A new report released by British doctors in the journal “Sexually Transmitted Infections” has shown that if you wish to catch AIDS, then smoking may increase your chances. The doctors found that 83% of the studies they analysed indicated that smokers had an increased risk of becoming infected. This increase results from the way smoking modifies a number of immune system responses.

• Health Officials are warning that women using the Ortho Evra birth-control patch should not smoke because of the increased risk of heart disease and stroke that smoking causes. The Ortho Evra patch has also been questioned lately as to its factor in increasing the chances of blood clots and strokes.

• In an effort to reduce teen smoking, attorney generals from across the nation have offered Hollywood three free public service announcements for inclusion on DVDs released by movie studios. Unfortunately, about a year ago attorney generals also urged movie studio participation in the initiative with little response. Dartmouth Medical School released a study in 2005 that stated that 38% of youths tried smoking as a result of exposure to smoking in movies. The attorney generals say that 73% of all youth rated movies show smoking in some form.

• If you smoke while you are pregnant, you may be dooming your unborn child to ADHD.

• And articles about smoking don’t all have to be doom and gloom. Northern Girl has a humorous post up at her blog: Quitting smoking (or not) one flaw at a time.

Imagine that you are smoke free. You have crisp clean air rushing into your lungs. You feel energetic. You smell good. Your feel normal again. Alive! You know that you should (need) to quit smoking, don’t you? You know its not good for you. You know that if you don’t quit soon its going to ruin your health. But how do you go about it?

I got stressed and I smoked. I got bored and I smoked. I ate a meal and I smoked. I got in the car and I smoked. I drank and I smoked. I came to the realization that I was behaving like nothing more than a less shaggy version of Pavlov’s Dog. I was simply responding to stimulus with a learned reaction. That’s not how I wanted to live my life.

When I first attempted to quit smoking I decided I was just going to stop. Just like that. And let my sheer force of will carry me through. And as you have already guessed, I failed. And not necessarily due to the lack of willpower, but more importantly due to the lack of preparation and planning.

Here are some steps with which you can bolster your willpower and go into quitting much more prepared and with a little bit of knowledge on your side.

1. Motivation. Before you can make a substantial attempt at quitting smoking, you really need to want to do it. The source of this desire can come from any number of different places, but if that desire is something that you can own, something that is important to you, then you can make it work. For example, you may be frightened by the shocking health statistics related to smoking and their ramifications on your own physical health (see: Smoking Facts Every Smoker Should Know). Then again you may just have become sick and tired with the way smoking makes you smell. Whatever the reason, own it, focus on it, use it as the paddles to get your boat up this river.
2. X Marks the Spot. Pick a date. And no, don’t pick one a year from now. Pick a realistic date in the near future. Mark it on you calendar. Promise to yourself that this is the day that you will finally begin being free of smoking. This is the day that you will begin your new smoke free life. As you approach your date try and smoke as little as possible. Fight the cravings as much as you can. When you do smoke think about what each puff is doing to every part of your body. Recognize the awful taste of the smoke and realize that that smell is on your breath, your lips, your tongue, your clothes, and your hair. Smell your hands when you are done. Reinforce that this is not how you want to be.
3. Scorched Earth is the Best Policy. Scour your environment for anything smoking related and get rid of it. Don’t just pack it away. Throw it out. Get rid of it. Toss all your ashtrays. Throw away any and all remaining cigarettes. Get rid of lighters and matches. Clean rooms that smell like smoke. Clean your car and use air freshener. Remove all avenues of smoking from your environment that you can control, as well as any reminders of it. You don’t want anything lying around that might tempt you to have just one more.
4. Learn Your Lesson From History. If you have made an attempt at quitting smoking before, spend some time analyzing what worked, and what didn’t. This is a good time to determine what the weak links in your armor might be. Work on ways to strengthen those links or avoid them altogether.
5. Enough is ENOUGH. Remember that this isn’t just a game. This is the real thing. You are deadly serious about this. Just as the diseases and illnesses that are caused by smoking are deadly serious.
6. Its OK to Ask for a Lifeline. Let your family, friends and associates know that you are quitting smoking. Hell, I’ll give you an example right now. I, Scott English, am committing myself to quitting smoking; I’d appreciate your support in assisting me reach my goal of becoming smoke free. Enlist the assistance of your family, friends and those that care about you. Tell them that you are making this decision for yourself and enlist their support. A word of warning though: Don’t rely on others to reinforce your resolve. This is your quest. Others may provide cheering from the sidelines, but always remember that you are the one that is responsible for achieving this goal.
7. What’s Up Doc? Talk to your health provider (your doctor) and ask them for suggestions and recommendations about medications and other assistance that will help you with your goal of becoming smoke free.
8. Something Shiny, Something Blue, Something New. One of the most difficult things that I have found about quitting smoking is distracting myself from thinking about smoking. It is incredibly important that you distract yourself at the times that you were most regularly likely to smoke. Instead of driving to work the usual way where you can drive on autopilot and consider smoking, take an alternate route where you need to concentrate on turnoffs. After you eat, go and get busy with a hobby or exercise. Instead of smoking as a result of stress, do some breathing exercises or yoga. Read A Key Ingredient to Quitting Smoking and Alcohol: Engaging Your Mind for other suggestions about how to take your mind off the thought of quitting and focus on other more productive things.
9. Everyone Is Smoking. No, they aren’t. Though it may seem like it, only about 20% of the population of the United States is a current smoker. You may just have a heightened awareness of it. Stay away from situations where you are exposed to smokers. Avoid other smokers.

