Hello! My name is Maud and I wrote my personal experience on this site just under a year ago, when I quit smoking. It will be a year in a few more days and I'm proud, extremely proud. I'm writing again today to show you that yes, it is possible. A year ago I smoked a packet of cigarettes a day. I no longer touch cigarettes and it's not torture, it's a joy. Believe in it, try it, and try it again. And say stuff it to the people who don't believe in you. Find your own motivations, write them down, at home, at work, in the car (thank goodness for Post-Its!). I've had a pretty bad year, to be honest I've cried, I've lost sleep, I've ballooned in weight (gained 22 pounds!), I had pimples all summerbut I came through it all. I gave myself a year to evacuate cigarettes. Here's the proof of it. *I cried for hours on end for no apparent reason. My best friends tried to help and ended up laughing at me, while I was still crying! But it passed. Now I've got my spark back! *I lost sleep. Yes, and that still happens from time to time. I look at the positives hot milk before bed, relaxing infusions, soft music, baths with candles and essential oils. My little girl loves it. So do I. Trying to cure your insomnia is not so bad after all! *My weight has ballooned. Ah yes, I must admit that that is really unpleasant. But I had accepted it might happen and I think that it has really contributed to my success in quitting. A year of being chubby for a healthier life. I'll take it. If I start attacking the green beans instead of the biscuit tin, the scales will soon start smiling again. And with them, my clothes. And as for me, I'm not even thinking about it! *I broke out in pimples in the summer. That, girls (and boys) is the time to go to a beautician for a bit of facial pampering. Take some time for yourself, look after yourselfwhat could be better? I'm now starting my new, healthy life as an ex-smoker. My two best friends have just quit, too. They are sick of having to go outside to smoke when we're all inside! If they are reading this, I'd like them to know that I believe in them. Finally, if I've got enough willpower to quit smoking, I've got enough willpower to achieve many, many things, haven't I? Woohoo!"

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I was a hardened smoker, and when I decided to stop I was smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. The ones I smoked were those brown tobacco cigarettes that stink and have no filter - those handed out to the army in the 60s! I was 37 years old and had been smoking for twenty years. Because I knew that my behavior caused me to argue with my friends and family, that I was setting a bad example to my children and that I was damaging my health (and no one even mentioned passive smoking then!) and above all that I was being very stupid, I decided to finish with cigarettes. I had to take the plunge. I decided that, in fact, I only enjoyed about four or five cigarettes of the forty or so I smoked per day, and that if I managed to resist these the battle would be won. Furthermore, I decided that I would no longer lower myself to such a pointless act. Armed with these arguments, and knowing that it had to be all or nothing, I stopped smoking overnight. Once you've decided to quit, the following are the keys to success: *Learn to resist the four or five cigarettes that seem essential (first thing in the morning, after a meal, and so on). You must learn to put up with the craving for about one or two minutes per cigarette, and make sure that you distract yourself during this time. After 4-5 weeks, the intensity of the craving dies down and it disappears completely after 2-3 months. *Have a steel resolve, and simply refuse to raise a cigarette to your lips. *Do some physical exercise. *Stop thinking that we are all victims of modern life and that cigarettes can help us to fight our depression. After the experience I had, I believe that only willpower and good sense can put an end to the habit of smoking. I'll let you imagine what I think of patches and other hypnosis methods - anyone who claims to have found a solution for hardened smokers is on to a very lucrative commercial product. Still, if one of these products helps you to quit, why not! I can't rave enough about the sweet things in life that tobacco robs us of while we are its victims, and that we rediscover as soon as we free ourselves from its grip.

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A few words that I hope will help you. I'm 45, I've been smoking for 27 years, and in April 2004 I was smoking 50-60 cigarettes a day. I already tried to quit 5 times without success, and now I'm on my 6th attempt. What motivates me is a constant cough which even stops me from sleeping, having to stop 1 or 2 times in order to climb a flight of stairs, and a lung specialist who keeps saying, carry on like this, and you aren't going to be around for long. I have a little 2 year old boy, after we tried for 8 years and eventually underwent fertility treatment. During my wife's pregnancy I tried to quitbut failed miserably! Now I'm on my fifth day without cigarettes, and I'm struggling like you wouldn't believe. The first 2 days were fine but yesterday and today have been so, so hard, even with Zyban to help. How hard would it be without it? What helps me more than anything else is realizing that I was selfish for 27 years, that I've had a little boy I adore for 2 years and that the way I repay all the joy he brings me is by poisoning him with each puff of smoke I breathe out. What kind of a father am I? Yesterday morning, as I was about to crack, I came to this site and read the personal experience of a mother speaking on behalf of her premature baby who was in a critical condition. As I read on, I had a flashback to 2 years ago and realized that the little treasure we waited so long for arrived early with a weight of just over 5 pounds. I can't stop thinking that the reason for that might be his father who poisoned mother and baby, puff by puff. My fifth day is hard, I don't deny it, but I haven't smoked a cigarette. In a year I spend over 3,500 euros on cigarettes, not counting doctor's bills, throat lozenges, cough syrups and goodness knows what else, and my wife puts up with my smoking out of love for me. What kind of a person am I? I'm on my fifth day, I'm scared of cracking but I'm thinking about everything I've written and I'm determined to do this for my wife and son. I'm with all you who are ex-smokers or want to be ex-smokers, and my dream is to be able to prove that I'm a part of this family of ex-smokers. I believe that dreams can come true, and that the prizes we cherish the most are those which were the hardest to win. The best prize I could ever win would be to become an ex-smoker. Best wishes to all of you.

