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Quit Smoking For Good, Really - Without Expensive Patches and Pills
By
Michael Hearing
My wife and I both quit smoking for good two years ago--after being heavy smokers for nearly 30 years. She did it her way, and I did it mine. Both ways worked, but her way was harder and cost a bunch of money.
My wife had tried to quit smoking before, several times, and had failed every time. For the first big attempt at quitting smoking, she tried patches. These seemed work for a while. But then I found her smoking in the bathroom. (I had been wondering why she always turned on the exhaust fan when she entered the bathroom.) And then she admitted that those expensive nicotine patches just made her want to smoke more. So instead of quitting or even cutting down her cigarette consumption, she wound up smoking more (but secretively this time) than she ever had.
Then, two years ago, my wife suffered a severe back injury, and that's what made her finally decide to quit. While she was in flat on her fractured back in the hospital and pumped full of morphine, she had no desire for a cigarette. But when she got home, the cravings returned full force and the battle began. So she used the pills prescribed by the doctors.
What my wife used was a well known regimen of pills, constructed around a progression of pill ingestion, that is supposed to help with anxiety and suppress nicotine cravings. The pills worked, I guess, but the side effects were hard to deal with. It affected her ability to taste, and food didn't taste right to her for about six months. She also had frequent bad dreams--frightening, night sweat-inducing dreams that she tried to forget and was reluctant to talk about. And to top it all off, I spent about $700 on those infernal pills.
I had tried to quit several time before, too. I tried to do it cold turkey and just tough it out through sheer will power. And... I failed miserably every time. The first two days were always easy, but the third day--that dreadful third day--was when things got tough. I got nervous and irritable, and I was restless. So I drank more coffee than usual and grew even more irritable and short tempered. And because I was jacked on caffeine, I really wanted a cigarette. One of those times, my wife and daughter came to me and said this: "OK, you've got two choices. You can either go buy you some cigarettes--or you can find a new place to live." So, naturally, I got in the car, drove to the convenience store, and bought a pack of cigarettes.
When I finally did quit smoking for good, I thought I did it cold turkey through sheer will power. Looking back now, though, I see that I didn't really do it that way. What happened was I had unwittingly applied some of the principles and techniques of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
I changed my self-perception and began to see myself as a non-smoker--not just a person making a mighty effort of will to reluctantly give up an incorrigible habit. I used confidence-inspiring and success-promoting self-talk. I began to think differently, altering my emotional responses to sensory stimuli and smoking triggers. I examined and modeled what other people had done to successfully stop smoking. I was unconsciously using NLP.
I wish now that I had known more about NLP and about some of the proven stop-smoking programs based on it. I really seems to work. And I know from our own first-hand experience that quitting by means of NLP is a lot safer and lot cheaper than the chemical-based methods.
If you're really serious about quitting smoking for good, you should check out neuro-linguistic programming. For more information about one of the NLP-based programs Click Here!
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