Aa
Day One of hopefully many.
So I have smoked for too many years. Quit once (for someone else) for 2 years, got mad at him and started back again in June. Trying to kick the habit again for myself and today is the first day. Last time I quit I used the patch and Welbutrin for a week that was all. This time I am trying the patch again (and have several times since June.) I dont 100% agree with the patches, as it still gives you the nicotene. My main reason for using them is because I dont have that hard of a time with the cravings, just the mood swings and of course the mental side of things. I am so used to smoking that even with no cigs I will still reach for one when I get in the car out of mental habit, which I think is far more harder to get over than the actual addiction. I dont like the patches, they make me feel horrible most of the time, give me muscle cramps where ever I stick them on at and make me feel kinda drunk, but I know if I have one on I wont smoke due to the simple fact that I dont want to be in the hospital for nicotene overdose. I also find that they give you a huge jolt when you first put them on and then have completely stopped working by about mid day. Does anyone have any advice on how to fight the mental habit and mood swings without any kinda of replacement therapy or medical intervention (including Chantix, too expensive)
That was very well said Ian! I felt your resolve and I know what you meant about the "click" that goes off and you finally know that it's over : )
Most smokers are under the impression that smoking relieves stress and anxiety! I thought it was also true, until I quit and experienced a more calming life!
Thanks for sharing your experiences with all of us : )
Kathy Jo
Most smokers are under the impression that smoking relieves stress and anxiety! I thought it was also true, until I quit and experienced a more calming life!
Thanks for sharing your experiences with all of us : )
Kathy Jo
Hi April
think that may people struggle at first because they think quitting is just a case of out willing the part of you that wants to smoke. In other words trying to muster
enough willpower to resist smoking.
I have a diferrent approach and theory to what may be required. There are two things you have to achieve before quitting. One is to change your perception about what a cigarette can actually do for you and the second is to gain the permission of your inner self to let go of smoking as a safety net.
Perception.
I had many attempts to quit before I finally quit for the last time. I know it is the last time because something changed inside me. It was what some people may call a reverlation. A bolt out of the blue, A bang on the head. Whatever you want to call it it was an awakening
experience.
It started after someone asked me a question.
"why do you smoke ?"
a simple, innocent question that had me reaching for the
answers I always gave, I am addicted to nictoine, it is a habit, I enjoy it. But on this occasion I said nothing. I just stared into space and thought.
What is it about these dried leaves that has me so
miserable? I done't enjoy smoking, I tollerate it.
It is not a habit it is a security measure against anxiety and if I am only addicted to nicotine then every smoker should be able to stop with NRT.
For the first time since I started smoking at 11 years old I asked myself the question.
"What do cigarettes ACTUALLY do ?"
not what do I THINK cigarettes do but what do the really, actually do ?
The answer I have since discovered is absolutely nothing. Oh, apart form one thing. They actually give you anxiety..
That may soundstrange to people who smoke as the one thing every smoker believes is that smoking relieves there Anxiety. What I had to do was go back to
well before I smoked my first cigarette. Most people will perhaps only look as far back as their first. But for me it all happened well before then. I saw most of my family smoke. My mum, brother, aunties and uncles. all smoked. They would tell me time and again, " never
let me catch you smoking, It will kill you" followed by them turning around and lighting one up. So the clear message to me was. Wow, they know cigarettes will kill them yet they still do it. Smoking must be fantastic.
Then there was the many films and T.V programms
that showed beutiful, successfull, tough, rebelleous often rich people smoking their heads off. At that age I wanted to be like that.
So by the time it came to eleven and that first cigarette was put in my hand I was alredy a smoker. In my head I had a vision, a concept, a perception of what i thought smoking was.
So when I did finally light that first cigarette and it made me sick and dizzy, afraid and excited I was sure I had done something wrong. As the chemicals and
additives in the cigarette started to react with various hormones in my body it made me feel something that should have been reserved for the moments in my life that are very rare.
The chemicals in the Tobacco had triggered the primal reaction called the Fight or Flight response. It is a thing that should only be activated in extreme danger. It is there to make sure you can stand and defend yourself or run away to ensure survival. But here I was in the midst of full blown fear with no way of switching it off. normally when the threat has gone the body will naturally react by secreting what is known as
the ' all clear ' hormone into the body. Hovever. I could not see what I was afraid of. what the danger was.
At that point I convinced myself that I had smoked the cigarette wrongly. Surely this was not why millions of people risk their lives to feel like this. So I light another. Now this is where the real problems start.
