If you are reading this article, then like me, you are fed up with cigarettes. Do you want to quickly end this addiction that spoils your life? If the answer is yes, then I have a method for you that will solve the problem of cigarette addiction in no time. I will tell you how to quit smoking quickly and easily, without harming your health and without buying all kinds of junk that makes it even worse. And not just give up, but fix the desired model and not break down in the future.
Smoker's story
In general, I became familiar with cigarettes in the seventh grade: my brother and I went up to the construction sites and learned to smoke "in puff. "Naturally, our parents forbade us to smoke, so we constantly had to come up with ways to hide cigarettes and get rid of the lingering smell of smoke.
Then came the companies where everyone smoked too. There was a kind of fashion, they say, if you don't smoke then it's not cool. Everything is different now, but before the times were different. Then, surrounded by smokers, the habit became more and more ingrained in me. He smoked whenever possible, and the likelihood of being burned by adults only gave the process more impetus.
But at 16, I felt a click in my head and decided to quit smoking. So, suddenly, by force of will. To be honest, there was a positive moment of this, although not for long. After a couple of weeks, I changed my mind, I said that I can smoke when I drink. I mean, when I'm sober, I don't smoke, but at parties I can smoke. And as you probably already guessed, I didn't stop there. Although there is a positive effect, for 4 years I smoked a lot.
But there is also a big downside to this method. Since there was a strong association between smoking and alcohol in my brain, I was drawn to drinking whenever I just wanted to smoke.
But I didn't stop there either. In my third year of studies at the university, I got a job in a taxi and there I already lit a full cigarette. He smoked almost a pack a day, and when he drank more. And this continued until the fall of 2017. I mean, roughly speaking, my experience as a smoker was about 10 years.
How I quit smoking on my own
Friends, in this chapter I will tell you how I went through the process of quitting, and then how to do it. Therefore, if you are too vague to read, you can continue reading the next chapter. It's just that a lot of people ask me how I handled it, but it's inconvenient to be smart, because the method is quite simple.
So in October 2017, I woke up in the morning after a hectic party and felt bad. I did not sleep enough, I had a severe headache from the alcohol I had drunk the day before, the vestibular apparatus was not working properly. I smoked a cigarette and got in the car. The car was loaded and smelled unpleasantly of the scent of herringbone. On top of that, I started to feel bad. In general, a wide range of negative feelings.
At that moment I started to feel bad and my mouth tasted like a freshly smoked cigarette. I looked out the window: it was beautiful fall weather outside, the sun was shining brightly and leaves were falling from the trees. And then I was flooded with very pleasant memories of childhood, related to this particular climate and a similar landscape. In me there was a pleasant association of the situation outside the window with that of childhood when I was feeling great, and not like now in the car. What did I do next?
My 3 instant steps
- I just connected intense suffering and negativity at this very moment with a smoked cigarette. And I felt with my whole body that it was because of her that I felt so bad now. It was not difficult to do this, because there was an unpleasant taste of tobacco in the mouth. More constant shortness of breath and added cash costs.
- Next, I looked out the window again and completely related the pleasant sensation to quitting smoking. Again, it was not difficult at all to do this, because in that situation of my childhood I did not smoke and I felt great. Also, I added the nice feeling that without cigarettes I can safely climb the stairs and not suffocate. I also added monetary advantages: if I don't buy cigarettes, I can buy myself something useful.
- At the peak of my emotional state, I made a clear and conscious decision to quit smoking for good.
This all took about 10 seconds. The emotional change was so strong that I immediately threw the package in the trash.
But these steps won't be enough in the long run, so I had to apply a few more steps, which also worked fine. You will read about them a little further down.
Now the fun part. I managed to quit smoking by accident. I did not prepare for this decision, I did not go to the doctors, I did not buy smoking gum, plasters, sprays and other nonsense. A few months later, I started reading Tony Robbins' book on self-improvement and came across these same methods that I unknowingly applied.
6 steps to get rid of addiction
These principles are based on neuroassociative conditioning. Here they are:
- Make a clear and informed decision about why you want to quit smoking. It is you who want this, not your loved ones.
- Use leverage: Link intense emotional pleasure with quitting right now and intense suffering if you don't now. Do something like what I did, or think of a different way to do it. The most important thing is to feel strong emotions and associate them with smoking.
- We need to break the old behavior. For example, I used to go to the smoking room at work and talk business with my colleagues, drinking smoke. After I quit smoking, I started communicating with them in "non-smoking" places.
- Create a new alternative. But this step, friends, is the most important if you are focused on the long term. The fact is, quitting is not enough. You need to replace the pleasure that cigarettes gave you with something else. Something that does not produce side effects. 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 examining your reasons for smoking. Let's say you pulled out a cigarette when you started to worry. Exercising or achieving a short-term goal helps a lot to overcome this feeling.
- You should install "forever" instead of "at least a week". And repeat the actions described above until it becomes a habit. It took me about 3 weeks for this.
- Create a reward system. This is a very important step. You should know that if you don't smoke today, you can afford to buy yourself some nice little thing; if it is a week, then the thing is bigger; if it's a month, then a vacation abroad. I did just that: I constantly encouraged myself until the habit completely disappeared.
Conclusion
Folks, the smoking problem is primarily a psychological addiction, rather than a physical one. There is a huge list of ways to quit smoking. Replace a regular cigarette with an electronic one, stick on a patch, chew gum. If you open a search engine and ask how you can quit on your own, you will see a bunch of ridiculous drugs, services, and ways.
Name at least one person who put on the cast and got rid of the addiction. For example, I don't know those people. The fact is that all these drugs only partially relieve physical dependence. And she, believe me, is not so strong anymore. But this is a profitable business, because people buy. They buy and hope for a miracle method that will work for them. This will not happen.
This fairly simple way helped me quit smoking addiction on my own. That's why I recommend it to you too.