It sounds dumb but the way to quit is to not smoke!! All the suggestions you’ll get are good ones worth a try. Test them all and see which ones work for you while you teach yourself the hard way not to smoke each cigarette… in the morning you have to learn not to smoke the morning cigarette. After meals you have to learn not to smoke the finished-eating cigarette. For me the hardest ones were the need-a-break-from-frustating-task cigarette, victory cigarette, and the hardest one of all was the waiting-for-someone-or-something smoke.

In bars I get up and “do laps”… talk walks around every so often.

I kept a ‘bag of tricks’ with me at all times so if i needed something to do I could go fishing in the bag which was always well stocked with gum and mints and candies and keychain sized electronic games and pen and paper, and microwave popcorn and silly putty and bubbles and a tiny little rubik’s cube.. etc etc etc

But for me the thing that not worked was throwing my whole self into the quit which I turned into my personal obsession. Every day I was in search of new toys and games and crutches while I taught myself not to smoke that next cigarette too.

In the beginning I really focused on making it to 100 days because that really does seem to be the marker for when you start believing you really might be able to keep the quit forever.

Good Luck!!!

For me, the thing that solidified my need to quit was hiking. I wasn’t able to make it a quarter of the way with the rest of the people without having to stop and nearly have an asthma attack. Finding something that fully demonstrates the health benefits of not smoking is a great motivator.