Hello SCUBAKristey,
First of all, congratulations on becoming a diver. You will find it well worth the effort you are going to face. Diving is the most wonderful experience you can do.
Smoking is habitual just like any other drug. It takes much will power to stop completely. You WILL have the very strong urge to "just smoke one". If you do that you will have to start quiting all over again. The hardest part for me was the parties, after diner, and like you said while having a drink, wine, beer, etc. My driving force was my wife. She is a microbiologist and had been after me to quite my 3 pack a day habit, for about a year. One day I was in her hospital labaratory and she told me she had something to show me. It was in a container and looked like a piece of charcoal that had been crushed into very fine granulars. I didn't get what she was showing me. She finally said "this is the lung of a 37 year old male, smoked since he was 17, and died last week of lung cancer. I happened to be 40 years old at the time and had started smoking in the military at the age of 20. I laughed it off but, the sight of that lung and how it looked stayed in my mind. I decided to quite about 3 weeks after that. The next 6 months were pure hell. I was okay until I was in the presence of someone else smoking. I could have eaten the whole pack. Now understand that was 15 years ago, long before Nicoderm or any of the other helpers were invented and a pack was about 50 cents. If I could do it, so can you especially with the helper prescriptons and surely the price($120/month) . This has to be something you WANT to do. Even then you may slip, I know I did, it is not the end of the world but, like I said you wiii have to start quiting all over again. I hope you can kick a harmful habit, save your cigerette money and buy all the fun things to use with a much better habit, scuba diving. Good Luck and keep us informed as to your progression. AS Tavi said:
YOU CAN DO IT!!!!
Cuban's!