With this guide to quitting smoking you should now have some very useful tools at your disposal. Talk to your doctor for additional assistance. But whatever you do, if you want to quit, stop just going with the flow, stop smoking because it seems easy to do. Stand tall and make your decision. Draw a line in the sand and guard that line with all that you have.

You’ll never regret that you did.

This is an opportunity for you. Do you want your next one to be when your doctor informs you that you have lung cancer?

Many attempts to quit either smoking or alcohol are destined to travel along rocky roads in part because we don’t think to replace our previous smoking and drinking habits with other activities that will assist us in diverting our focus from what we are trying to stop doing.

Instead we remain relatively inactive during the times when we would have been otherwise engaged in the habits we are trying to quit. That is, we sit stewing in our own sweat, struggling as our minds revolve around thoughts of how much we miss/want/need what we are trying to give up.

This behavior contributes to our chances of finally cracking under the pressure of our minds worming around justifying why it would be ok to have just one more smoke or drink.

There is however a tool that assists us in combating our mind at its own game and that tool is simply a process of diverting its attention. The theory here being that if we can engage our minds in some other activity or pursuit, it will have much less time to focus on what we don’t want it to.

How do we engage our minds?

We already know the answer to that. Do you recall situations where you were so caught up in something that before you knew it, it was really late? The time just seemed to have flown by? It was probably something that you enjoyed a great deal, something that you are very passionate about, something that was pleasurable. Such things serve as great ways to engage our minds and get them almost completely distracted. Before you know it you’ll have gone several hours without even thinking about a smoke or a drink.

But such activities are not always accessible. That doesn’t mean that we need to despair the rest of time. There are a whole slew of things we can do that are available to each and every one of us. Think about your interests, your hobbies, sports, work and other activities. Remember those things that you like to do, and do them. Think of new things that you would like to try and do them.

Below is a, by no means exhaustive, list of examples to get your mind thinking about some activities and interests that you can pursue instead of sitting around biting your nails hoping that the cravings will go away.

• Involve yourself in a sport such as football, hockey, soccer, ten-pin bowling, racquetball, tennis, etc.
• Take up hobbies such as gardening, jewelry making, knitting, woodworking, collecting, etc.
• Work on your artistic talents such as drawing, painting, photography, music, etc.
• Play board games, card games, and computer games.
• Read books that you’ve really enjoyed in the past or new ones that really interest you.
• Exercise. Get on a treadmill. Go for a walk, jog or ride around your neighborhood or the local park. Go to the gym. Beat the life out of a punching bag.
• Watch your all time favorite movies, or go out and watch new ones that grab your attention.
• Go out with friends and family and do things together (but be sure to avoid those that will want to smoke or drink).
• Write the next great American novel.
• Work around your house fixing all those little problems that you’ve been putting off.
• Immerse yourself in work.

