How To Quit Smoking

by Ted A. Moreno, Certified Hypnotherapist

The history of smoking goes back to 5000 BC. Smoking has been associated with religious ceremonies, cleansing rituals, divination and even spiritual enlightenment.

Today, however, the dangers of smoking are well known. Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death in the world. In the United States, about 500,000 deaths per year are attributed to smoking related diseases [1]. At least half of all lifelong smokers die early as a result of smoking [2]. Thinking about quitting smoking? If you want to live a long healthy life you should be.

Some people are able to quit smoking on their own, but research show that the best way to quit is through evidence based smoking cessation technologies and programs. Seventy percent of smokers will attempt to quit smoking without using a program and 90 percent will relapse. (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.)

Ready to try quitting smoking on your own? Here are some tips to increase your chances.

• Have a plan. To quit smoking, you must be prepared. Pick a goal date when you will smoke your last cigarette and start your life as a non-smoker. Between two weeks and 30 days from today.
• Get a physical. Be aware of any health problems that may exist. It's better to know. Make sure it's ok for you to exercise.
• Get regular exercise. Get your health back. Walking is a great way to start, riding a bike or doing exercise videos at home. Exercising will also help you deal with negative feelings that may arise in your first days of quitting.
• Prepare to quit. If you smoke over a pack a day, give yourself two weeks to prepare your mind to quit smoking. If under a pack, give yourself a week. Adjust if necessary and based on your intuition and experience. During your preparing to quit period:
• Write down all the reasons why it's so important for you to quit smoking. The more emotional, the better. ("I don't want my kids to watch me die of lung cancer" for example.) Write your reasons down on a few 3x5 cards and carry them with you. Put them up where you will see them. Read them several times a day.
• Change your diet. Since nicotine acts as an appetite suppressant, you don't want to gain a weight after you quit smoking. (Very common after people quit smoking.) Start to eat three healthy meals a day with healthy snacks in between. Increase protein and reduce refined carbs.
• In your preparation period, start to scramble your smoking pattern. For instance, if you smoke in your left hand, start smoking in your right. If you like smoking on the front porch, change your smoking spot to some uncomfortable place like out by the trashcans. Stop buying cartons and buy one pack at a time, changing brands each time you buy a pack. Start cutting cigarettes in half.
• FIND REPLACEMENTS. In my opinion, this is the number one secret to successfully quit smoking. There are many reasons people smoke: to ease boredom, reduce stress, relax, as a reward, or simply because it's a habit. Of course, there is the addiction component as well. Find things to replace smoking with and have them ready on your quit day. Some examples:
  1. Find ways to stay busy to keep from being bored. At work instead of a smoke break, take a short walk.
  2. Keep your mouth busy using sunflower seeds in the shell, gum, sugar free suckers or hard candy, licorice, carrot sticks, celery sticks, pretzels, flavored toothpicks. Some people say that putting a Listerine slip in their mouth takes away the urge. Drinking milk works too.
  3. Keep your hands busy with a stress ball, or an object you can keep in your hand like a pen or small stone.
  4. Drink lots of water.
  5. Take a Vitamin B supplement to help with stress.
  6. Deep breaths.
  7. Use the nicotine patch, gum or prescribed smoking cessation meds if you need to, they are much more effective when used in combination with the techniques I'm giving you here.
• Use affirmations. Use positive self-talk such as "I am free!" or "I can do this" or "I am in control" or I'm worth taking care of " or "I am healthy, happy and free from addiction." Make it a habit to say them several times a day.
• ON YOUR QUIT SMOKING DAY: Tell everyone what you are doing to make yourself accountable. Pick your quit day carefully; a day when you have time to focus on your goal.
• After you quit smoking, avoid drugs like alcohol and marijuana which can decrease your motivation. I suggest giving them up at least for the first month of being a nonsmoker, longer if they are major triggers that make you want to smoke. If coffee makes you want to smoke, cut down or eliminate it for a while.
• Get lots of sleep. Your body needs energy to heal.
• Get your teeth cleaned and get checked for oral cancer.
• Get your car washed and detailed if you smoked in your car.
• Avoid situations that will tempt you. Stay away from bars and parties where people will be smoking. Ask those close to you to refrain from smoking in front of you.
• Give yourself a reward. Have a plan to get a massage after 30 days of smoke free. Or take a trip. Or buy something for yourself.
• DON'T KID YOURSELF! Don't even think for a second that you can have "just one" after you quit. Chances are you can't. "Just one" can undo all of your hard work. Begin to see cigarettes for what they are: a deadly poison that you want to avoid at all costs.

