It’s been almost seven weeks since I quit smoking. I’m not gonna lie, I have smoked since. Last week when I was in Stockholm and hung out with three smoking friends for three days straight I had a few cigarettes. I haven’t smoked since I got home though and I don’t want to either.

I always thought giving up smoking would be hard and the other times I’ve tried it’s been hard and ultimately I’ve failed. Now I know why. It’s all about motivation. Those other times sure I wanted to quite smoking but I didn’t want it with all my heart. I still wanted to smoke but decided that I shouldn’t. Now I simply don’t want to. Do you get the difference?

And why I don’t want to smoke is because I don’t want to die. I used to think that I was young and hadn’t smoked for long enough to be in danger of cancer. And as I’ve already told you I then found out it would take my lungs fifteen years to recover from my smoking. That was a slap in my face since many smokers in my family have died from lung cancer as early as in their thirties. The fact that I in ten years still will be in greater risk of lung cancer than someone who never smoked really scares me. There’s nothing I can do about that. It’s too late. What I can do is to never buy another pack of cigarettes. And I won’t. The realism of dying of cancer made that shouldn’t smoke a don’t want to smoke.

The only tip I can give to those who want to quit smoking is MOTIVATION. If you’re not 100% determined there’s no use trying. You have to make up your mind and really want to quit. I didn’t even try to smoke less in the weeks before I quit. I haven’t used nicotine gum or anything like that either. I quit cold turkey because I was motivated enough.

That’s pretty amazing seeing that I used to smoke a lot. Not a pack a day but maybe four packs a week. And that’s only because I tried to smoke only half a cigarette every time. So yeah, I smoked a lot and I smoked for more than eight years. And that’s only the years I smoked every day. Before I turned eighteen I smoked every now and then. If I had been able to buy cigarettes myself at sixteen when I first started smoking I probably would have become a full time smoker then but the age limit for buying cigarettes in Sweden is eighteen and I didn’t always have a eighteen year old friend around to help me out.

I can’t say that I’ll never pick up a cigarette again. I probably will. I’m fairly certain that I’ll never start smoking full time again though. It’s not that good and it’s not worth it.

Plugs: Michael, Aly, tiff k, clare, Ashley