A few smokers, mainly the younger ones, have almost a death wish. They prefer to roll the dice in life and think that "it'll never happen to them". What they usually mean is that they hope they'll never get lung cancer.

Why do smokers fear lung cancer? Because if you get it then it is almost certainly incurable and you will probably die a slow painful death within a matter of months.

Your chances of getting lung cancer are still fairly low though. So if you forget about the hit to your wallet, is it still worth taking a chance and carry on smoking anyway?

Smoking affects your entire body. Have you ever seen a woman who claims to be 40 but looks more like 55? Chances are that she was a smoker.

When you smoke, it goes into your lungs and then you breathe it out but the long term effects are on your entire body. Smoking affects your circulatory system which means every square inch of your body. It clogs the arteries and almost guarantees that you will die from a heart attack, on average, earlier than a non-smoker.

It affects your organs, you are more likely to get a whole host of cancers and not just lung cancer, and it affects your fitness and even your brain and thinking.

Sure, gamble if you want that you'll never get lung cancer but die early in ignorance anyway having lived most of your life with a diseased body.

On the other hand, if you stop smoking, at whatever age, then the benefits from stopping smoking happen very quickly indeed - more on this later.

Do you believe in that statement?

Many people believe that smoking is actually enjoyable. Maybe you do yourself, you have your favourite brand and, although you know smoking is bad for you and you want to give up, you will sadly miss the "taste" of cigarettes.

Now, if you gave a non-smoker a cigarette, what would their reaction be? They would turn you down, right? They have smelled smoke and to them it is foul. Naturally so, because it is a toxin and all toxins smell or taste foul. Even if they actually tried a cigarette, unless they were being offered a lot of money then there is no way that they would smoke the whole thing, right?

Remember those first cigarettes that you ever smoked? They were foul and tasted weird. But anyway, you kept smoking them in search of this "taste" and enjoyment that real smokers talk about. Human beings are naturally curious so this is normal.

Did you ever notice that cigarettes only tasted good and became enjoyable when you became addicted and not before? And how do cigarettes suddenly go from being foul and nasty to become tasty and enjoyable? The simple truth is that the addiction plays tricks on your mind. It makes you think that cigarettes are enjoyable and taste good when in fact they are not. Don't be fooled by your emotions and the addiction that is toying with them.

Do not believe that smoking is an "acquired" taste like coffee and alcohol. Although you can get addicted to both of these, even though you thought that your first sip tasted foul, most people drink them in moderation with no ill effects. They also have powerful psychoactive properties so many people drink them for a specific purpose rather than for taste (do you know many people to drink decaf or non-alcoholic booze?).

With smoking, you only ever "enjoy" the taste after you become addicted.

And what about this "enjoyment" that cigarettes give you? They make you feel good right? Especially that first cigarette of the morning or having a cigarette after a meal?

You'll have to make a leap of faith here. Trust me as a non-smoker who used to smoke over a pack a day. Trust me when I tell you that you do not enjoy smoking. Smoking only brings you back to the level that every non-smoker is already at, it brings you back to an approximation of normality.

Think about addiction. You look at another addict, another smoker, and he or she thinks that they "need" a cigarette. Yet there is no physiological reason why they need a cigarette. They don't need it at all! When this "need" is fulfilled, the only thing that happens is that you are restored to normality. You get put back to the place where every smoker already is. Cigarettes just make you feel normal.

Basically, you are always going downhill and smoking is just a boost to put you back to normality. Smoking is not enjoyable but it does make you go higher. But only as high as ground level - you are always in the basement and moving even lower when you are a smoker apart from when you have a cigarette - a cig brings you back to the ground floor again.

Non-smokers don't have this constant sinking action because they are not addicted. It's only when you are addicted to something that the chemicals (nicotine here) make you think that you are sinking and can only raise yourself with another cigarette. I don't personally believe in God or a creator but if anyone ever wanted to design or create an addiction, then the illusion that the substance was enjoyable would be a perfect design feature, don't you think?

If you make someone believe that smoking is good then they will always feel bad and only smoking can make them come back to normality and feel better. But constantly also make them feel worse so that they come back, again and again. It's almost the perfect design of using emotions to override logic.