Hypnosis was found to be more than twice as effective as quitting "cold turkey," and over three times as effective as nicotine replacement therapy, according to a a study presented October 22, 2007 at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.

Here are some online resources that can be helpful in your goal to become free from smoking:

• Nicotine Anonymous: http://www.nicotine-anonymous.org/
• Stop Smoking Support Forum: http://www.as3-web.org/discuss/
• Quit Net: http://forums.quitnet.com/community/talk/
• Ex: http://www.becomeanex.org/

http://www.hypnosis.edu/articles/quitting-smoking

Why Do People Continue Smoking?

Everyone knows the negative health effects of cigarettes... but why do so many people continue smoking?

People smoke for many different reasons. Smoking is very addictive because tobacco contains a powerful drug called nicotine. Smokers have also been influenced by the clever marketing tactics of tobacco companies for many years.
Nicotine as a drug

Cigarettes are deliberately designed to give you a fast nicotine hit. It takes just 10 seconds for the drug to reach your brain from inhaled cigarette smoke. Nicotine causes addiction in much the same way as heroin or cocaine. It is just as addictive as these ‘harder’ drugs.

Nicotine is a stimulant that increases your heart rate and affects many different parts of your brain and body. Smokers get a high because nicotine triggers the release of dopamine in the brain - a chemical linked to feelings of pleasure.

This also means that smokers start to make a mental link between the act of smoking and feeling good. Because of this, smokers can also become addicted to abstract things like the taste of cigarettes or the feeling of smoking, as well as the nicotine itself.

Withdrawal symptoms

Addiction explains why giving up smoking can cause nicotine withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms include cravings, irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, restlessness and disturbed sleep.

As your body adjusts to the lack of nicotine, these symptoms will start to disappear and most will go away within a month. Withdrawal symptoms can be difficult to cope but the benefits to your health are well worth it.

Nicotine as a poison

Nicotine is a neurotoxin (a poison that kills nerve cells) found in tobacco plants. It acts as a defence mechanism to stop them from being eaten by animals.

However, in cigarettes, the level of nicotine is too low to cause poisoning. And the nicotine in nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is a safe way to come off the nicotine in cigarettes. Using NRT can double your chances of successfully quitting.

Tobacco advertising and promotion

Half of smokers die from smoking-related diseases. The tobacco industry needs new customers to replace the 114,000 people who are killed by smoking in the UK each year. Cigarette manufacturers make sure that:
they know exactly why people smoke
they cleverly market products to attract new customers.

In the past cigarette manufacturers have deliberately targeted children and young people. The industry spends a great deal of money on making cigarettes seem glamorous, appealing, fashionable and attractive. Most smokers started when they were young and image conscious. Young smokers often find it difficult to give up in later life.

Cigarette advertising is now banned in the UK. So the industry is developing new and subtle tactics to avoid prosecution.

Stress and relaxation

Many people claim that smoking helps them to cope with stress. But in fact, nicotine is a stimulant and won’t help you to relax. Smokers probably think a cigarette makes them feel better because when they aren’t smoking they suffer from nicotine withdrawal.

Other personal reasons for smoking

People have many other personal reasons for smoking. Smokers may:
use smoking as a support for when things go wrong
enjoy smoking with others as a shared activity
use smoking to start conversations and meet new people
smoke to make themselves look more confident and in control
think that cigarettes help them to keep their weight down
have a cigarette when they’re feeling bored or lonely
smoke when they need a break or a moment to themselves.

Knowing why you smoke is one of the first steps towards giving up.

Hypnosis to quit smoking

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/whydopeoplesmoke/smoking-and-cancer-why-do-people-smoke

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/home/

How To Quit Smoking With Hypnosis

Along with losing weight, quitting smoking is probably the biggest business for hypnotherapists because it is something so many people wish to do. But just why are there so many people out there who want to stop smoking but struggle to do so?

Everyone knows the long term damage smoking causes, there is evidence of it even on cigarette packets themselves nowadays. Cigarettes are a cocktail of more than 7000 chemicals that cause high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer of the mouth, throat, lungs, circulation problems to name but a few of main dangers (to both smokers and the people they smoke around), and in combination with causing poor oral hygiene these factors would surely put most people off, wouldn’t they?  (If you want to know more reasons to stop smoking click here) (Or here) (Or here)  

The cost is also frightening, in the UK cigarettes cost something in the region of 7 GBP (approx. 10 USD), so if a single pack are smoked daily you’re looking at around 50 GBP per week (75 USD), 2600 GBP per year (3900 USD) - and if someone did manage to survive 50 years of smoking your looking at a bill of 130,000 GBP (195,000 US) for the pleasure! And that's if prices stay at their current level which on current form they won't with taxes rising everywhere, not to mention the excess drinks that are bought to combine the smoke with as well as the time and cost of dashing out for cigarettes on a regular basis. Read more on the price of cigarettes.  I'm sure the average persons finances could do without such a burden to bear.  The smoking ban that has taken effect in many places around the world has also left smokers suffering often outside in the cold, huddled in groups together by doorways facing exclusion from numerous public places, because of the known effects that can be transferred lethally to others. To any non-smoker there seems little going for smoking… yet why do so many people continue with it despite wanting to stop?

