Stop Smoking!

[ihatepeopleidontlike]

Hey guys newbie here,ive looked all through steves archive and also the posts on this forum and im quite surprised there isnt a thread directly related to smoking.Its something that i really need help with,ive tried a lot of different methods to stop but none really seem to work FOR GOOD!

I once quite for six months through sheer belief/wilpower and somehow a situation where i was offered a ciggarette came up and i suddenly forgot why i had stoped and started thinking they wernt so bad...after about a week i was smoking more than ever.

Its said the first three days are hardest and when your passed them the craving start to ware off gradually and i know this is true.I stoped for 3 days last week,on the third day the craving was so bad i HAD to get a ciggarette!

Can anyone suggest a way they think might be helpful or any suggestions at all they think might help thanks,ihatepeopleidontlike.

[The David]

I don't have any experience with smoking, but I can bump the topic for you.

[kpreston]

My dad had some results with hypnosis. You may want to look into that. Good luck with your addiction.

[Believer]

I quit smoking after deciding I wanted to get fit again, I removed all the items related with smoking, like ashtrays, lighters etc from my house.

It seemed pretty easy for me though, I don't know why, I had been smoking 30 a day (much more when I was drinking) for about 8 year. One day I decided I was sick of not being able to run, of not being able to think clearly because I always had a craving, of having bad skin and looking old and most of all I was sick of waking up in the mornings coughing and wheezing.

So I decided to get as fit as possible.. I haven't touched a cigarette since. The nicotine craving only lasts two days, after that all you have to do is beat the routine of having one and that's not hard if you're serious.

Oh and keep yourself out of situations where you're going to get offered one for at least a week, it might seem a bit harsh missing out on certain things for that time, but a week is worth it, hell, a month is worth it if it means you're not going to die from something horrible or suffer with bad breathing for the rest of you life.

[Razo]

I've never smoked in my life, but i believe that with just about achieving anything, an incentive can usually give you quite a push. Give yourself rewards for when you pass a certain amount of time, or equally punish yourself when you fail to do something, put all the money you'd otherwise be using for cigerettes in a box and wait for a long time, after a while, look in and realise how much you could save. Tell people about your ambition to stop, you'll be much more inclined to continue once you know of the pressure or promises that you may have kept others (be careful with that one though).

Alternatively you could try using an intention-manifestation technique to help you get rid of it? write down your goal in a clear and easy to understand sentence or short paragraph, post it up nice and large and read it to yourself out loud several times of day for at least 60 seconds at a time, eventually over time you'll convince yourself how much better life is without them. visualise life without them, visualise the harms of cigerettes and the benefits of living a healthy life without them, such as getting fit like 'believer' suggested.

i wish you the best of luck!

[YouseffTheSheep]

Have a good friend your really trust beat the crap out of you ever time you reach for a pack fo cigarettes.

[free spirit]

Hmmm as a smoker myself, it would be great to hear a few suggetsions on how to stop from other people who have been successful.

People I know that have given up is through hypnosis, reading Alan Carr and by sheer will power!

If you are ready and serious about stopping, then you will find the answer of how. I have given up a few times and started again, because I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my old "friend". Maybe you are just not ready?

[skinnyninja]

I managed to quit smoking successfully and I have over a year and a half nicotine-free. Here is an excerpt from my blog on how I did it:

So my suggestion? Quit cold turkey. I know that sounds like a death sentence. After I had tried and failed to quit smoking so many times, even with the help of the nicotine patch, I felt that I would have no chance going cold turkey. But it worked. Unbelievably, it worked for me and I stayed quit. However, my success was not a matter of will power—I can assure you. I have tried and failed so many times before this. Here is what worked for me:

Don’t smoke no matter what.

Don’t use any nicotine products—the patch, the gum, the lozenges, the inhalers, etc.

Don’t overdo the sweets and sugars. Chew sugar-free gum. (NOT nicotine gum). Chew toothpicks.

Eat smaller portions of food, but do it more frequently throughout the day. Don’t binge on food! Concentrate on purposely eating much slower than usual.

Drink juice.

Moderately reduce your caffeine intake, especially if you are a coffee drinker.

Here is what really clinched it for me though: I took a few days off of work for the beginning of my quit. On the first day off, I quit smoking at night before going to bed. I woke up the next day and started flushing my system by drinking massive amounts of cranberry juice. I drank the stuff all day long. By night time I was getting into some more serious cravings. Instead of going to sleep though, I stayed up all night long, flushing my system out further and becoming extra tired. At nine o’clock the next morning I was still awake, dead tired, and entering the worst of my withdrawals. See the timing there? I was extra, extra tired when I was approaching the worst part of my physical withdrawal. I believe this was the key to my success—because at this point, I was able to lie down and sleep for about 24 hours straight—right through the peak of my body’s withdrawals. I literally stayed asleep for over 20 hours. When I finally got up, I could tell that the cravings where subsiding. I was through the worst of it. By a long shot, I was through the worst of it. Every day after that, it got a little easier each day. At the end of day five I was telling people that I was surprised at how easy this was turning out to be.

[hkalchemy]

If you want to stop, just stop. I honestly think it's this easy.

I struggled with it for many years, but one day I just got so sick of it, I wanted to stop so much that I did. And that's all.

[jwz]

You need to be in the right mood to quit smoking.
If you don't REALLY want to quit, there's no way you're gonna succeed.

The thing is that you need to find every single reason that you WANT to smoke and prove them wrong.
By doing this, after a while nicotine will be 100% negative for you.

Read all you can on WhyQuit - the Internet's leading cold turkey quit smoking resource .
Then when you feel that you're ready for it, go ahead and quit.

I also recommend Allen Carr's 'The easy way to stop smoking' if you want to spend your money on it.

Remember that when you're feeling odd or bad it's not because your body wants a cigarette but because your body is healing itself.

There is NO "one single puff". One puff is likely to throw you back into being a full-time smoker.

You're a nicotine-addict. So am I.


After the last cigarette:

After 20 minutes, your heartbeat falls to normal.

During the initial 72 hours your body is going to remove the nicotine left in your body.
(on the 4th day, you're "nicotine-free")

After 7-10 days, your body will have learned to adjust your bloodsugar etc. by itself.
This is the reason that you might feel odd every now and then. Your body needs to learn being normal again.
Nicotine makes your body release bloodsugar almost instantly. When eating, bloodsugar is released 20 mins AFTER the 1st bite

After only a couple of days after quitting, you will start noticing the benefits of quitting.

After approx. 2-3 months your body will feel "boosted". You will have much more stamina that you had as a smoker.

[Jonathan Mead]

For someone that quit smoking 9 months ago, I know how you're feeling. One of the best things to do is shift your intention from "not smoking" or "quitting smoking" to breathing easy and clean lungs, and having lots of energy. This shift in my thinking helped me stop attracting smoking and start attracting health.

Another tip, don't reward yourself for not smoking for a certain amount of time with a cigarette. I used to do this all the time and it did not help me whatsoever.