Day 13
Have you ever heard this story about President Eisenhower? It happened after his first heart attack and when he had just given up smoking. At a news conference, a reporter asked him, "President Eisenhower, do you think you’ll ever smoke The old soldier thought for a minute and said, "I don’t rightly know whether I’ll smoke again, but I sure as hell will never quit again! "
Once you’ve been able to kick the habit and have put in those first few days and weeks of hard work, you’d have to be crazy to start smoking again! Even so, the fact is that many people who have quit go back to smoking and do it weeks and even months after they’ve stopped.
Like Mark Twain said, it was easy to stop smoking — he’d done it hundreds of times! There is not a safe length of time when you can say, “Well, that is it. I’ve kicked the habit.” Cigarettes will always be there to tempt you. It will not be banned. There will always be other smokers. Even though the strong cravings to smoke do go away there will sometimes be a longing for the past that might tempt you to smoke.
A return to smoking is likely to happen if you keep the idea somewhere in your mind that you will be able to smoke again one day. You may think that you will be able to go back to smoking and keep it under control.
You are only fooling yourself. The problem is that it’s almost impossible for a former smoker to keep his or her smoking down to a couple of cigarettes a day. If you keep such hopes, you must remember that you would not just be taking on one or two cigarettes a day. You would be taking on the whole weight of your old habit. To make sure that you keep up your success, you must be aware of this kind of trap.