What a fitting heading for my big plunge into actually recording that I am giving up smoking.  Well in fact I have been giving up now for 8 weeks and 2 days and about 20 hours and have been doing a really bad job of it.

I want to stop.  I read Allen Carr’s “Easy Way to Stop Smoking”, then I took Zyban, then Champix (like I am taking now) and I have done all these things several times.  The most important thing is that it is stopping, not giving up.  I am not giving up anything.  I suppose that is why I have not used patches because then I would not be giving up anything, I would just be replacing the induction method.  However, Allen Carr has said the thing that I can’t get out of my head….

“Smoking is like beating your head up against a wall so that when you stop it feels good”

I wrote in my journal on 14/6/2013 (which interestingly enough has an entry that says I’ve just smoked the last one!!) the reasons why I was STOPPING:

• I hate smelling like cigarettes
• I can’t get fit
• I cough as the last thing every night when I get into bed
• It is costing a fortune
• It will make me an invalid
• It socially isolates me
• It will make me happier
• It will make my wife and my kids happy
• I wont feel sick from smoking
• I will stop doing something which doesn’t add to my life

This is a good list that I should read each day.  I really want to STOP SMOKING.

It comes down to something else I wrote in my journal and it applies to a lot of the things that I write:  “Stop doing things that do not add to your life.”

I will not give up giving up…