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Smoking is one of the hardest addictions to kick. People have an easier time getting off class-A substances but nicotine cravings plague them all their lives. Here are a few ways you can control your cravings for cigarettes when you are trying to quit smoking:

Meal-time Cravings

Many smokers have conditioned the end of a meal to lighting up a cigarette. It gets extremely uncomfortable when you are taking yourself out of that comfortable, familiar pattern. You can curb this craving by replacing the cigarette with something else such as a piece of fruit, a dessert, a chocolate square or some chewing gum.

A Drink and Smoke Go Hand In Hand

Most people cannot consume alcohol without smoking a cigarette with it. If you are trying to quit smoking, why don’t you try quitting all addictive substances altogether and replace alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic beverages? You can enjoy virgin cocktails, which taste and feel like the real thing but would not leave you intoxicated.

If quitting smoking and drinking altogether seems overwhelming, try drinking only in those places where smoking is not allowed. Or if you can’t help where you are drinking then replace the cigarette with nuts and chips. You can also simply chew on a straw and cocktail stick to get rid of those pesky cravings.

Cravings from Social Smoking

When you are around smoke, and people who smoke it is almost impossible to avoid relapse in the early stages of abstinence. You can request your friends for consideration before you meet them so that they refrain from smoking around you.

Try hanging out with non-smokers for a change till you are at a point where you feel like you can be around smokers without being tempted to relapse.

Maintain a Craving Journal

Make an inventory of your cravings, thought processes and daily progress for the first few weeks of quitting smoking. You can figure out patterns, moments and times when you find yourself craving cigarettes the most. This will help you identify your triggers and avoid them duly.

Writing about your feelings also helps you manage them, and give you perspective on your progress.

The dangers of smoking are undeniable. Anybody who has taken a science or health class in school is aware of the negative impact secondhand smoking has on a person’s health. There are millions of people in the world that smoke cigarettes without considering the side-effects of the smoke they constantly let out on the people who live around them, such as their friends and family. The biggest damage that comes from second-hand smoke is caused by tobacco.

Traditional cigarettes are full of tobacco which is the dangerous element in those cigarettes. Tobacco smoke contains several harmful chemicals that are harmful for the human body. These chemicals include cadmium, formaldehyde, ammonia, methanol, polonium, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, benzene and arsenic. All of these chemicals have known fatalistic properties. Apart from these chemicals there are also forty other proven carcinogenic chemicals that are present in these cigarettes that cause cancer which results in millions of deaths each year, even for people who do not directly smoke.

Tobacco cigarettes are harmful for you and people around you. If you smoke traditional cigarettes regularly then you should look for different ways to deal with your smoking addiction to avoid causing damage to the health of people around you. A good alternative is to consider electronic cigarettes which are smokeless.

Millions of chain-smokers have switched to electronic cigarettes which allow smokers to get their nicotine fix without resorting to burning tobacco and inhaling tar. This has helped reduce casualties of secondhand smoking and is a better way to safeguard your health and the health of people who are around you every day.

There is no fire or burning involved in e-cigarettes as they are battery operated. Hence there is no smoke, smell or ash. Since the smoke that comes from the e cigarettes is basically vapor, it is odorless and presents no dangerous secondhand smoke. This way you can smoke these cigarettes anywhere you want without receiving complaints about health risks and without irritating other people.

Addiction is a recognized mental illness, whether it is to nicotine or cocaine. Any foreign substance that has the power to alter your brain chemistry fulfills the prerequisites of creating addiction in a person’s mind and body.

Many people disregard nicotine as a substance that can be abused, because of its social acceptability and ready availability. This is why many people would take up smoking without hesitation but still refrain from doing “hard drugs” as a means of justification.

Cigarette smoke contains three substances that damage the human body completely. These substances are nicotine, which gives the cigarette its addictive hook, along with tobacco and tar, which is a byproduct of combustion when you light up a cigarette.

Nicotine is a substance secreted by the tobacco plant to ward off insects from destroying the crop. It is also used as a popular pesticide. However, the negative effects of nicotine have plagued nature as well as human beings. Nicotine pesticides have been blamed for killing honey bees and has been labeled as a super-toxin, which is three times deadlier than arsenic and twice more poisonous as rattlesnake venom.

The reason why the human body can take in large quantities of nicotine is because nicotine has chemical compounds similar to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Once fitted inside the brain, this neurotransmitter hosts a series of chemical locks that enable it to take control and steer the flow of over two hundred neuro-chemicals around the brain, dopamine being one of those core chemicals.

It is no secret that tobacco is one of the most harmful plants on the planet. Tobacco is actually toxic, and is used as a natural pesticide for farmers when they want to get rid of certain types of pests that plague their crops before harvest. Facts state that around six million people die every year from diseases caused by tobacco consumption alone. Pair that with a combination of nicotine and tar and you have a ready-made cancer stick that millions of people proudly puff around the world.

This should be reason enough to quit smoking. Apart from that, there is always second-hand smoke, which makes you a social pariah in gatherings with non-smokers, which makes quitting smoking seem like an overall attractive prospect.

