My First Day

Hi everyone!
I've now gone through my first day without smoking, and I have to say, it wasn't that easy.
I know that some people claim that it's no problem to quit "cold turkey", but it at least turned out harder than I thought.
Let's start from the beginning:
When I got up, I took all tobacco products as well as related stuff in my possession and threw it away.
This step is very important, since you're in a vulnerable phase at the beginning and you need to take every measure to prevent a facilitation of a relapse. That means you should get rid of:
- cigarettes (of course), rolling tobacco
- cigars or similar types
- pipe tobacco (and also the pipes)
- water pipes
- in the best case, it's also good to dispose of lighters and ashtrays. You won't really need those when you're through.

Be sure that you render all those products unusable before you throw them away; break cigarettes apart, throw loose tobacco away removed from the package and so on (get creative on that one :D). Also, I recommend you not throw it away in your own household; throw them in some public garbage. If there is any type of smoking paraphernalia in your possession that you consider valuable, maybe deposit it at a bank or so. Don't keep it!
This step is not only getting rid of what you don't want to use anymore anyway, but also resembles a ritual, being a psychological step: if you can show yourself that you can willingly destroy cigarettes and such, then you'll automatically distance yourself from them.

Then, next thing is the trick:
Don't quit forever. Quit for 30 days.
Why, you'll ask? It's simple. The human mind does not take well to an ultimatum that involves doing something that you somehow enjoy "never again". That's about as hard as saying "I'll never eat my favourite dish again." or "I'll never watch TV again." Sounds hard, right?
I'd say, to some it probably sounds impossible.
And that's the key.
You don't really need smoking, you just think you do. And I'm convinced that if you "forget" what it's like to smoke, you won't be tempted to do it. And that time is 30 days.
So you "appease" your mind by saying you'll only quit for a while, so that your subconscious goes "at least I can start again when that time's over" and loses the memory of smoking more and more.

There's this rule about the "Three-Day-Hump", saying when quitting something, the first three is hardest part.
I say, the whole first week will be the hardest part.
The reason: There are three main "triggers" for lighting up a cigarette: boredom, stress and routine.
The routine part is based on your week, and also the stress and the boredom parts are connected to it. Most probably, you have breaks at work where you always go smoking.
Then maybe, you have to wait for a bus on the way home, so you usually smoke.
And the hardest part: you normally smoke with other people.
Then you maybe go out on fridays and saturdays, where you usually smoke, too.
You'll see how many events in your everyday routine are connected to smoking; it's quite a lot.
but when you stand through one normal week without smoking, the following 3 weeks will go much smoother.
Optionally, you can also put away the money you normally would spend on cigarettes. In most cases, you can already see quite a sum of money after 2 weeks.

So today, I got rid of my cigarettes and lighters and decided to face a challenge: hanging out with my friends.
That was really hard, also because you're very vulnerable to give in after you've had a few beers.
Although I imagined it worse, there were a few moments where i considered forgetting the idea.
But I'm proud to say that I went through the whole day without smoking, and now I already fell a bit better.
Always remember: the start is the hardest part! The thing you can look forward to is that it becomes easier every day, probably even every hour. Don't ever talk yourself into relapsing; you know that's not what you want.