Quit Smoking Forever Guide

When you extinguish your final cigarette you may feel some small elation or you may feel nothing at all.

Over the next few hours and days, it is normal to feel a kind of “void” or emptiness. This is perfectly normal to notice this change. After all, you used to smoke cigarettes and they became a part of your life. No longer will they be a part of your life.

Don’t mistake feeling a little weird for wanting a cigarette. They are two totally different things. You won’t crave a cigarette at all. You’ll feel a little strange due to the change and even more so that you do not desire a cigarette anymore.

These feelings are normal with huge changes to your life.

Have you ever moved house and noticed that the first night in a new place is very strange. There’s something that you can’t quite explain but it just doesn’t feel “normal”, it doesn’t feel like what you have been used to. But have you noticed that it only takes a few days to get used to the changes? Within this short space of time, you notice how well you are adapting to your new surroundings, to the new curtains or knowing how to jiggle the key quickly to get the new front door to open. It’s the little things that you notice.

Smoking is no different. It’s just a case of getting used to your new life as a non-smoker.

Another example is when you lose a loved one. Despite immediate peculiar feelings, life does eventually get back to normal. Eventually, the date of death becomes defining in your life. You move on and your daily routine returns to normal. Things will never be the same but the date of their death becomes more significant. You no longer grieve or are in a grave emotional state but you are changed for it.

Stopping smoking is very similar to losing a loved one but is also different. The mental after effects of stopping smoking are obviously nowhere near as severe as losing someone - at most you will simply feel a mild but strange sensation of a change in the world around you. This will pass in a few days and less than a week. After these few days, you will actually be getting used to being a non-smoker.

You will notice the small details which will become very clear to you - such as seeing the poor smoking addicts outside buildings getting their fix, wondering why you ever started smoking, being so glad that you don’t need to spend money every day on useless cigarettes, noticing that you don’t have to clean up ashtrays all the time and noticing how you have more free time to do other things instead of smoking.

Don’t be worried when you experience a “void”. It is not a true void - you have lost nothing. You are simply getting your new bearings.