True addiction is not to be underestimated. I’ve heard many people argue that they could stop eating something like cheese despite being addicted to it, so why couldn’t a smoker? Cheese for one thing does not have the addictive chemicals in it that cigarettes do. Physically the body craves the nicotine content it has become accustomed to over time. The mind also craves the relaxing sensation smoking brings, with many smokers claiming it is the only thing that allows them to ‘de-stress’. Despite the ‘anti-smoking ban’ smokers still see smoking as a very social pastime, and the ‘Let’s go for a smoke’ mentality bonds them together in a kind of exclusive club.

So where does hypnotherapy fit in? Hypnosis has been proved a successful method to help people quit smoking because it tackles at least a large segment of the problem at its root. Nicotine gum/patches may well prevent the body from craving the nicotine, but what about the habitual processes and the de-stressing factors that have little to do with the nicotine? Hypnotherapy tackles those very issues.

To understand hypnotherapy a basic knowledge of the two parts of the mind must be taken into consideration. On one side you have the conscious aspect of mind, the reasoning, critical ‘voice inside the head’ that is the voice of our thoughts and our decision maker. On the other side is the subconscious mind, the aspect we are not aware of but regulates all parts of ourselves we are not actively thinking about e.g. our breathing, regulation of hormones. The subconscious is also the seat of our emotions and our habitual behaviour, behaviour that has become so embedded we no longer think about it. Smoking addiction would fall into this category. Smokers light up a cigarette so frequently they no longer think about it and therefore we know this pattern of behaviour is controlled by the subconscious mind. Read more about the background of hypnosis and the subconscious here. 

The conscious mind of the smoker understands all the reasons stated above telling them they should not smoke. The conscious mind even agrees they should stop and actively attempts to stop smoking. But this decision has not transferred into the deeper subconscious that is still programmed to want cigarettes. The subconscious will send urges and cravings to the conscious mind continually for however long it takes until a cigarette is reached for, be it days, weeks, months or even years. The subconscious will always overcome the conscious in the end.

What hypnotherapy does is break the old unwanted thought patterns. Under hypnosis the conscious mind is bypassed leaving the subconscious open to manipulation as though it can be talked to directly. In this state the subconscious can be reprogrammed to behave in a different way, and so the hypnotherapist might reinforce the knowledge that smoking has so many drawbacks, giving smoking a negative association in the subconscious, while offering healthy new ways to de-stress and enjoy quiet moments. Using simple self-hypnosis/meditativemethods the individual can learn relaxation techniques that do not require smoking. They can also learn how to get rid of the urges that come to them so frequently without the need of a cigarette using visualisation and breathing techniques. After all, smoking is itself often a process of deep breathing and inner thoughts, so what better way to replace it than a like for like method?

Another key method in a hypnosis stop smoking program is to change the physical habits of smoking. Breaking the engrained habits even in small ways can help shift and eradicate the habits in the long term. For instance, if a smoker is used to a cigarette after lunch sitting in their favourite chair, smoking Marlboro reds with their right hand – that should be one of the first things altered. Change the brand to something different like Camel, smoke with the left hand and do not smoke after lunch or in your favourite chair – try a new less comfortable place at a different time. Of course going cold turkey is one way forward, but many find it easy to taper off and if you do so while breaking your old habits for many it is easier to give up for good in the long run.

Quitting smoking is not easy, and for a true addict will power alone is not always enough. Using hypnotic method hand in hand with strong will power makes stopping a lot easier, but it is very important to stress that the will power must be there and there must be a strong desire to quit smoking in the first place for hypnotherapy to work. Hypnosis can’t alter your opinion, so if people are urging you to stop and you don’t really want to, hypnosis just won't work for you. But if you do want to stop and are having trouble doing so under your own steam then hypnotherapy can certainly be a fantastic tool to quit permanently.

If you have a strong desire to be a non-smoker why not send me an email and let me know about it?