From someone who's quit before....if this is your first time, it will be your easiest.... It gets progressively harder each time you try to quit, my experience. Then again each person is different, so the successful method varies from person to person. The patch is popular, but in my mind I don't think it would work for me, therefore I would have less success than someone who was enthused about this method.

The first four times were cold turkey, and they didn't work out too well, although I did stay nicotine free for a whole year once. The last time was gradual reduction, and I've been off smokes for 8 yrs. I got it down to 5 ciggies a day, and on the night before I quit I finished a half-pack and went to bed. That was it, except for dealing with all the cravings. Each day gets a little easier, though for me I didn't stop craving them until about a year later. That seems rather daunting to most people, and perhaps other ex-smokers would verify my experience. I think that's why it's so hard to stay nicotine free. If you can make it a year, you can probably live the rest of your life relatively easily without cigarettes.

I, like another poster, used to dream about them. I'd dream I lit one in my sleep, forgot I had a cigarette in my hand and put my arm under the pillow. Then I would wake with a start, thinking I'd caught the bed on fire. The subconscious mind is a weird universe. Still, I could taste them in my dream, smell the smoke, detailed and vividly. That should give some indication as to the power of the addiction. Heroin addicts have better luck kicking heroin than cigarettes, even though the physical hold heroin has on the body is far stronger than the hold nicotine has. So, theoretically, if you can successfully kick nicotine, then you should be able to overcome just about any addiction, or at the very least you've proven to yourself that you have a formidable amount of willpower.

Sometimes that willpower comes from outside of yourself. The turning point for me - the moment of clarity when I knew I had to give those killers up - came when my 3 yr old son sidled up to me with a crayon cradled between his fingers, sucking on it in reverent imitation of his dear old dad. I owe him.

The power of nicotine can't be taken lightly. Respect the hold this drug has on you, because you'll always be a nicotine addict. If I'm ever diagnosed with terminal cancer and only a few weeks or months to live, the first thing I'll probably do is go out and buy a carton of my old brand. In the way some people are at once fascinated and repulsed by a gruesome car wreck, you have to stand in awe of the absolute control a chemical can have over one's behavior.