Smoking is something that's really easy to get in to. Hang out with enough people and you'll probably be offered a cigarette. Provided that you're not broke and are legally able to, it's also perfectly easy to buy as many cigarettes as you want. It's not so easy, on the other hand, to stop smoking.

Funny how that works, isn't it? Nobody writes about how to start smoking. Either way, before you make your first (or next) quit attempt, there are a few things you need to know about how smoking works.

The nicotine in cigarettes, after entering your bloodstream through your lungs and all of that fun stuff, has a half life between one and two hours. Not days, hours. What does that mean to you? It means that the worst physical withdrawal symptoms from smoking happen within a day of quitting.

So why, then are you constantly being sold nicotine replacements? They don't work (7% success rate? Please), cost a fortune, and cause worse side effects than smoking the darned cigarettes!

Stay away from nicotine replacements, they don't do you any good at all.

With nicotine levels rapidly depleting, why then do you want to smoke several days after quitting? Put simply, your mind is conditioned from all those years of smoking to want a cigarette at every turn. It wants you to do something with your hands and mouth, which is why people talk about chewing hard candy and toothpicks after quitting. They occupy your mind and replace its want for cigarettes with something innocent.

Annoyingly, it's not that simple, but there are a number of great ways that you can easily break free of your mind's connection with cigarettes, none of which involve taking any pills or other bizarre things (although it would be nice if it were that simple!)