Breathe deeply: When you were smoking, you breathed deeply as you inhaled the smoke.Clean out a closet, vacuum the floors, go for a walk, or work in the yard. Exercise or do something that keeps your hands busy, such as needlework or woodworking, which can help distract you from the urge to use tobacco. Get active: Do something to reduce your stress.Some people chew on a coffee stirrer or a straw. Choose other things for your mouth: Use substitutes you can put in your mouth like sugarless gum or hard candy, raw vegetables such as carrot sticks, or sunflower seeds.Take a brisk walk instead of a tobacco break. Choose foods that don’t make you want to smoke or chew. Switch to juices or water instead of alcohol or coffee. Later on you’ll be able to handle these with more confidence. Stay away from people and places that tempt you to smoke or chew. Use these ideas to help you stay committed to quitting

Be ready with a distraction, a plan of action, and other ways to re-direct your thoughts. After you write down the thought, let it go and move on. Look out for them, because they always show up when you’re trying to quit. As you go through the first few days without tobacco, write down rationalizations as they come up and recognize them for what they are – messages that can trick you into going back to smoking/chewing. “Air pollution is probably just as bad.”.“How bad is smoking/chewing, really? Uncle Harry smoked/chewed all his life and he lived to be over 90.”.“I'll just do it once to get through this rough spot.”.If you’ve tried to quit before, you might recognize many of these common rationalizations: If you choose to believe in such a thought even for a short time, it can serve as a way to justify using tobacco. A rationalization is a mistaken thought that seems to make sense at the time, but isn’t based on reality. One way to overcome urges or cravings is to notice and identify rationalizations as they come up. This is why, even if you’re using nicotine replacement therapy, you may still have strong urges to smoke or chew. It will take time to “un-link” tobacco from these activities. If you’ve been using tobacco for any length of time, it has become linked with a lot of the things you do – waking up in the morning, eating, reading, watching TV, and drinking coffee, for example. Most people who use tobacco find that the mental part of quitting is the bigger challenge. Nicotine replacement and other medicines can help reduce many of these symptoms. Still, if you’re not ready to resist them, they can tempt you to go back to smoking or chewing. The physical symptoms are annoying but not life-threatening. Withdrawal from nicotine has 2 parts – the physical and the mental. This is because the body has to get used to not having nicotine. When a person quits tobacco, they also quit nicotine and will likely have withdrawal from it. When a person uses tobacco, many parts of the body get used to having nicotine in them. Nicotine is the main addictive substance in tobacco.

Free Quit All