Quit Smoking Over the Next

¶ … Quit Smoking over the Next Eight Weeks

Smoking is one of America's largest silent killers behind heart problems. The American people, once glamorized through the thick wall of smoke, are now realizing how serious the complications related to smoking actually are. The 2005 National Health Survey (NHIS, 2005), reported staggering numbers of Americans, 29.5 million males and 20.7 million females, were smoking and thus considered themselves as smokers. Having been a smoker for a decade now, I see the need to drop the habit in hopes of preventing serious disease and pain in my future years. I no longer have much of a decision in the act of quitting, it's either I quit, or I give myself a death sentence. With that in mind, I am proposing to change my dangerous habit, and over the course of the next eight weeks completely eliminate smoking from my daily life.

Quitting smoking is much more difficult than most might imagine. Of the thousands of people who try to quit each year, only a few remain successful in their fight against nicotine. Most smokers quit for a period of time, only to regain their habit after a brief separation. In fact, it is the first few months which prove the most critical, "Most patients relapse within the first six to 12 months of a smoking cessation attempt," (Mallin, 2002). Through other people's failures, physicians have also discovered that quitting without any plan of action leads to an even higher percentage rate of ex-smokers succumbing to their old habits. An overwhelming 95% of smokers who quit without implementing any sort of program to assist in their endeavors, actually stay smoke free, (Reynolds, 2002). These drastic figures attest to the importance of formulating a plan unique to one's position as the most efficient way to quit smoking. More important to creating that plan, is the eventual follow through.

The adverse health affects are a justifiable reason to quit smoking. An astounding 90% of lung cancer is directly associated with long-term smoking, (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). Other adverse health risks include cardiovascular disease, and other respiratory diseases. These haunting reminders of the adverse affects of smoking only increase as the user smokes for a longer period of time. Both lung and heart disease rates for smokers explode as smokers continue smoking throughout their lives. The risks just get higher as the years continue to pile up, "If you smoke for a lifetime, there is a 50% chance that your eventual death will be smoking-related - half of all these deaths will be in middle age," (BBC News 2003).