I was in the full throws of the fight or flight response. and can see no way out. I mentioned a hormone above known as the 'All clear' hormone. It is this I was trying to get to. That calm state again as I was before I
lit that first cigarette.
That hormone is called DHEA (it has a very long chemical name but it is most commonly known as DHEA) Nicotine has been found to stimulate DHEA. So by lighting the cigarette I was giving myself the impression that the cigarette had just made me safe.
However what I didn't do was link the two things together. The fact that the first cigarette was the cause of these extreme feelings in the first place. All I now remember is that smoking a cigarette made it all go away. That is until the levels of the good hormone
(DHEA) start to fall again and the levels of the bad hormone (cortisol) start to trigger the same fear response again. So what I now had was a distorted memory for what a cigarette actually did. I forgot about the anxiety and fear it created and focused on the relief it appeared to give.
All this at an age when I was changing from a child to a young adult. And the thing I know now is that the main difference between a child and an adult is your ability to cope with stress and anxiety. What I did by smoking is give all of the responsibilty over to a cigarette. I never developed my own coping strategies or technicques. Why would I when I could just light a cigarette and it would appear to vanish.
The second part of the quitting process for me was the ending of smoking. I had to link the two events together. The smoking of the previous cigarette and the feelings I got when I wanted another. (the reaction described above) I always thought that to quit smoking I had to want to not smoke more that I wanted to smoke.
Which is true but if you force this issue to much you will struggle. I used to fight like a dog not to give in and have a cigarette but the more I fought the more tired I became until, in a moment of weakness and vulneribility I sucumbed. But this time I realised something. Willpower is not an external fight, I was not fighting any one or anything outside me. It was the internal fight between my concious mind and my sub conscious mind.
The conscious mind is the part that says I want to quit, I do not like smoking. Whereas your subconsciousmind can not decide what is write and wrong or good and bad. It is like the opererating system in your computer. It will do the same routines over and over again until the program is changed. What you are doing by just saying you are going to quit is like asking your computer to change is routine without permission. If you do not have permission or more importantly you do not show it or give it a new program it will just carry on doing the same thing.
You have to convince your subconscious mind that it is not cigarettes that are making you feel better. Then there will be no conflict. The conscious and subconscious mind will agree and you will not have to fight anymore. Your perception and permission are there and you will see that smoking does nothing for you. Only them will you be sure that you will never smoke again.
Ian
think that may people struggle at first because they think quitting is just a case of out willing the part of you that wants to smoke. In other words trying to muster
enough willpower to resist smoking.
I have a diferrent approach and theory to what may be required. There are two things you have to achieve before quitting. One is to change your perception about what a cigarette can actually do for you and the second is to gain the permission of your inner self to let go of smoking as a safety net.
Perception.
I had many attempts to quit before I finally quit for the last time. I know it is the last time because something changed inside me. It was what some people may call a reverlation. A bolt out of the blue, A bang on the head. Whatever you want to call it it was an awakening
experience.
It started after someone asked me a question.
"why do you smoke ?"
a simple, innocent question that had me reaching for the
answers I always gave, I am addicted to nictoine, it is a habit, I enjoy it. But on this occasion I said nothing. I just stared into space and thought.
What is it about these dried leaves that has me so
miserable? I done't enjoy smoking, I tollerate it.
It is not a habit it is a security measure against anxiety and if I am only addicted to nicotine then every smoker should be able to stop with NRT.
For the first time since I started smoking at 11 years old I asked myself the question.
"What do cigarettes ACTUALLY do ?"
not what do I THINK cigarettes do but what do the really, actually do ?
The answer I have since discovered is absolutely nothing. Oh, apart form one thing. They actually give you anxiety..
That may soundstrange to people who smoke as the one thing every smoker believes is that smoking relieves there Anxiety. What I had to do was go back to
well before I smoked my first cigarette. Most people will perhaps only look as far back as their first. But for me it all happened well before then. I saw most of my family smoke. My mum, brother, aunties and uncles. all smoked. They would tell me time and again, " never
let me catch you smoking, It will kill you" followed by them turning around and lighting one up. So the clear message to me was. Wow, they know cigarettes will kill them yet they still do it. Smoking must be fantastic.
Then there was the many films and T.V programms
that showed beutiful, successfull, tough, rebelleous often rich people smoking their heads off. At that age I wanted to be like that.
