Tobacco: Top Techniques to Kick the Habit

Many smokers want to quit for the sake of their health, their finances, or just to be free of addiction. Tobacco is one of the hardest drugs to give up; most people who tryto quit relapse in less than two weeks, but it can be done! Ex-smokers report that a good plan, notes to yourself, mourning, and avoiding triggers makes all the difference.

Quitting smoking is made much easier if you follow a strict plan you devise in full before your last cigarette. A plan is important because, a few short hours after your last smoke, your brain and body will enter a state of withdrawal so awful that it sends most people sprinting for the nearest ashtray. Among the many symptoms of withdrawal are:

• Stress • Anger • Frustration • Fatigue • Depression • Excessive hunger

All of which are common cues for a smoker to light up. Not only will you experience many of these concurrently, you will do so while your brain is furiously attempting to rewire itself to restore normal function without the drugs it has learned to work with. Many systems are compromised, including motivation, emotional stability, and rational thinking. The person you will be while in this state is not someone you can trust to make good decisions about your future, so make all of the decisions now and write them down. The most successful quitting plans have the following marked on a calendar:

• A quit date beyond which you do not smoke at all.\ • A gradual, linear decrease in the number of cigarettes smoked per day for several days leading up to the quit date. This teaches self control and reduces the shock of withdrawal. • Boxes to tick at the end of each successful day of abstinence. • Milestones such as the 48-hour mark, the two-week mark, and the dates at which you can expect each symptom of withdrawal to fade. Information of symptom duration is easily found online.

It is best to use a physical calendar rather than one on a computer or phone. A paper calendar is reliable, unchanging, and tangible. Using external aidsto give yourself a sense of time's passage is extremely important during withdrawal. Smoking introduces drugs into the brain which affect your sense of time. Your brain is excellent at adaptation and rewires itself to include the drugs from tobacco in its normal function. When you then stop using tobacco, the brain's rewired system fails and your perception of time is abnormal until the brain can revert itself to its pre-smoking setup. Until it does, minutes can seem like hours and you will begin to feel as if your entire existence has been spent withdrawing.

After making your plan and plotting milestones on your calendar, the next step is to write yourself notes to read while you suffer withdrawal. Your emotional state is about to get messy, and if anyone triesto encourage you or remind you to stay strong you are more likely to want to slap them than be comforted. Some examples of messagesyot future self will need to hear are:\ • This feeling will pass. • Quitting is my choice. • I can ignore the way I feel if I have to, and I will ignore this. • The cause of this feeling is not a lack of cigarettes. This is cigarette damage.

Once the plans are made, mourn for your loss. It may sound silly, but you are ejecting an old friend from your life. Not a friend who treated you well, but one you share a lot of history with and once relied upon. You will see your old friend around everywhere you go and you will have to do your best to ignore it. That will be hard.

Say goodbye in a way that is meaningful to you, even if it seems a little insane. Some people sit a pouch of tobacco down at the table and explain to it why it has to end, some hold a funeral, and some give them away to a new home. The idea is to accept that you are losing something and perform a ritual of accepting that loss.

The last step is to avoid triggering situations. Your brain is excellent at understanding its current situation and predicting what will happen next. When a delicious smell makes you salivate, it is because your brain expects food and is preparing to digest it. When you wake up a moment before your alarm clock beeps, it is because your brain knows it is wakeup time.

Forming these associations is an important part of learning and habit formation, but now it has turned against you. Your brain has leamed to associate cigarettes with many situations, all of which will now cause you to anticipate a smoke. You must identify and avoid as many of these situations as possible.