1) On your Quit Date, you MUST get rid of ALL your cigarettes, lighters, matches and ashtrays. Check your purse, your car, your pockets, your kitchen drawer, etc. If you cannot put your hands on a cigarette during a strong craving, obviously you can't smoke one. The craving is likely to pass before you do anything you'll regret.
2) Always be prepared. NEVER find yourself in a situation where you haven't planned IN ADVANCE how you will distract yourself if a craving hits you. And make sure you have whatever supplies you will need to accomplish that distraction. Cravings rise, peak and ebb away. Keep your brain and your hands busy during those few minutes.
3) Cookies are part of the journey. This is important. Also: Where there is cake, there is hope. Ask any Elder... ;-)
xxxooo, Sky
I don't think you have to be afraid of craves. They are the perfect opportunity to enjoy a few deep cool breathes of clean air drawing deeply into the lungs and give a little fist pump celebration of finally breaking free of the ball and chain of the smoking trap.
Turn the crave on its head. Instead of thinking about some fantasy cigarette, use the crave as a moment of reflection about what smoking was really like before you quit. Trying to trick yourself into not thinking about cigarettes is probably not going to work, anyway. So use the craves as a way of reinforcing the reasons you made a personal commitment to never take another puff.
What happens, over time, is that smoking triggers stop being moments that make you want to smoke. Instead, they become trigger moments that trigger celebrations of not smoking. You flip it completely around. Instead of brainwashing yourself to believe that you enjoy smoking, you "brainwash" yourself to believe that you despise smoking and what it did to you.