Smoking is at the least a habit, but more often an addiction, for many people. Unfortunately, habits can so quickly become such a routine part of your life that you stop being consciously aware of them. This is true of the habit of smoking which rapidly becomes a normal part of your daily life. An odd thing is that a habit can have a connection to a past event; especially an emotionally charged past event.

Making Connections

Since most habitual behaviours don’t require conscious thought (hey that’s why they are habits right?), we rarely spend time thinking about that habit. It can be quite illuminating to sit down in a quiet environment, away from riotous kids and niggling chores, and really reflect on your smoking habit. Go back in time through your memories and try to identify the precise moment you started smoking. As you travel through your memory banks you will probably make a connection, and not necessarily just one, with a specific event that had an impact on your smoking. It could be that a break-up with a cherished girlfriend or boyfriend in your teens started you smoking; or perhaps a negative family incident caused the habit to start.

By exploring how past events may have influenced your smoking you can determine whether in fact you need to resolve some deep emotional issue first before you can really tackle stopping smoking. If the event that is fuelling your smoking habits isn’t dealt with you will find it much harder to quit smoking.

Breaking Connections

Once you have identified one or more key past events that may have started you smoking you should seek ways to break the connections. There is scientific evidence in the realm of psychology that suggests we form memory links between the emotionally charged events that occur in our lives and our physical bodies.

You will be aware that when you recall a strongly emotional past event, whether positive or negative, there is often some physical feelings that seem to accompany the memory. This is the link mentioned previously; our thoughts produce physical reactions in our body. Fear is a classic example of this. When we think about something that frightens us we nearly always also actually feel the sensations that go with the emotion of fear even when the object of that fear isn’t near by; we are not in danger and yet we can manifest the physical feelings of our fear simply by thinking about what causes our fear. Phobias are the most well known form of this phenomenon.

When such a past event is linked in this way to smoking, for example when we remember something negative from the past our immediate reaction is to seek solace in a cigarette, it becomes very difficult to abandon the one thing that appears to help us i.e. the smoking. However, the good news is it is possible, and often very simple, to break these emotional connections and open the way to breaking the smoking habit completely.

Smoking has got to be one of the worst afflictions man has brought upon himself. As Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland put it, “A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.” Of course, in the old days people didn’t even know that there was a connection between smoking and becoming ill not only through cancer, but also via a whole host of other diseases.

The four big killers from cigarette smoking are lung cancer, heart attack, stroke and Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease or COPD. The lung cancer is not the only form of cancer that smokers put themselves at markedly higher risk of either.

Smokers represent 90% of all male lung cancer sufferers and 80% of all women lung cancer sufferers, of whom, 90% die within 5 years of diagnosis. Smoking also increases the risk of other cancers. Amongst the plethora of other diseases, smoking enhances the risk of cervical cancer, cancers of the mouth, lip and throat, cancer of the pancreas, bladder cancer, cancer of the kidney, stomach cancer, liver cancer and leukaemia.

Of course smokers are made totally aware of the illnesses that they risk as a result of their habit. Health warnings are emblazoned everywhere. Governments and health organisations around the world continue to berate smokers with warnings and images of the diseases they are risking as a result of smoking. The reason they argue being that smokers are intelligent and can make choices when given the appropriate evidence. As an ex-smoker (and a happy one at that), I disagree.

The problem with their argument is that these health organisations and governments think that smokers smoke out of choice. This is blatantly not so. To understand the flaw in this idea I suggest we do a little mental experiment:

Let us imagine we take a smoker and a non-smoker as our subjects. We then starve the subjects for 24 hours but give them water so they will not die. We then offer them some food of their individual choice, whether it be soup or stew or curry or cake, they get to choose. Then let us poison this food in front of each subject and tell the subject we are poisoning his or her food. Stick with me here… both of our subjects are famished and both know that their favourite food in front of them is laced with poison and will kill them if they eat it.

Which one is more likely to go ahead and eat the poisoned food, the smoker or the non-smoker?

Neither of them of course, but now ask yourself this question;

“Which one of them is no longer hungry because the food is poisoned?”

Do you see the problem? Just because something may be bad for you and you know that, does not necessarily mean you will not want it. Smoking is not a matter of choice, just as eating isn’t. Smoking to a smoker is a means of obtaining nicotine and the craving for that nicotine is going to be no less when you tell him or her that it’s delivered by a health destroying, cancer instigating, stroke inducing, emphysema causing, heart attack inducing cigarette.