Listen to your logical brain and use it to override the emotions. Cigarettes are not enjoyable, you are just fooled into thinking that they are.

Probably, you were shocked by this statement, and maybe you still are, despite the evidence I presented. This is your addiction working – your addiction is even trying to fool your powers of logic. But if you don’t believe me, then let’s revisit it again.

Nicotine is not addictive. Nicotine is a chemical substance, yes. Nicotine produces some small physical changes when injected into the bloodstream, yes. Nicotine in too high a dose can even kill a person, yes.

Nicotine is a toxin and nothing more than that. It is not addictive. I’ve already given you some examples and here is yet another one: a friend of mine from Scandinavia once brought back some “snus”. Perhaps you have heard of this – it’s a type of tobacco that you place in your mouth – some people use it in places that they cannot smoke. Just like cigarettes, however, snus is carcinogenic and bad for your health.

In the years since I have stopped smoking, my friend has offered me snus and I have never even given it a second thought about trying it which I have done maybe 3 or 4 times. It comes in a kind of teabag that holds the tobacco and you keep it just under the top lip, where the nicotine is absorbed into the bloodstream.

Did I fear the consequences of consuming nicotine again, possibly getting “re-addicted”? To be honest, it did not even cross my mind, I actually did not make the connection between snus and cigarettes both being made of tobacco. I also found that having tobacco stain my teeth was not to my liking so I did not care to continue trying this snus despite my persistence in trying to work out the attraction! Despite my almost not realising that this was a tobacco product before I placed it into my mouth, did I get hooked once more? No, of course not – because nicotine is not addictive.

Here’s another example – did you ever hear of a non-smoker accidentally becoming addicted to patches? And here’s another one – there are many people who occasionally smoke cigars. Maybe they have them two or three times a year at a party. Personally, I still do this from time to time like at the office Christmas party. Do I long for or pine for tobacco in the months between getting my next fix of a cigar? Do I miss the aroma of tobacco until my next chance to have a cigar? Or do I even resort to cigarettes because cigars are too expensive? Of course not! In fact, it’s never even occurred to me at all. I don’t have any cravings for tobacco and I never think about tobacco.

Let’s go back to cigarette smoking. If we know that nicotine is not physically addictive, then why do people have a craving for cigarettes? We’ve established that it’s very hard, if not impossible, for the average person to get hooked on patches, cigars or snus. But if they all contain nicotine then what makes cigarettes so different?

Nicotine is not physically addictive, but cigarettes ARE psychologically addictive.

We have just proven this statement above. So why are cigarettes such a special case? I don’t have all the answers but I suspect it’s a result of social conditioning, of the way in which society as a whole looks at cigarettes, categorises cigarettes, the way in which people believe that nicotine is addictive and the “brainwashing” of the establishment (more on that later). This would explain why most people who try a cigar do not get hooked on either cigars or cigarettes, even though they also both contain nicotine and tobacco.

So now you know that cigarettes are psychologically addictive. So, in order to conquer your addiction, you therefore must understand exactly how your cigarette addiction works. Keep on reading to learn more.

Here's another example of nicotine not being addictive.

You may already know that in The Netherlands, locals and tourists can visit what is known as a "coffeeshop". This is a place where you can legally buy and smoke marijuana products.

Europeans traditionally mix their marijuana with tobacco which they then roll up and smoke. Now, it turns out that most of these people do not even smoke cigarettes when they are not in a coffeeshop. That's right, they don't smoke cigarettes at all and they have no desire to smoke cigarettes. They simply use tobacco because it is a good material to help the "joint" burn.

So, if you are a smoker who believes that your body is highly addicted to nicotine, how can you possibly explain those people who do not smoke cigarettes but use tobacco in their marijuana joints. How can this be possible?

Here's another reason why your body doesn't need nicotine. Can you remember when you were last really ill and could not move from your bed. Even a hangover qualifies for this test.

When I used to smoke, if I had a very bad hangover then I did not desire a cigarette. I remember having the flu (a real flu and not just a cold is when you cannot reach the foot of your bed, even if someone placed 100 dollars there) and I did not smoke for a week. If nicotine has such a grip on you then why do you not smoke when you are terribly ill? Surely that goes against a smoker's logic and you would get twice as ill if you did not smoke! But we all know that is not true.

