How I Finally Quit Smoking for Good
Posted on April 7, 2008
Filed Under Smoking | 1 Comment
On 10-26-07 I ended a 38-year habit of smoking over a pack a day. At the time of this writing, I’m coming up on 6 months being quit.
But it didn’t happen right away. You can read the prior attempt here and the subsequent caving in here. In light of that failure, I purposely put off writing any more about my stopping smoking effort until now.
Why now? Because this time I was successful and wanted to let other would-be quitters know what worked and what didn’t. It can be done, and I’m proof that failure is just a step on the road to success.
Two weeks after that last failed attempt just mentioned, I became a non-smoker and have remained so. So, lesson one is failure at one point doesn’t mean failure for good. It may be you merely discovered one more way not to do it.
Quitting smoking is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be as daunting as most people make it out to be. Furthermore, anyone can do it, but you must not only be totally serious about quitting, but clearly understand the things that will cause you to fail. The latter is the hard part.
Over 90% of the people who try to quit smoking, fail. That’s a pretty high washout rate, and represents not just folks who only lasted a day or a week, but those lasting months and years as well. That latter group was me. I’ve quit several times throughout my life, some of them lasting 2, 3 and 4 months or so. Once for over a year.
Why did I start back all those times? Sometimes I used the excuse of stress, or boredom, (interesting to be fooled by both extremes), and others I would fall for the trap of having just one or two smokes (maybe at a social occasion), and end up hooked again.
But in hindsight, the real underlying reason I started smoking again was because I chose to do so. I wanted the smoke more than the benefits of not smoking. What I didn’t truly understand then was “why I wanted the smoke”. That’s the reason one must not only be serious about quitting, but understand what’s really taking place so they can stay quit.
At various times, I’ve found it both agonizing and easy to quit smoking, but usually I found it easy. In a way this can be a danger because the easier it is to quit, the more you get that false sense of security that having done it once, it will be easy to do again if you start back.
Sometimes, I used something to help, like patches, gum, or drugs like Wellbutrin, and others went cold turkey. Although successful with all of them at one time or another, my preference is the cold turkey approach. When using one of the various stop smoking aids, I believe I succeeded in spite of them, not because of them.
The key is to change the way we think. It’s true that smoking is an addiction, and that nicotine, proven to be as addictive as heroin or cocaine, is the problem. But physically it’s easy to get off nicotine. Most smokers sleep all night without their nicotine addiction even waking them up. Fact is, anyone can go a day without smoking and the nicotine is mostly gone in 24 hours.
No the real problem is in the mind. We become addicted to the pleasure sensation created by chemicals in another part of the brain. An excerpt from a related article sums it up well:
An addiction to cigarettes is viewed as physical, but the root of addiction lies in the mind. The physical dependence on nicotine is only a minor part – within 24 hours, the body can be cleared of the drug. Since most quitters last far more than a day before they succumb, we know it’s not the body that leads them to smoke again, it’s the brain. To be more precise, it’s the mid-brain screaming out for the buzz it has come to associate with cigarettes.
The mid-brain is the impulsive, sensation-seeking, primitive area that becomes bathed in a neurochemical called dopamine when you repeat an action that, in the past, has provided excitement. It is dopamine that drives the addiction, setting up cravings that delude smokers into believing that they can’t function without it.
That’s rubbish, of course, but no one can simply wish away the delusion of being unable to concentrate, deal with emotional situations, or enjoy a party without cigarettes. Help is needed, and the best help is not a patch or an acupuncture needle, but the use of another part of the brain – the pre-frontal cortex, a more evolved area that makes choices.
Using one part of the brain to retrain the conditioned responses of another might sound like word play, but it is crucial. Most stop-smoking programmes don’t engage the pre-frontal cortex (instead of offering choices, they dictate and prohibit) and that’s why they may work for a few weeks, but will fail over the long term.
In my own experience, this is exactly what’s been going on during past attempts, but now that I understand it, I know how to deflect it. For anyone wondering, this is how I know I won’t succumb to starting smoking again.
So the bottom line is that we need to change the way we think, and make choices based on a clear understanding of why we smoke in the first place. I learned a lot about this in a book I read prior to quitting. It was by Allen Carr, and titled The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.
Yes, of course I was skeptical when my wife gave it to me, but the fact the author had used his own method to quit and stay quit for over 20 years was compelling. More so was that he quit a 30-year, 100 cigarette per day habit, cold turkey, without willpower, withdrawal pangs, weight gain, deprivation, or substitutes.
As it turns out, Allen’s book did in fact help me quit, just as it promised. I ended up reading it through twice, and referred to certain sections often during the first weeks after that last cigarette.
Interestingly, I was already aware of much of the information, but his teaching had some unique twists. One was to not try quitting until after finishing the book. Following this advice turned out to be quite illuminating.
But the big thing was learning to understand that though smoking is nicotine addiction, that’s not how to beat it. You have to conquer it in the mind, and what Allen did an excellent job of is teaching how that’s done, by a reversal of thinking.