So by the time it came to eleven and that first cigarette was put in my hand I was alredy a smoker. In my head I had a vision, a concept, a perception of what i thought smoking was.
So when I did finally light that first cigarette and it made me sick and dizzy, afraid and excited I was sure I had done something wrong. As the chemicals and
additives in the cigarette started to react with various hormones in my body it made me feel something that should have been reserved for the moments in my life that are very rare.
The chemicals in the Tobacco had triggered the primal reaction called the Fight or Flight response. It is a thing that should only be activated in extreme danger. It is there to make sure you can stand and defend yourself or run away to ensure survival. But here I was in the midst of full blown fear with no way of switching it off. normally when the threat has gone the body will naturally react by secreting what is known as
the ' all clear ' hormone into the body. Hovever. I could not see what I was afraid of. what the danger was.
At that point I convinced myself that I had smoked the cigarette wrongly. Surely this was not why millions of people risk their lives to feel like this. So I light another. Now this is where the real problems start.
I was in the full throws of the fight or flight response. and can see no way out. I mentioned a hormone above known as the 'All clear' hormone. It is this I was trying to get to. That calm state again as I was before I
lit that first cigarette.
That hormone is called DHEA (it has a very long chemical name but it is most commonly known as DHEA) Nicotine has been found to stimulate DHEA. So by lighting the cigarette I was giving myself the impression that the cigarette had just made me safe.
However what I didn't do was link the two things together. The fact that the first cigarette was the cause of these extreme feelings in the first place. All I now remember is that smoking a cigarette made it all go away. That is until the levels of the good hormone
(DHEA) start to fall again and the levels of the bad hormone (cortisol) start to trigger the same fear response again. So what I now had was a distorted memory for what a cigarette actually did. I forgot about the anxiety and fear it created and focused on the relief it appeared to give.
All this at an age when I was changing from a child to a young adult. And the thing I know now is that the main difference between a child and an adult is your ability to cope with stress and anxiety. What I did by smoking is give all of the responsibilty over to a cigarette. I never developed my own coping strategies or technicques. Why would I when I could just light a cigarette and it would appear to vanish.
The second part of the quitting process for me was the ending of smoking. I had to link the two events together. The smoking of the previous cigarette and the feelings I got when I wanted another. (the reaction described above) I always thought that to quit smoking I had to want to not smoke more that I wanted to smoke.
Which is true but if you force this issue to much you will struggle. I used to fight like a dog not to give in and have a cigarette but the more I fought the more tired I became until, in a moment of weakness and vulneribility I sucumbed. But this time I realised something. Willpower is not an external fight, I was not fighting any one or anything outside me. It was the internal fight between my concious mind and my sub conscious mind.
The conscious mind is the part that says I want to quit, I do not like smoking. Whereas your subconsciousmind can not decide what is write and wrong or good and bad. It is like the opererating system in your computer. It will do the same routines over and over again until the program is changed. What you are doing by just saying you are going to quit is like asking your computer to change is routine without permission. If you do not have permission or more importantly you do not show it or give it a new program it will just carry on doing the same thing.
You have to convince your subconscious mind that it is not cigarettes that are making you feel better. Then there will be no conflict. The conscious and subconscious mind will agree and you will not have to fight anymore. Your perception and permission are there and you will see that smoking does nothing for you. Only them will you be sure that you will never smoke again.
Ian
Congrats on your decision to quit April!
The emotional/mental addiction is quite hard to break and its difficult to pinpoint one thing that works. I know for me, I had lolipops and toothpicks and it helped me with my hands and the oral aspect. Another thing that worked was to call/write someone when I felt I was at my weakest point. I don't know what else to tell you. You really just have to fight the urges, ask for help and stay strong.
As a smoker of 38 years, I never thought I could do it, but here I am, 1 yr. and nearly 2 months quit.
It does get easier with time, I promise you.
We are here for you so you can lean on us.
Kathy Jo
The emotional/mental addiction is quite hard to break and its difficult to pinpoint one thing that works. I know for me, I had lolipops and toothpicks and it helped me with my hands and the oral aspect. Another thing that worked was to call/write someone when I felt I was at my weakest point. I don't know what else to tell you. You really just have to fight the urges, ask for help and stay strong.
As a smoker of 38 years, I never thought I could do it, but here I am, 1 yr. and nearly 2 months quit.
It does get easier with time, I promise you.
We are here for you so you can lean on us.
Kathy Jo
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