It is tragic to note that even the most developed countries like the US, the UK, Australia and Canada; smoking has become one of the primary causes of death over the past twenty years. Studies have shown that deaths from smoking related illnesses are slowly surpassing those caused by the AIDS epidemic since the early 90s.

The study also predicts that in the coming two decades over eight million people will be dying because of smoking in developed countries. The statistic for deaths related to smoking is even higher for developing nations.

Currently, there are over a billion people around the world that are chain-smokers, which means that they are susceptible to deaths related to tobacco consumption. Tobacco alone has been reported to kill almost four million people every year.

Tobacco related illnesses are mainly attributed to developed countries, as many labels them as “rich country diseases” but the epidemic is spreading worldwide. The Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, UK predicts that in another decade, three quarters of all the deaths in the world will be related to smoking and the majority of them will be from developing countries. By then the amount of tobacco related deaths would claim over ten million lives every year in developed countries.

The figures are absolute, and for many who are regular smokers, quitting does not seem like a very practical option as addiction to nicotine is an extremely real and difficult disease to overcome. If nicotine cannot be avoided at least the intake of the most harmful ingredients such as tar can be limited.

Sorry – what follows is a rant – but is something so fundamental to how your faithful blogger thinks I really had to put this to paper (the virtual sort).

Was in a conversation with a friend recently who was urging me to quit the ecig industry – saying we feed off peoples’ addiction. I quite firmly insisted that helping sell ecigs is actually helping people take the first step towards a healthier lifestyle because electronic cigarette cartridges do not contain tar and other carcinogens that are really bad for you.

So he lectured me on the fact that any form of addiction is bad for you. I told him I did not deny that but the reality is that it is actually quite hard to quit nicotine and in practice it is easier to substitute cigarettes for ecigs. But he brushed it off as an excuse to sell products that he classified were in a ‘gray area’. So I asked him if it is ok to sell nicotine patches and nicorette gum. He quickly said ‘yes’.

I asked him how ecigs were different from these products – chemically I mean. He agreed that there was a little difference but countered that ecigs felt like the real thing while gum and patches felt more like traditional medicine and did not indulge the smoker in their ‘fix’ fantasy. So ecigs were somewhat like fat-free cheesecake to a dieter. It does not kick the addiction but merely introduces a healthier alternative. We both agreed to this.

Then I made the lofty (but true) statement that if I helped 10,000 people to permanently convert to ecigs from tobacco cigarettes over the course of a year I would likely positively impact families and help save at least 3,000 lives. So this is really a rewarding and fruitful profession. We may not be doctors but reduce the chances that someone has to see their doctor in the first place. He vehemently shook me up and said that I should not pretend that I am helping society but was in this merely for the profit motive. If I really wanted to help society and others I would instead take up the medical profession and not choose a profession in a grey area such as selling ecigs.

I left it at that. I guess different people do think differently. I can’t bring everyone else to see my point of view. If he were a smoker or a vaper he would probably have understood me better?

It is no secret that tobacco is one of the most harmful plants on the planet. Tobacco is actually toxic, and is used as a natural pesticide for farmers when they want to get rid of certain types of pests that plague their crops before harvest. Facts state that around six million people die every year from diseases caused by tobacco consumption alone. Pair that with a combination of nicotine and tar and you have a ready-made cancer stick that millions of people proudly puff at around the world.

Smoking alone is an act which is attributed to the deaths of over seven million people by the time the year 2015 rolls around, and the number would only increase to an estimated nine million human beings in the year 2030, especially in developed countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia.

The World Health Organization reports that a smoker dies at every six seconds in the world, whether he/she is an active smoker or a former smoker. The World Health Organization also states that there are over two billion chain smokers around the world.

Statistics show that over four million, forty three thousand Americans die purely due to tobacco consumption through smoking per year, which makes over eighteen percent of all deaths in the country. Smokers are a hazard to everybody around them as well, as over fifty thousand people in America die because of exposure to secondhand smoke from people they are living with that do smoke even if they don’t.

Over 2 million people die due to tobacco related illnesses in Australia every year, with the main source of tobacco consumption being cigarettes. It is forecasted that tobacco consumption through cigarettes alone will be the cause of death for a billion people in the twenty first century per year. When you do the math, it adds up to two thousand people dying in a single day from diseases like lung cancer, bronchitis and lung collapse.

Statistics also reveal that thirty three to fifty percent of all smokers in any country in the world die purely because of consequences of their habit. It is also noted that people who smoke have a shorter lifespan than those who do not smoke. Non-smokers outlive smokers by fifteen years.

A good way to reduce your tobacco intake without quitting smoking altogether is switching to electronic cigarettes. E cigarettes are especially helpful for people who are trying to reduce smoking because it is damaging their health.

E cigarettes contain lower nicotine content and the absence of carcinogens such as tar let you smoke almost anywhere you want. This way, you do not have to go through unpleasant nicotine withdrawal symptoms and do not have to suffer through all the side-effects that come as a consequence of smoking tar in traditional cigarettes.