Before Preparing to Quit

  1. Smoking Cessation Worksheets
  2. Inventory Story Addiction Management
  3. Before Preparing to Quit                           Free Sample Guided Meditation
  4. Preparing to Quit                                     
  5. Long Term Quitting 
  6. Behavior and Change

You control when and where you smoke before addiction sets in. You have no problem with smoking restrictions or being considerate of other people.

Then something happens. You start to smoke more or more often. You may like the response your body makes to a toxic smoke.

Can your body’s response be obtained in some other less harmful way? Can you just stop smoking? Can you change habits?

If not, you have become addicted. Your “habit” is now also an addiction. That addiction is the number one cause of preventable illness and early death.

This is a serious public health matter. Yet, each cigarette only shortens your life by 11 minutes. The smoke, and your smoking, affects everyone around you.

Breaking free from nicotine addiction requires some planning. Your nicotine requirement needs to be judged. This is different for each person.

Make a short bar across the left 24 hour circle for each time that you feel the need for more nicotine (a smoke).

Make a short bar across the right 24 hour circle for each time that you do smoke a cigarette.

If the markings on these two circles are the same, you are responding to your addiction. If they are different, they are telling us that you still have some control.

Use that sense of control to manage your nicotine dosage. You can reduce the number of times you smoke and/or reduce the amount you smoke each cigarette.

This method allows many people to end their use of tobacco. Others need more planning.

Characterize (THINK, ACT, FEEL) the times you need to smoke on the BEFORE PREPARING TO QUIT worksheet. Do the same for the times you smoked.

We now know enough to plan for breaking out of your nicotine addiction. We know your dosage and something about the circumstances in which you smoke.

Pick out any situations you can target for dosage reduction. Pick out trigger situations that can be avoided or changed. Enter on the PREPARING TO QUIT work sheet.