When I was in the eighth grade, I did a very stupid thing: I began smoking. While I now know that there is nothing more ridiculously stupid than a thirteen-year-old girl smoking, at the time I felt very sexy, sophisticated and cool.

My mother felt otherwise. Every time she caught me with cigarettes or found a pack in my room, she grounded me, adding an additional week for each time she caught me. By my sixteenth birthday, I was up to six weeks.

While I never intended to smoke forever—even as a stupid, arrogant teenager, I understood that smoking was not good for me—I didn’t try to quit until I was 28. Now, five years later, I am still “clean”…I haven’t had a cigarette since.

You Gotta Want It
Successfully smoke-free citizens share one important characteristic: they all want to quit. The motivating factors may have been different for each—mine was my mother telling me she didn’t want to watch me die—but the reality must be the same. You can’t stop smoking if you don’t want to stop smoking. If, for some reason, you cannot think of a good reason to quit, simply visit your doctor, a retirement home or the cancer ward of your local hospital.