Every smoker knows that they need
to quit sometime, they hate smoking, and yet they smoke! That is the power of
nicotine over you! I was a pack a day smoker for 12 years and quit cold turkey.
I brain washed myself into quitting by using the following technique. Some of
these techniques or methods can be found in Allen Carr's book - 'Easy way to
quit smoking'. Hope it helps you quit smoking too.
Some Myth's about quitting:
1. Quitting is so hard!!
Stop telling yourself that. If you
really think about it, quitting smoking is the easiest thing. All you have to
do is not smoke! It is just like how you don’t eat things you dislike. That is
not difficult is it? It is the same with smoking. You dislike it and want to
quit so all you have to do is not smoke.
2. OMG I am never going to smoke
again! What will I do when I am bored? Life is not going to be fun anymore!
The thought of never having a cig
made it harder to quit than the nicotine addiction itself. This is where
understanding the addiction helps. Every
time you smoke, you get a dose of nicotine. As the nicotine enters your body
and all the chemical reactions occur your appear to be satisfied. However,
after a few minutes, the nicotine will begin to leave your body. The body will
start craving nicotine again. This craving will make you anxious to get some
more nicotine back in your system ASAP, else, you get stressed, agitated or
even depressed. So you grab your cigarette, light it up and puff away to ease
those cravings. When those cravings go away, you feel relaxed and happy again.
Do you see how this is a cycle
and how it loops over and over? That is all smoking does!! It creates a craving
and then you satisfy it. Then it creates a craving again and you satisfy it
again. It does not make you feel relaxed or any such thing. You were perfectly
relaxed before you started smoking and so are the non-smokers so stop kidding
yourself! So if you get bored, just twiddle your thumbs like the non-smokers
coz smoking did not help with your boredom. The nicotine inside you just said
'Since you are doing nothing, may as well feed me!' and if your idea of a fun
life is satisfying a craving every hour or so, then please feel free to puff
away. Smoking does absolutely NOTHING for you, it just keeps you in the cycle
forever.
Some of the things that helped me
stay quit are listed below. A lot of them are silly but they worked for me and
they may work for you too. Good luck.
1. How smart are you?
If you knew someone who went to a
doctor every single day, and each day pay the doc about $5 to pull out 1 hair
from his head, what would you think? You must think he is stupid! Who would pay
good money to go bald rt? Well guess what? You are doing the exact same thing,
but only to your lungs. You are buying expensive cigarettes everyday to damage
your lungs. You can't get all your hair pulled out at once either, it would
hurt rt? Similarly if you smoked all the cigarettes you have smoked in your
lifetime all at once, it would hurt as well. You know smoking is bad for you
and yet you pay good money to buy them every day and burn your lungs out.
The process of smoking is so
stupid that it took me days to come up with that analogy and it is not even a
good one. There is nothing like it. I can't think of another instance where
people would pay money every single day to hurt themselves.
2. Time clock
The time clock method also worked
wonders for me. It may not work for everyone but don’t worry there are plenty
of options here and I am sure at least one of them will work for you too. I
just close my eyes and pretend I am 20 - 30 years in the future. I am in a
hospital and been diagnosed with cancer. Just let that sink in for a bit. I
feel myself wishing that I had quit when I had the chance. I feel me wishing so
hard that I could go back in time and quit, but it was too late. I was going to
die a long and painful death. Not just painful for me, but all my near and dear
ones too.
Well guess what? It is not too
late yet coz you are still in the present and you can quit now to avoid that
scene in the future. If that does not work for you, you can always think about
the millions of times where you have thought about going back in the past and
never picking up that first cigarette. It is going to be the same 10 years from
now, where you were wishing you had quit when you had the chance. Your chance
is now, so quit and stay quit!
3. Play your ego
I found that anytime I challenged
myself and tried to prove something to myself, I was more committed to it than
normal. I know this is really silly but I used to play good cop, bad cop with
myself. The good cop would say "oh he is so strong, he is going to quit
for sure" and the bad cop would be all "hahaha he is a weakest person
on the planet. He will cave in an hour let alone a whole day". I would
hold out just to prove him wrong. So any idea to quit smoking is a good idea J.
If you don’t wish to do something
like that, here is something similar you can try. If you have watched the lord
of the rings movie, you will remember the scenes where Frodo is trying the
resist the temptation of wearing the ring and you in your head are going
"don’t do it Frodo, stay strong" or think that you would be able to
resist that temptation easily. Well here is your chance, just picture a
cigarette calling out to you and you fighting off its power to control your
mind.