Nicotine delivery is most effective when taken as smoke from cigarettes, rolling or pipe tobacco. It gets delivered fast to the bloodstream and fast to the brain where it is wanted. Nicotine patches, gums, sprays and inhalators all deliver nicotine but it takes several minutes for the delivery. Smoking takes less than 10 seconds to get the nicotine to the brain and that is important because the cravings are short lived but intense, hence smokers prefer to smoke than have a patch dribbling them a little of what they are addicted to.

Once you can understand that nicotine addiction is the problem and you understand that you must overcome that addiction, you build on your chances of becoming a happy non-smoker.

Part of the problem with the government sponsored and pharmaceutical company led solutions to smoking are that they re-enforce the belief that quitting smoking is difficult and they try to solve what they see as a problem of tobacco smoke by giving the addict the drug in a different form such as NRT.

For years now, NRT has been preached as the saviour of smokers around the world, just as methadone has been preached as the solution to heroin addiction. Neither are terribly effective at achieving the goal of bringing people back to normality; i.e. being nicotine or heroin free. Governments and health organisations need to think more about the addiction smokers have to cigarettes because of the nicotine than brow-beating them with bad news about the health effects.

Arguably 80% of smokers are motivated to quit smoking, but motive does not necessarily provide means and opportunity. If smoking is to be overcome, a smoker must not just “not want to smoke”, they must believe that they have no desire to smoke. Only once a smoker can lose the desire for cigarettes, can they become happy non-smokers. Understanding how they can reach the point of not desiring a cigarette is key in removing the perennial problem of relapsing ex-smokers.

Most smokers are afraid that they can’t quit, that cigarettes are more powerful than they are. Actually this is fear from the fear, because if you are still smoking, how can you know that it’s hard without cigarettes? This is a result from your habit that is controlling you so much that it won’t allow you to imagine how life can look like without smoking.

This point brings another question or excuse of yours. I love smoking; I love the ritual, etc. This is partially true, you love the time spent with yourself in that moment. But the cigarette will burn after two minutes, so why light it in the first place? She’ll burn but the pleasure will only last for two minutes. It will last for two minutes and only two minutes. No more. This conditioning will continue until you are brave enough to interrupt this pattern.

First thing you have to do is to hate that you’re controlled. How can you be a free human being, when someone or something controls you? This should be the first milestone for you. The rest are simply techniques that will help you substitute the smoking habit.

You can’t stop smoking without thinking and trying to implement a non-smoker habit.

After you are sure that you understand this, and only after you’re sure, follow these instructions:

o If you can hold out without smoking for only one minute, don’t you think that you can do it in the next minute? Sure you can. You should battle the craving by the minute. It is a much shorter time period to fight your battle and win. This makes the war all that much easier.

o Your first trigger occurs at a point where the body is conditioned to enjoy a cigarette along with a drink or after a meal, etc. These triggers will last for a maximum of 5 minutes. During these 5 minutes your entire body will convince you that it is okay to light the cigarette, that you have reason and it will come up with so many excuses that it will be hard for you to say no.

o Second, as I mentioned in the secret for becoming a non-smoker, you should not involve yourself in your personal fight with the habit. You can’t win your habit in this way, because there will be a period when you’re feeling “down” and that will be a good enough reason for lighting a cigarette.

o You should also be aware that you’ll be very confused in the first 3 days and this is normal and you should accept it. This is the period where your brain is forcing you to light a cigarette and attempts to convince you with what may seem “reasonable” excuses. Since you programmed your brain to feel pleasure whenever you light a cigarette, it is now telling you that something might be wrong without a cigarette or that something might be missing from your life. Your brain is like a big and mighty ship, but you’re the captain, and it will follow your navigation orders, but needs time to take the right course. There is also wind that is blowing your ship in different directions, and there is still a force that is pushing the ship towards the old navigation commands. Don’t forget the power that you as a captain posses, you can change the course of your ship in any direction you want.

By my experience you’ll need only 3 days to start feeling like a non-smoker.

o Another very helpful thing is to try to help some of your friends who are smokers. Try telling them about this techniques and theories and check their opinion. You can make some kind of pact, trying to work together to beat this habit. At the bottom of every post there is a link labeled “Tell a friend!”. Use this link to forward this message and at least remind your friends that they can quit. This can be very stimulating for you and your strength to quit smoking.