The thought of quitting smoking produces a paralyzing fear in some people. They know they want to quit, but the comforting effect of inhaling smoke along with the nicotine is not easily given up. Many people do want to quit smoking cigarettes for various reasons, although these reasons are not sufficient motivation to quit. Many who smoke will always find a reason to smoke if they want to. Listed below are five reasons to quit smoking.The first reason to quit is that you may live longer and live healthier. This is absolutely true as the days string together and you have a successful recovery from using nicotine and/or other tobacco products. Although no one can forecast the future and truly know how long we will live, quitting smoking may give you the edge you need to live a longer and healthier life. Your children wanting you to quit is seen as the second reason. Quitting tobacco products and smoking is actually one of the greatest things you could do for your family. You could be a role model to your children and your grandchildren; someone they would want to emulate. When an adult in the family does not smoke the children are much less apt to. If your children do not smoke as an adolescent or teenager they are much less apt to as an adult. The third reason to quit smoking is that your breathing will become much easier and you will regain your lost energy. Both of these are true providing you follow a regime of psychological and behavioral changes throughout your quitting process. The fourth reason is you will have a much greater chance of lowering the risk of heart attack, stroke, or cancer by quitting. This is all true, although you will never regain the pure body you had before you started smoking, stopping now significantly reduces these risks the longer you do not smoke. The fifth and final reason to stop smoking is that the cost of cigarettes is becoming too expensive. This is very true and you can see it on a daily basis. One more cost of smoking relates to the medical costs associated with usage. Quitting may cut the medical costs significantly over time. Add the two together and there is quite a sum to pay if you continue smoking. Do you really want to quit or are you ambivalent about it? Deciding that you want to quit smoking and making a commitment to stop will provide motivation to follow through. The five listed reasons are just a few known for quiting smoking. You can use any reason that means something to you to quit. The road can go uphill for only so long, then the process of quitting will become easier. Make your commitment to stop today—you will be happy you did. By: Ted Marlett About the Author:
The main reason quitting is so hard is the severe cravings that are associated with the use of nicotine. What happens in your brain each time you light up a cigarette? When you smoke, nicotine sends a signal to your brain to release a chemical called dopamine that can give you a feeling of pleasure and calm. Unfortunately that feeling is short lived. So to achieve that feeling again, you have to light up another cigarette, and the craving process begins.
Regardless of the smoker’s perceived benefits from tobacco, one would assume that an overwhelming consideration must be the likelihood of an early grave after a life of gnawing addiction. However, the addictive qualities of nicotine often overpower a smoker’s fear of premature death.
Thanks in large part to work done at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the 1980s, it is now clear that all the elements of addiction found with “serious” drugs like heroin and cocaine are also found with nicotine. Smokers trying to quit are likely to become as psychologically distressed as the average psychiatric outpatient. In animal experiments, squirrel monkeys will press levers as many as 250 times to get a single intravenous dose of nicotine. Human smokers under the same conditions will dose themselves at orderly, predictable rates depending on how much nicotine they are getting — the very hallmark of an activity controlled by a substance.
BUT there is hope and there are effective alternatives.

