Peter Kirwan

The general governing idea behind the nicotine patch is that you'll overcome the oral fixation of needing a cigarette in your mouth. Then you can take the next step of slowly but surely weaning yourself off the nicotine patches as well. Still, nicotine is a toxin. It's dangerous and addictive and will have an adverse effect on your heart and your brain!

You're bound to have heard this plenty of times - "you only need a bit of willpower!". Ths particular grammatical gem has probably been thrown constantly at the poor old smoker who wants to quit for generations and while it has worked and most definitely continues to work for a number of people, it basically just doesn't work for everybody.

Nicotine is just one of the poisonous direct by-products produced when smoking and is absorbed into your bloodstream each and every time you take a puff. Here starts a genuine vicious circle - the nicotine exits your body very quickly, so you begin to crave for that next cigarette.

Us humans have an amazing and unique ability, one amongst several actually - and that ability is; being able to conjure up [mostly rubbish, but some quite brilliant] excuses for NOT actually doing something. We have and continue to create heaps of excuses for not trying hard enough to completely and effectively kick the habit!

It's an unfortunate but very much proven fact, that for those that like to do it and for those that don't, smoking is a total health and life destroyer. Surely it's got to be practically impossible that anybody anywhere on our entire planet doesn't know that smoking is bad for them!

You need to consistently be reminding yourself of your main goal, including when and how you're going to finally get to it. Be realistic, don't prevaricate or procrastinate, don't be distracted, don't manufacture stupid excuses for not doing something and you will on the whole, without doubt come out a winner!

To put it as simply as possible, smoking costs an absolute fortune. If you were to quit you'd be a whole lot healthier, every person around you would remain a whole lot healthier and the bonus money you'd boast would finance other things you'd love to do or buy but can't because you have to always ensure you have the ready money for your 'coffin nails'!

As i'm sure everyone already knows, nicotine is very addictive - it's every bit as addictive in fact, as all the terrible hard drugs that you've heard about, like heroine or cocaine etc which makes it quite difficult to kick the habit. But the real fact is, the addiction and the consequential withdrawal from nicotine is absolutely nothing like that of the aforementioned hard drugs!