For women, I guess it would be something
like watching your favourite soap and the main character breaks up with her
boyfriend, and you are willing her on to get over him and find someone who deserves
her. So I guess you just think of the cig as that ex-boyfriend and get over
him? I don’t know what works for women here but hopefully you get the picture.
4. Everything is Temporary
Everything in life is temporary,
hell life itself is temporary. So after you quit, all the feelings of pain,
depression, anxiety, temper etc are all temporary. It is not going to be like
that forever. You will move on from it. So just keep telling yourself that
everything will pass and you will go back to feeling like a non-smoker again.
The best analogy for this if you
ask me is , going through your old pictures. You will remember a dress or a hat
or an accessory or something that you were obsessed with at the time. However,
now that you look at it, you wonder how you even considered wearing something
like that. You had totally forgotten about that old hat because you have moved
on to something else. It is the same with smoking too, you are obsessed with it
right now but after you quit you will move on to something else. When you look
back, you will wonder why you even felt
the need to smoke all those years.
5. No such thing as a last
cigarette
Every time that I felt like
smoking I would say to myself "if you smoke just one more, you are going
to go back to being a regular smoker. Is that what you want coz if you smoke
now, 2 hours later you are going to want another cig and then another cig and
another ......You will be trapped in the cycle again. So if you are going to
give up that second cigarette why not just start with the first one?". The
fact that I fully understood the consequences of that one puff or one cig from
my previous attempts at quitting helped me with this one.
6. You save money!!
Well when you quit smoking you
are not going to see or feel all the health benefits immediately. It is all
mostly internal so you never get to see it. However, you can see all the wealth
benefits in your wallet every day J.
Let us do some fun math here shall we?
Let us make some assumptions:
· Average pack of cigarettes cost $6 a pack
·
You smoke a pack a day
·
You smoke for 30 years
·
There is an increase of $1 in cig cost every 3
years
Do you have
any idea how much that adds up to?
It is a grand
total of $ 113,400. mmmm ....I
wonder if you could have put that money to better use?
7. Benefits of smoking?
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Were you really expecting to see anything there?
Well guess what? It is no myth. There are no benefits to smoking. None
whatsoever. Not even 1. Zilch, nada, Zero, you should have got it by now. On
the contrary there are a million and one benefits to quitting smoking and more
are being discovered every day. So why do you want to smoke again?
8. You are going to need plastic surgery soon!
Oh you did not know? Well that's right! Smoking
makes you age fast. You are going to have plenty of wrinkles on your face and
god knows where. Your grandma is going to look younger than you in a few years
if you continue smoking. She is going to climb those stairs faster than you too
coz your lungs probably have given up on you by now. That cannot be a good
thing, cant it? So why do you want to smoke again?
Other little things that do help are
Water - Drink plenty of it. Do not just gulp it all down, rather take small and frequent sips of water from time to time like you would puff away at your cigarette. When you go to a place where you would frequent to smoke, carry a small bottle of water and sip away.
Keep busy - Try and keep your mind occupied with something. Like reading, watching a movie, work or writing a blog like this one, etc. You know what they say ' An idle mind is the devil's workshop'. So the busier you are, the less likely you are to think about smoking.
Exercise - I don't mean to join a gym and lift heavy weights or do advanced yoga or anything like that. Just take walks! Even if it is inside your office or home. Just walk around. listen to some music if you like and walk around.
Don't try too hard to not think about smoking - If you spend a lot of time trying not to think of think of something then you are going to think of that thing! Don't believe me? Close your eyes for about 30 seconds and whatever you do, don't think of SHEEP. Sheep or anything to do with sheep, like meat, fences, sleep, nothing! Ready? ...GO! See what I mean? :) Anywho, when cigarettes do cross your mind, focus all your energy in to the reasons that you want to quit.
Well as you can see, I had to fight my way out of
the addiction. Nicotine is a very powerful drug and should not be
underestimated. Use any of the methods above or use them all or some methods of
your own to get out of this habit. Anything to get you out is a good thing. I
quit cold turkey but I am not against using Gums, Patches or E-cigs to help you
quit. Anything that can help you get out of this addiction is a good thing.
Anywho, I hope this little article has helped you.
Just hang in there, it will get better over time. If this article has helped
you quit, I would appreciate you sending this page to someone who needs help
more than a thank you note to me. Good luck.
