Quitting Smoking Try Try Again

Quitting smoking is a difficult and frustrating endeavor

I have been trying for years to finally give up my smoking habit. I am fully aware of just how dangerous smoking is for me and I have no desire to die from a heart attack or gasping for breath in the final stages of lung cancer. Yet I continued to smoke and I continued to fail at quitting.

Recently I came across the electronic cigarette, which is getting a good deal of press as an effective way of quitting smoking device. The electronic or smokeless cigarette contains no tobacco and nothing is ignited or burned. This means no carcinogens are produced when using the electronic cigarette. The device allows the user to get a small amount of nicotine with every drag and even creates an inhale-able vapor to simulate the smoke from a tobacco cigarette. No other device on the market so closely mimics a real cigarette while providing the nicotine a smoker craves without any added cancer causing chemicals.

When I first got my electronic cigarette I tried using it as if it were a real tobacco cigarette. In other words, I tried to approximate how many tobacco cigarettes I was smoking daily and using my smokeless cigarette in a similar way. This just didn’t work for me. I found that I was overusing the electronic cigarette and I was taking in more nicotine than I needed. This had the effect of making me dizzy and actually made me crave a tobacco cigarette more than if I just went cold turkey. It also made me feel uncomfortable and dehydrated.

Rather than give up and go back to smoking tobacco, I decided to improvise a bit and try quitting smoking again!

Now I only use my electronic cigarette when I feel myself ready to get up and go searching for a tobacco cigarette, its really great for quitting smoking. When this happens, I take two or three drags on my smokeless cigarette and go back to what I was doing before the urge to smoke struck me. This method is much more effective for me and after several weeks of using my electronic cigarette in this manner, I am still tobacco free. It works well for me without any of the side effects I was having when I overused the smokeless cigarette.

The bottom line is not to give. Keep trying until you find something that works for you. In my case using the smokeless cigarette in a more limited manner was just what I needed to stop smoking tobacco. If you are a smoker, I strongly suggest trying the electronic cigarette to quit smoking. Just put aside any per-conceived notions and do what works best for you. For me, when I tried to use the electronic cigarette as a 1 to 1 replacement for 2 packs a day of tobacco cigarettes, I ended getting a lot more nicotine than I needed and some unpleasant side effects. So I adapted and improvised and tried again. I didn’t give up and I found success at quitting smoking.

About Jennifer DaSilva