You should be able to see now what addiction really is and how it attacks the mind rather than the body. You can't deny it, because I have given you several cases that you cannot explain any other way. Maybe you are making mental objections - this is your addiction at work right now! If you truly believe that I am wrong, then get out a piece of paper and write down your case. Show it to a non-smoker whose mind is not twisted by addiction and see what they say. I assure you that they will disagree.

The fact is, those withdrawal effects are not real. The mistake that people (perhaps including you) make is that they think that their body is reacting to taking away nicotine. Nicotine is addictive right? So if you take it away from your body then your body will react and make you feel sick so that you will instinctively reach for the nicotine.

No, it has nothing to do with your body, it's your mind.

The mind is a powerful thing. When a drug company does double-blind medical trials, some people are given a placebo which is a pill with nothing in it. Sometimes, the people given the placebo get better than the people given the drug!

This is a well known medical fact that the mind can have incredible effects on the body. Just by believing that you are getting better, very often you will. This is just one example.

The reason that I and some other smokers do or did not get withdrawal shakes or sweats is because they don't exist except in the mind. If you believe badly enough that you will get the shakes then you will! Apart from people telling you, your addicted state of mind is telling you this too. It's telling you this to prevent you from quitting.

So you can see, if you really were "chemically" addicted to nicotine, then your body would react violently to taking it away. But, if you know better than this and see it for what it really is, then you will not suffer when you stop smoking.

Because you now know that your body is not addicted to nicotine (it is just nicotine playing "tricks" on your mind") then you will never again suffer any strange "withdrawal" symptoms.

What nicotine does do is to play tricks on your brain and fool you into believing that you are addicted. If nicotine was really addictive then how can you explain how some people are able to stop smoking immediately and never have a desire to smoke a cigarette ever again?  Can you explain that? I promise you that it is not magic!! It is because I learned better than to believe that my body was addicted to nicotine.

Stay tuned to more posts, and we'll show you how.

One of the biggest myths about stopping smoking are the apparent huge withdrawal effects that you will suffer from if you stop smoking.

Let's think about what 'withdrawal' is for a moment.

Can you explain how some people stop smoking and still crave cigarettes but they never felt ill after quitting? Can you explain how I quit smoking and never felt any withdrawal effects at all?

How about people who claim to quit and then get a whole host of symptoms - the shakes, the sweats, cramps, diarrhea, headaches and more.

Can you relate to any of this? Maybe you have tried quitting before and felt really bad. Maybe you know a family member who quit and felt terrible. Perhaps you even threw up violently.

And then you started smoking again and all the feelings went away. As soon as you had your cigarettes, your body was restored to normality. It made you realise how much your body had grown to depend on cigarettes and how much your body needs cigarettes just to survive.

If this is true, then how can you explain my own quitting and other people who didn't suffer at all? Don't say that we have different bodies with a different reaction to taking away nicotine. This is your addiction making up excuses to stop smoking. This is your addiction bending your logic.

For now, understand that there is a huge apparent "logical paradox" between most smokers who give up using willpower and the few who give up using other methods. If there is a way to avoid the withdrawal symptoms, then what does that tell you about so-called nicotine addiction? Doesn't it sound like a better way?

What is the difference between an ex-smoker and a non-smoker? You might say there is none, but it's important to see that there is a huge difference.

Remember when you were an adolescent, and you saw people smoking? Maybe it was your parents, maybe some of your friends had started. You just couldn't understand why they were doing this, even if it looked “kinda cool”.

You did not understand what it was like to always be smoking but you DID know how foul smelling these things called cigarettes were.

And how about ex-smokers, how do you think they feel? For someone who has stopped smoking, many of them never stop wanting cigarettes. As time goes on it gets much easier.

Have you seen the movie with Danny DeVito where he keeps a cigarette in a glass case and eventually breaks it open and smokes it? This is a bit like my friend's father who stopped smoking for over 10 years and one day on vacation, a smoking family member offered him a cigarette and he thought "oh, just the one". Now he smokes a pack a day and has been doing since for several years.