That’s just a sample to get you thinking about things that you could be doing. You know yourself better than anyone else, and you know what you enjoy or are likely to enjoy. So stop sitting there. Think of some things to do and go do them. Not only will it help keep your mind off smoking and drinking, by the very fact that you are doing something you enjoy, you’ll also become a more interesting person and you’ll start enjoying life again.

In my ongoing efforts to quit smoking, I compiled some facts and figures about various aspects of smoking. From the outset, I was struck by the sheer immensity of the figures that I came across. They should really give everyone, even those that don’t smoke, pause for thought about the enormity of the toll that smoking is taking on American society every day. So stop for a moment and browse through some of these interesting little facts…

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2004, 20.9% of the population of the US was a current smoker. Thats approximately 44.5 million people. 44,500,000! That’s about twice the total population of Australia.

Now let’s make an assumption, and I know you will find it ridiculously understated, but lets just go with it for example’s sake: Lets assume that each of those smokers lit up only two cigarettes per day. If we do that we come up with some pretty startling figures about smoking…

• 89 million cigarettes are smoked every day.
• If you laid those smokes end to end lengthwise the result would be a white line of cigarettes over 29 million feet long. That’s roughly 80,556 football fields laid end to end.
• If you put those cigarettes into packs of twenty, you’d have 4,450,000 packs of cigarettes.
• If you stacked those packs one on top of the other, you’d have a tower of tobacco nearly 370 thousand feet tall. That’s about the equivalent of twelve Mt. Everests, stacked one on top of the other.
• If you were to pay for all those packs of cigarettes, it would cost you about $13,350,000.
• Remember, those figures are based on each smoker only lighting up 2 cigarettes per day. Can you even begin to fathom the reality of the impact smoking actually has?

By gender, 23.4% of men and 18.5% of women smoked. That’s pretty damn close to 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women.

Smoking is the number one cause of avoidable sickness and death in the United States. Approximately 440,000 people die every year due to causes related to smoking.

• That’s approximately 10% of the smoking population. Each year.

This accounts for roughly 5.6 million years of lost potential life per annum. That means the average smoker dies prematurely, on average, by about 13 years.

• That’s 4,745 days that go up in smoke.

The annual health-related economic cost of smoking is about $157 billion. Breaking that down, we have approximately:

• $75 billion in medical costs
• $81.9 billion in lost productivity
• $366 million in neonatal care!

About 90% of lung cancer deaths in men, and 80% in women are attributable to smoking.

• If you’re guy, you are about 2300% likelier than a non-smoker to get lung cancer. If you’re a woman, its 1800%.
• In 2003, approximately 157,200 people died from lung cancer. About 18 every hour. An estimated 171,900 new cases were recorded. Nearly 20 per hour.
• In the same year about 3,800 deaths occurred due to laryngeal cancer. Approximately ten per day.
• As well as an estimated 12,500 (one per hour) deaths from bladder cancer (and 57,400 new cases - roughly six per hour).
• Approximately 12,100 (one per hour) deaths annually are related to esophageal cancer, with an estimated 12,300 (also one per hour) new cases every year.
• Oral and pharynx cancers kill roughly 7,800 people annually (about 21 per day), with about 30,200 (or three per hour) new cases identified.

To be honest with you, the statistics on deaths resulting from diseases and illnesses that are caused by smoking goes on and on like a very expensive grocery bill. I may continue with more about diseases in follow up post, but until then I thought that it was important to at least cover the biggest avoidable killer of men and women in the United States.

If you have any interesting facts or figures about smoking, please share with me in the comments. I would love to hear them.