Top Tips.

Yes, it's a Happy Anniversary to me! A year ago today I stopped smoking and haven't looked back once.  I'd wanted to give up for quite a few years and had various failed attempts, some lasting a few days, some a few months but I'd never really felt like a non smoker. This time it's different.  I really do not want to smoke and haven't since waking up on the 29th July 2016.

So, how did I manage it this time and what was different from previous attempts? Well, there are a few things that helped me get to where I am now.

• Nicotine Patches - Really useful for the first couple of months to take the edge off things and get over the initial physical and mid term psychological withdrawal.
• Will Power - Yeah, this is an important one.  You really need to want to give up and not do it purely because you feel you should.
• Heart Failure - How could I forget this one!  Yes, it's true, heart failure helped me give up smoking.

So, completely by coincidence, the day I had planned to give up smoking was the day I also started to feel really ill from my heart failure and this whole journey began.  As I've said previously, I had been feeling grotty for quite a while before it really hit but had shrugged it off as just being unfit and under the weather but waking up on the 29th last year was a whole new level of ill.  I've gone over how ill I felt at the time so I won't bore you with my symptoms again but I really do credit heart failure with being instrumental in helping me stop smoking (although I wouldn't recommend it as a viable treatment plan).  I found that I simply didn't want a cigarette once I'd become that ill and coupled with the patches it meant I was not tempted to reach for a cigarette.  The four weeks in hospital that followed when I eventually went to the doctor also helped with not being around cigarettes and changing my routine so I wouldn't be tempted to have one.

Of course, coming home after being discharged could easily have been a trigger for starting again but all smoking had been banned from the house in preparation for me coming home and I had made a commitment to myself, my family and friends and my medical team that I was not going to screw this all up.  It simply wasn't an option.

I'll be adding a few more posts over the next few weeks to mark my year anniversary so please do check back.  I don't see any of this as negative as it's lead to me making some big and positive changes that were long overdue. Yes, I'd rather have done these things without the heart failure but shit happens and you have to try to grasp the positive things if you can.

Some exciting things coming up in the next few months too, can't say too much at the moment but watch this space!