Whoops. Sorry I didn’t see this until now. I’ll go ahead and respond anyway. As far as what I did, it was very tough to keep my mind off of them at first. I used the patch to quit, but I still had the problem of wanting a cigarette in my hands and smoke in my lungs. One of the biggest problems was in the car, where I used to smoke a lot (2 hours in the car every day to and from work was about 5 cigarettes total). For the car, I bought a lot of altoids and Altoids sour candy. That definitely helped. Every time I thought about smoking in the car, I’d eat a piece of candy. It was nice, because, like smoking a cigarette, it was a small little process: get the tin out, open it up, select a piece, put it in my mouth, close the tin, put it away. That really helped a lot in the car.

As for other places, I had a tougher time. I would make sure to watch a lot of movies, go out with non-smoker friends (a lot) and always have something going on. The biggest thing I missed was always having something to look forward to (my next cigarette). So I would make all kinds of things to look forward to—calling my sister, eating some cake, playing some video games, hanging out with people, and my newest one: getting coffee. You just have to think of everything as a little reward for not smoking. I would let myself buy stuff at the store that I normally wouldn’t as a reward. Anything to keep up the good work of not smoking.

Finally, don’t go to the bar for a month or so. That is the hardest place to resist.