If you are reading this article, you, like me, are sick of cigarettes. Do you want to quickly end this addiction that is ruining your life? If the answer is yes, then I have a method for you that will solve the problem of cigarette addiction in a short time. I will tell you how to quit smoking quickly and easily, without harming your health and without buying all kinds of garbage that makes it even worse. And not just leave, but fix the desired model and not break down in the future.
Smoker's Story
In general, I was introduced to cigarettes in about 7th grade - my brother and I climbed construction sites and learned to smoke "in fluff". Our parents, of course, forbade us to smoke, so we had to constantly come up with ways to hide the cigarettes and get rid of the persistent smell of smoke.
Then came companies where everyone smoked. There was some kind of fashion, they say, if you don’t smoke, then it’s not cool. Everything is different now, but they were different some time ago. So, surrounded by smokers, the habit became more and more ingrained in me. I smoked whenever possible, and the likelihood of being burned by adults only gave the process a greater instinct.
But at 16 I had a click in my head and decided to give up cigarettes. Just like that, abruptly, with willpower. To be honest, there was a positive moment from this, though not for long. After a few weeks I changed my mind and said I can smoke when I drink. That is, when I am sober, I do not smoke, but I can smoke at parties. And as you probably already guessed, I didn’t stop there. Although there is a positive effect - I smoked for 4 years.
But there is also a huge drawback to this method. Because there was a strong connection between smoking and alcohol in my brain, it pulled me to drink every time I just wanted to smoke.
But I didn't stop there either. In my third year of college, I got a job in a taxi and lit a smoke there. I smoked almost a pack a day, and when I drank more. And that continued until the fall of 2017. That, roughly speaking, was my smoking experience for about 10 years.
How I quit smoking
Friends, in this chapter I will tell you how I went through the process of quitting smoking, and then in the very way how to do it. Therefore, if you are lazy to read, you can move on to reading the next chapter. A lot of people ask me how I managed it, but it’s awkward to be smart because the method is pretty simple.
So in October 2017 I woke up in the morning after a busy party and I felt bad. I did not fall asleep, I had a severe headache from the alcohol I drank the day before, the vestibular apparatus did not work properly. I smoked a cigarette and got in the car. The car was stuffy and smelled badly of fishbone. On top of that, I started to feel sick. In general, a whole range of negative feelings.
At that point, I started to feel nauseous and the taste of a recently smoked cigarette was in my mouth. I looked out the window: it was beautiful autumn weather outside, the sun was shining, and the leaves were falling from the trees. And then I was overwhelmed by very pleasant memories from my childhood, associated with this time and a similar landscape. There was a pleasant connection in me to the situation in front of the window with the one from my childhood when I felt great, not like now in the car. What did I do next?
My 3 current steps
- I just associated intense suffering and negativity at this point with cigarette smoking. And I felt with my whole body that I felt so bad from her now. It was not difficult to do so, for there was an unpleasant taste of tobacco in his mouth. Plus added constant shortness of breath and monetary costs.
- Then I looked out the window again and fully associated the pleasant feeling with quitting smoking. Again, it wasn’t hard to do because in that childhood situation I hadn’t smoked and I felt great. In addition, I added the pleasant feeling that without cigarettes I can safely climb stairs and not suffocate. I also added money pluses: if I don’t buy cigarettes, I can buy myself a useful thing.
- At the height of my emotional state, I made a clear, conscious decision to quit smoking forever.
It all took me about 10 seconds. The emotional momentum was so strong that I immediately threw the package in the trash.
But these steps will not be enough in the long run, so I then had to apply a few more steps, which also worked successfully. You will read a little about them below.
Now for the fun part. I managed to quit smoking quite by accident. I didn’t prepare for this decision, I didn’t go to the doctors, I didn’t buy smoking gum, patches, sprays and other nonsense. A few months later, I started reading Tony Robbins ’book on self-improvement and discovered exactly these methods that I unknowingly applied!
6 steps to eliminate addiction
These principles are based on neuro-associative conditioning. Here they are:
- Make a clear, informed decision about why you want to quit smoking. That's what you want, not your loved ones.
- Use leverage: Link intense emotional satisfaction with quitting smoking right now and intense suffering if you don’t stop right now. Do something like what I did or think of a different way to do it. Most importantly, you need to feel strong emotions and associate them with smoking.
- We need to break old behavior. For example, I went to work in a smoker and talked about work with colleagues, sipping smoke. After I quit smoking, I started communicating with them in non-smoking places.
- Create a new alternative. But this step, friends, is most important if you are focused in the long run. The fact is that quitting smoking alone is not enough. You have to replace the pleasure that cigarettes have brought you with something else. Something that will not create side effects for you. For example, instead of going to smoke with friends, I watched an interesting TV series or drank tea. You need to come up with a stimulating alternative to smoking by looking at your reasons for smoking. Let’s say you took out a cigarette when you started worrying. Exercising or achieving some short-term goal helps a lot in this feeling.
- You must install "forever" instead of "at least a week". And repeat the steps described above until it becomes a habit. It took me about 3 weeks for this.
- Design a reward system. This is a very important step. You should know that if you don’t smoke today, you can afford to buy some nice little things; if a week, then the matter is bigger; if a month, then a vacation abroad. That's exactly what I did - I was constantly encouraged until the habit completely disappeared.
Conclusion
Friends, the problem with smoking is primarily a psychological addiction, not a physical one. There is a huge list of ways to quit smoking. Replace a regular cigarette with an electronic one, stick a band-aid and a chewing gum. If you open a search engine and ask how you can quit smoking on your own, you’ll see a bunch of drugs, services, and funny ways.
Name at least one person who put on a cast and got rid of an addiction. For example, I do not know such people. The fact is that all of these medications only partially alleviate physical dependence. And she, believe me, is not so strong already. But this is a lucrative business because people are buying. They buy and hope for a miraculous method that will work in their case. That will not happen.
This pretty simple way helped me quit smoking on my own. So I recommend it to you too.