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I lit my first cigarette at a holiday camp when I was 11 or 12. But I consider that I didn't really become part of the smoking clan until I was 15, when I was smoking a good 20 cigs per day. That was fine and we were all much less aware of the harm that smoking could do. My father died age 59 of cardiovascular problems due in large part to cigarettes. My mother stopped smoking then but it didn't stop cancer of the vocal cords catching her and then, 15 years later, cancer of the larynx. As for me, I carried on smoking a packet a day minimum. Quitting was out of the question and I never even tried once in nearly 30 years (except during my pregnancies, when I was lucky enough to be repelled by the smell of cigarette smoke). However, two summers ago, we went to Scotland on a family holiday, and stayed in the middle of nowhere with only sheep for company. It was here, among all that nature, that my husband and I decided to smoke our last cigarette. The fact that we were away from our normal lives for three weeks was really essential. In the first few days I would pace up and down like a bear in a cage, especially in the evenings at the time when, a few days earlier, I smoked the best cigarettes. But I held out. I went walking down the empty roads or cried in the fields and I came back feeling calm. The hardest thing was coming home to our old routine and the little habits we'd forgotten. I discovered a little trick that helped me a lot instead of settling down on the sofa at the end of the day, I'd take myself off to bed with a good book. I'd never smoked in my bedroom so the call of cigarettes wasn't as strong there. Now there's nothing much other than driving and the odd bit of road rage that make me think of cigarettes. I used to smoke a crazy number of cigarettes in my car. Two things stop me from going back to cigarettes: the memory of my dependency and the feeling of panic I used to get when I saw that my packet was nearly empty. I used to have to get in the car and drive as long as it took to find somewhere to buy cigarettes. Sunday was an awful day for that. Whenever I see people queuing on Sundays and bank holidays at the only kiosk that's open in the area, I tell myself I had a lucky escape. Another thing that plays in my favor is the awful smell that surrounds smokers and the image that they project. I used to be someone who drove around with a cigarette in her mouth, one of those people who lights up in the street, and the smell of stale tobacco clung to me despite my best efforts. Now I think people who walk around with a fag in their mouth look awful and it's really unpleasant when wafts of tobacco smoke reach my nostrils when a smoker says hello, even if they've already stubbed out their cigarette. All is not rosy in their world. I think I'm more or less cured, but I've put on a lot of weight while compensating, especially at the wheel (packets of sweets, little detours to the bakery). I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel where that's concerned but it will have taken two years (6 August) to stabilise and start getting back to normal. My kids help me to stay off cigarettes I think they would resent me and be very disappointed if they caught me smoking again. Getting some outside help might have stopped me gaining 22 pounds but however you go about it, quitting is really worth it.

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Here I am, face to face with reality, face to face with my stupidity. Here I am, and I don't understand. The worst thing that cigarettes contain is Addiction, as that takes away your free will, your determination and even a part of your personality, which is burned away without you realising it in those puffs of pleasure! The cigarette is the partner of all the difficult moments that will always be there. The need for a cigarette is deeply embedded in our lungs when life gets us down, when stress overwhelms us, when boredom overcomes us, when our senses are heightened, when fear strikes us, when our cravings become intolerable, when the force of habit is too strong This loyal friend could be there until our dying moments, until our last gasp on our death bed. This family member, this companion, fills our brain with so much smoke that we can no longer do anything without it we are afraid of living without it instead of with it. Here I am, face to face with myself, face to face with the distressing reality, but I am full of hope and I say NO to this poisonous partnership.

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I waited for the desire to quit smoking to come to me. I had tried to stop ten years ago but without any real conviction. Then one morning about a year and a half ago, I was outside smoking the last cigarette in my packet and it was so cold it was snowing. I realized that part of my actions were dictated by tobacco, and that made me want to stand up to it. I decided to free myself and I quit. I'd been smoking for 20 years, and the desire to quit only came to me once in all that time. I didn't want to miss the boat. Tobacco left my life just like that, and I didn't miss it, because I defied it. I also defied all the people who told me I'd only last a month, and then 2 months, then 6 months, then a year My defiance allowed me to never let down my guard.

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