Ending relationships is always fraught with difficulty, pain, sorrow loss etc, even breaking up when things have been bad brings up sadness and regret.
Some people stay in even the most abusive destructive relationships because of their own inner turmoil.
Smoking is another relationship which eventually has to be torn apart.
Countless times clients have referred to cigarettes as their friend.
After the soothing smoke was always there in bad times, in times of anxiety and stress even when others had failed in their support.
This friend helped them when they were bored, when they were lonely, or trying to think and especially when they were trying to relax.
But this friend has a dark side, a two faced companion who offers support and comfort but at the same time is stealth fully attacking and undermining.
This friend wants you all to themselves, they take you away from friends and family.
Take you outside in the cold or heat or rain.
Make you be the one standing on the footpath watching those inside in the restaurant.
Take you away from the movie or the dance etc.
This friend is jealous.
This friend is a thief, they reach into your wallet or purse every day and steel your hard earned cash, whether you can afford it or not.
If you add up how much this smoking friend has cost you over the years you will become angry.
You know this fried steels but you excuse it's behaviour.
This thief makes your life insurance premiums much more expensive and can even prevent you from getting the job you want.
This thief also steals your life.
Steals on average 14 years from your life and robs you of years of quality health.
This smoking friend is a liar who has convinced you that you enjoy food and drink even more with a cigarette.
This friend works for a large corporation and funnels your funds back to that company.
This smoking friend slowly sticks a knife into your back and keeps turning and plunging it in, yet you still defend it.
Sometimes when you through this friend out of your life you allow it to back in when it comes begging to your door.
Will the cigarette companies be there to hold your hand as you lay dying in a cancer ward.
Will they reach out to comfort your family as your health fails.
Will they step up and pay your medical bills.
Wow with friends like that who needs enemies.
Maybe its time to take a long hard look at this friend, Decide once and for all whose side it is on.
Decide you are too important to hang out with such friends.
Perhaps it's high time to pull the plug and break up this nasty relationship no matter how hard it is too do.
Does all of this sound just a little too familiar? Strategies to break free from smoking.
1.
Make a list of all the problems you are experiencing with smoking including health and social.
2.
Sit down and count how much money you have spent in the last year, and in the last 10 or 20 years.
How much will you spend in the next 10 years.
3.
List any perceived benefits and get and get real with yourself about these benefits.
4.
Get angry with this friend, stop fooling yourself and commit to break up this doomed relationship Until you severe all emotional ties and stop kidding yourself that this deadly habit is no friend to everyone, then you will never succeed, because a part of you will always want to hang on to cigarettes