engine.