Pavlov was a Russian behaviouralogist working at the beginning of the last century. He established, through experiment, that he could make a dog associate being fed with the ringing of a bell. He rang the bell every time it was fed and finally withdrew the food. The poor dog became very confused because it could not understand why there was no food even though the bell was ringing. Pavlov called this a conditioned response.

Now, think about you and smoking. When you think about it there are certain times of the day when you smoke, there are certain situations in which you smoke, there are certain places you smoke. Basically there are subconscious versions of that bell jangling in your subconscious every day and these cause you to reach for that packet of fags (or tabs as we call them in the North East of England).

This response can also lead you to actually believe that you enjoy smoking. Think about it. Each time you take a drag on that cigarette you are taking smoke, tar, nicotine and about 4000 other poisons into your system. You wouldn't stand over an incinerator while you burned rubbish and breathe it in with a smile on your face.

We are talking about what psychologists call association. You become convinced you enjoy smoking because of the other activities you associate with it. Sitting in the pub with friends enjoying their company; getting a breather from the working day and standing outside gathering your thoughts; finally getting a chance to talk to your partner at the end of the day, having put the kids to bed. That's the pleasure. Smoking is incidental and ultimately irrelavent.

So you are not an addict. At the moment you are a victim of a conditioned response governed by your subconscious and this can be easilly overcome if you genuinely want to stop smoking.

Before we go into how easy that could be for you, lets explore a few of the other ways people try to stop smoking and why they can be so very hard and ineffective.