Most ex-smokers still crave cigarettes. If you stop smoking then your body will gradually get more healthy and recover from years of smoking. But you still run the risk of temptation throwing you back into the lion's den, to a future of unhealthy smoking.

On the other hand, a non-smoker who has never smoked cigarettes does not crave for them at all. He might be curious but he does not have an "itch" for a cigarette.

When you understand what nicotine really does to you and addiction, then you will be like the old non-smoker self that you used to be. You will never have cravings for a cigarette again, unlike most people who stop "successfully".

Now ask yourself, which would you prefer to have? The mind of a non-smoker or the mind of a typical ex-smoker?

OK, I know that this may be a controversial statement but I don't care what the reaction is.

YOU ARE AN ADDICT!

So you may already know that but not think it's a big deal. I mean, it's not like you're a heroin addict or a junkie, right?

Well, in my opinion, you are really no different. If you look at how easily hooked and how hard to stop both addictions are, you'll see that they are pretty similar.

There are some differences, the big one being that heroin is more difficult to come by and it is harder to maintain a normal life on heroin (although some addicts do) so a heroin addict is more likely to steal and cheat people to get their hands on money to feed their addiction.

Can you imagine if, overnight, cigarettes were made illegal, more expensive and you developed a tolerance meaning that you needed more to get "your fix". Would you look so different from a heroin addict then?

At the end of the day, all cigarette smokers, including you, are addicts. They think they are normal but non-smokers see them act strange when they need a cigarette. They do illogical things like ignoring good advice on how to stop smoking. They even offer cigarettes to their best friends who they know have stopped smoking. Does this sound like the behaviour of a good friend? Sadly, this is the behaviour of a smoker.

Maybe you think you're not an addict? Are you one of those smokers who says "I can stop anytime"?

Before I post anything else, I want you to please keep an open mind.

Your first response to something that I might say is "heck, that can't be right". But what I would like you to understand is that I've been there myself. I used to be a 25 a day smoker of high tar cigarettes. I've been there and I know how you feel and I've come out the other side.

You have the mind of a smoker, and more so the mind of an addict. All addicts are close minded when it comes to feeding their own addiction, as you will find out more and more about soon enough. If you don't keep an open mind, then you may as well surrender now to the game of life. If you do keep an open mind, your life will be enriched.

So please, if you can just keep an open mind and prepare to be shocked, you need to think about exercising your logic over your emotions. We are emotional beings, us humans, and often our emotions are wrong. They were made for flight or fight in the wild and they serve the animals well. But in today's complex world, we have the power to think for ourselves.

One more thing, don't blame your genetics, your parents, your upbringing, your circumstances, society or anyone else for where you are now. Look forward and understand that you are in control of your destiny. You can change things for the future and if you put your heart to it, you WILL be an ex-smoker or, more correctly, a non-smoker, just as you were before you ever started.

So what is the situation today with the whole idea of "stopping smoking?" You may know it quite well, but it's worth talking about again because we'll come back to this time and time again.

These days, many people give up using willpower. Almost immediately after stopping, they are "dieing" for a cigarette. You know the deal - it can't be done at any old time, you need to prepare for the inevitable struggle that is coming up so you set a date and psyche yourself up. Then you stop and celebrate and hope you can get through the bad days ahead. Everyone tells you it will get better but it seems a mystery to you.

Maybe you even use some "medicine" to help you. It must be good, right? Because the doctor recommends it then it must be good for you? Especially patches, they really help. You just slap a patch on and no cravings. Wow, this is really great! Imagine stopping smoking and with the help of the great drug companies and the medical profession, you can do it without wanting another cigarette, well at least until you take off those dreaded patches anyway!

Or if it's not this method, it's one of the many other ways such as using an inhaler, throwing out all the ashtrays, keeping a picture of a diseased lung, remembering your friend that died from lung cancer, remembering your kids and their future. Whatever it is, you've probably tried or thought of trying them all.

So what happens if you follow all the steps above? Were you successful? If you're still smoking today then you weren't. Stopping smoking successfully is not measured in how long you have stopped for. You don't want to stop for just a year or 5 years do you? You want to stop permanently.

What if there were other ways to stop smoking?