First of all I want to tell you that I am not going to try to steal cigarettes away from you. Either you want to stop or you don’t want to stop. There is no point in doing for others either, say if your partner wants you to stop and you want to please him or her. It won’t work in the long term.

Smoking actually gives people things… People who smoke are in a kind of relationship with smoking. Some might say that smoking is their best friend, something that is always there for them when they are feeling stressed or anxious. A friend that is there for when they have had a bad day at work or an argument at home with a loved one.

So lets talk about loving smoking, you must love smoking right? Maybe you once did and now you’re not so sure. Maybe you love smoking too much to free yourself from it?. People love or think they love all kinds of people, substances or ideas that undermine them or maybe you feel that you hate smoking now but feel yourself caught up in that honey trap of addiction.

So why do I suggest you should love smoking?  Just for a moment I want you to think of smoking not as a habit but as a deal. Think for a moment about your deal with smoking…. The pleasure you get with smoking. the seeming benefits. For instance you learned at the beginning when you were young that smoking helped you form an identity, a way to be in the cool group with your peers. Perhaps it made you feel a bit cooler, to fit in or whatever.

It might be a case now that you have come to feel, like millions of others that smoking helps you relax or socialise because you connect to other smokers. Perhaps it gives you something to do with your hands. Maybe smoking feels comfortable familiar, perhaps kind of like a friend who is always there for you in the good times and in the bad. .You see Smoking is like being in a relationship with another person. In order to understand it perhaps we can talk about what attracts a person to another person. for starters I guess there must be something charming about them. Then perhaps it could be a feeling of safety and security they feel when in the company of that person .A sense  of reassurance and a feeling that they can depend on the other person. When you think of it that could be a little like the relationship you are in with Smoking. Smoking gives you certain things and if it did not then you would not bother with them. 

The question is … what is smoking getting in return for the pleasure of being in this relationship with you?. Nothing in life is free and you know that you are paying in more ways than just financially. There is the payment of your health for one and then there is the payment of being a social leper these days if you are constantly nipping out for smoke breaks whilst in the company of non smokers.  When you begin to realise that you are in an abusive relationship with smoking then you start to see things from a different angle. In all relationships there is an unspoken deal and its this.. You do for me and I will do for you. What if the price of this relationship is not worth the deal you are getting?. Just think about that relationship that you are in with smoking, what you are getting from it and what you are giving for it.