I used to smoke.  I used to smoke a lot.  I smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day, every single day.

Then I decided to quit.  It took me a few tries at it, and at first I could only manage to quit for a week or so, but I finally figured out how to quit for good.

It was actually not that bad once I figured out the secret.  The secret is to drink a thirty two ounce cup of water every time you get a major craving for a cigarette and keep a bag of twizzlers or pretzel rods handy at all times to give your hands something to hold that resembles a cigarette and that you can chew on throughout the day.

Today I want to talk to you about the different stages you can expect to go through when you quit for good. When you quit smoking, you go through some pretty intense stages.

Stage one: the first day.  You can usually get through one day without smoking pretty easily. Its easy enough to get distracted for a day, and you are all charged up after all and ready to quit.

Stage two: the second day.  Now the reality of quitting actually hits you and you realize how fun this is NOT going to be. Many people start smoking again on the second day.

But if you make it past stage two, then you are on your way to stage three which is about a week.  After a week you are pretty exhausted by the huge amount of will power you have had to expend for a whole week of not smoking.  To celebrate, you will probably try to convince yourself to have just one cigaratte.  A lot of people lose their battle to quit smoking here.

In fact, it took me several tries to get over the one week stage three.

After that, stage four is the two week mark, followed by stage five, which is the one month mark.

If you've made it a whole month, you probably feel you have won, and in many cases you have won!  The bulk of the nicotine has been flushed out of your body and you aren't having those hourly cravings anymore.  In fact, you may not be having any cravings anymore, except for the occasional one here or there, spread days apart and usually triggered by an especially stressful situation.

Then it hits you, the THREE MONTH STAGE.  At around three months after you have quit, one night, without any warning, you will have a dream.  Not just any dream, a LUCID dream.  This is the sort of dream that people only have once or twice in their life. Lucid means real.  A dream so clear, so real feeling that you will SWEAR that you are awake.

And in this dream you will have a cigarette.  You will FEEL it, and when you wake up you will feel MISERABLE because you will think you have smoked!  You've gone three whole months without smoking, how could you break that huge record and have a cigarette!

But then as you wake up more, you will realize it was only a dream.  But that miserable feeling will stay with your throughout the rest of the day.

If you make it past that day without lighting up a cigarette, you will have quit for good, forever.