For anyone wanting to quit smoking, I wholeheartedly recommend getting this book, however, you have to be ready to quit for it to be the most effective. In my case I could relate a bit to the author in not just having tried many times before, but with physical effects like shortness of breath becoming pronounced enough they were ever harder to ignore.
I’m also aware that because I’d quit so many times and then started again, I knew from experience what many of the lures and traps looked like. This is where the book can really help someone not as experienced, get better prepared to quit.
While I heartily recommend The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
So in conjunction with the book, Allen Carr also offers stop smoking clinics around the world where he and his staff assist those needing more hands-on help. He affirms that all one needs to know about how to quit successfully is provided in the book, but the clinics offer a more intense focus with a real person to take you through the process. As one might expect, the clinics are not cheap, but may be just what’s required for some folks. Also, they’re guaranteed, so if the first session doesn’t take, you can attend again. Information on them is in the back of the book.
So far I’ve mentioned only 2 approaches to stop smoking, each at opposite extremes in terms of both cost and time required.
But there are other alternatives. Many of them are a waste of time, but others are solid and offer the right fit for thousands of people. In looking at any quitting program, you need to be sure it focuses on the one area that allows for success, and that is the mind. Realize that if you aren’t successful in changing your thinking, you won’t be successful in quitting smoking.
Some folks find that reading and assimilating the necessary information for themselves just doesn’t work. They need more help for it to click. Perhaps a clinic approach would do the trick but at what cost?
As an alternative to these clinics, and for those wanting more than the book, there’s a compromise solution that gives a bit of both, but at a much more attractive price.
The Quit Smoking Right Now program is one that provides a digital product that gives you the teaching and material you would receive in a clinic session. If a more self-paced approach, but with clinic type guidance, is appealing then take a look a this program.
Again, they focus on changing the way one thinks about smoking and have a success rate of 90%. Read some of the stellar success stories about multi-pack a day lifetime smokers who followed the methods taught and found it easy to quit themselves.
All they needed was the right information and to be shown how to apply it in a way to change their thinking. Besides that, they offer a 100% refund if you don’t stop smoking - hard to beat that kind of backing!
No matter how you do it, if you’re a smoker, the best thing you can ever do for family and friends is quit smoking as soon as possible.
So nearing the six month mark, how am I doing?
Great! Improvements seem to come in spurts, with the most noticeable being the increased energy after only being quit for a couple days. Since then energy levels have continued to improve, plus the chest pains and tightness seem to be a thing of the past.
Shortness of breath is the big thing for me. It’s what I most want to be rid of, but seems to be taking the longest to come back. For sure, it’s much improved, but from talking with other long-time ex-smokers, it takes the longest to overcome. They tell me to expect the process to take a year or so.
In the meantime, I’m really liking the cost savings. Six months off the weed gives me an extra $720. With the sin taxes ever rising, the savings will surely keep growing each year. Even more sobering is that I have NOT have smoked 3,600 cigarettes.
That may not sound like much when compared to the nearly 300,000 I’ve consumed during a lifetime but I didn’t reach that number all at once. I got there one at a time and that’s how I’m stopping.
Keep that in mind whenever you experience a setback while quitting. It’s a process, and every cigarette you don’t smoke is a small success in and of itself.
Also remember you never really fail unless you stop trying.
Resources:
The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
Quit Smoking Right Now - immediate download available
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Proven relief for rotator cuff & shoulder injury
Most Read
- Stop Smoking For Good
- Quitting After 38 Years - Understanding
Rotator Cuff Injuries - Rotator Cuff Treatment
- How Anyone Can
Lose Weight Fast - Find the Easy Way to
Keep Fit Past Forty - Obesity in America
- Learn About Anxiety & Panic Disorders
- Panic Attacks Treatment
LOSE WEIGHT NOW?
See Fast Results With
This PROVEN Method
Click to Learn How!
Categories
- Aging
- Alternative Medicine
- Anxiety
- Care Providing
- Dementia
- Depression
- Diet
- Exercise
- Fitness
- Health Products
- Healthy Living
- Nutrition
- Pain Relief
- Smoking
- Stress & Time Management
- Treatments & Surgery
- Weight Management
Recently
- Eighteen Months Into the Stop Smoking Journey
- A Dazzling Health Gem – Infrared Sauna Health
- Are Low Carb Diets A Good Weight Loss Solution?
- Grow By Volunteering In Kenya And Other Destinations
- Home Fitness Equipment Helps Limit Sedentary Lifestyles
- A Water Aerobics Workout
- Losing Weight After Giving Birth
- Exercising In The Cold
- Choosing A Place To Get In Shape
- What Kind Of Control Do You Actually Have Over Aging?
[...] over a year and a half since I quit smoking, it seemed like a good time to provide an update to this journey. Last time I wrote on the subject, I’d been quit 6 months, and chalking up another year pushes my [...]