I started smoking at very young age, I was barely 18 at the time.  It was cool at the time to be a smoker. If you didn't smoke you looked like a loser. So that's how I started and I thought "sure I can stop any time I want".  From day to day I got more and more hooked up to tobacco. It came to a point that I'd first buy the cigarettes and then think of food. My son and husband never liked me stinking and so irritated when I needed a smoke. I smoked for 20 years and have tried all kind of ways to stop smoking. Tried the patch, the Zyban, the acupuncture and all kind of herbal teas and stuff. Nothing helped. One day as I was browsing the Amazon.ca for some good books I came across a book called "Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking". I ordered the book right away.  The book was very easy to read as he wasn't talking against smoking but he was talking that after so many years of smoking 5packs a day he found the key to stop it. The idea is to counter brainwash ourselves. We're brainwashed into believing that we need  a smoke to relax, to be alert and we think that smoking gives us a pleasure (like lighting up a cigarette after eating a food or after not smoking for a few hours). The fact of the matter is that we get the pleasure not from the smoke itself as we get it from ending the misery of needing a smoke.
Some people could stop smoking just like that after reading this book. Many renown people have stopped somoking using Allen Carr's Easyway. Even George Harrison, just before he passed away, he stopped smoking using this method by saying "I want to die a free man". Other famous names that have used this method and worked for them are: Richard Branson, Sir Anthony Hopkins and many others.
I couldn't stop by reading the book, so I went on the website that was advertised there http://www.allencarrseasyway.com/ and found the Allen Carrs seminar in Toronto and attended it almost 4 years ago. After the seminar I walked out a free woman, no need to smoke ever. The next day I woke up with some withdrawal symptoms. I felt like any smoker would "I need a smoke" I thought.
Then I took a long walk and thought of Damian O'Hara saying that's better to smoke marijuana then a cigarette, cause marijuana is not as addictive... Oh, no, I didn't even think of looking for it, but I thought "I sure can use some smokes from the herbal cigarettes I saw in the Health Food Store". So, I went and bought a few packs of herbal cigarettes (they contain no nicotine, the addictive part). I smoked them a few days. They felt terrible, it felt just like breathing in some smoke from the fireplace when you just lit it up. I told myself that, this is it, I'm pass the 3 days without real cigarettes and I don't need to keep on taking this garbage in my body (meaning the herbal cigarettes). Since then I never lit up ever again. The best thing about the Easyway of Allen Carr is that once you understand the smoking as well, you don't have the urge to smoke, in fact every day I'm grateful to God for sending me this info on his method. Allen Carrs Easyway is worth trying and you have nothing to lose, only to gain: your health!