As it’s nearly Christmas and there might be the odd prospective New-Year quitter searching for a little guidance I thought I’d post this nugget in the hope that it might be the catalyst to help someone along the happy road of freedom.
Well it’s that time of year when a smoker’s thoughts often turn to giving up the evil weed and it’s a bit scary what with being an addict and all that…
Smokers do not really smoke because of nicotine at all, even if they are utterly convinced they do. (Were you expecting that I wonder?) If they’re addicted to anything it’s possibly dopamine but even then it’s stretching things a bit.
At first glance the nicotine addiction theory holds a lot of water and luckily any leaks can be plugged by an astonishing amount of myths and creative statistics. Bear in mind that it’s part of a multi-billion dollar industry and there are good grounds for its success.
As sophisms go it’s not dreadful, after all, if a smoker can use their perceived nicotine addiction as a weapon to quit then it’s advantageous, however, the reverse is more often than not the reality.
When I look back at my own quit I’m quite surprised how long I managed to stick with the addiction theory, modifying it to suit the way I smoked even to the ludicrous conclusion of separating my fags into “wants” and “needs” so that I was able to identify those smokes that fed my addiction and those that were casual fags for the fun of it. I managed to answer most of my questions but there were some biggies that seemed to have accepted answers that were frankly rubbish. Bizarrely in every packet of fags I smoked there was my morning fag, my after eating fag, my after sex fag and my calming bedtime fag. There were a few ‘calm me down’ smokes, a few ‘perk me up’ smokes and one or two ‘help me concentrate’ smokes and despite looking, not one of them was labelled yet I managed to select the correct one each time.
Every study I read, every published paper I worked through added more questions and fewer answers until I realised I was looking in the wrong place. The vast majority of stop smoking data is indirectly connected to the pharmaceutical companies and therefore biased towards their products. Not unsurprisingly the pro-smoking groups with the burden of the smoking ban chip-on-their-shoulder are very good at winkling out the data and had done a fabulous job. Of course their reasons were more of a battle with the smoking ban, their loss of ‘freedom’ and the myths surrounding secondhand smoke. Exploding the nicotine myth is very low on their agenda and I’m sure a goodly proportion of them think of themselves as addicted. (Addicted to a substance more addictive than Heroin apparently, but sold on the lower shelves of ASDA, fancy that.)
Nicotine is a toxin, one of many in cigarette smoke, and certainly present in nicotine patches, gums, sweeties, puffers, lozenges, creams, cheese slices and Nick O’Tine’s medicinal jam. Unfortunately it’s not actually physically addictive, despite a lot of research, and you can’t get lab rats, monkeys and beagles hooked on it. The tobacco giant denied its addictiveness for years until it was in their interests to change their tune.
As smokers we eventually learn to tolerate its presence in our bodies and when we stop consuming it our bodies take a week or two to acclimatise to its absence. You can purge it quickly by just stopping consuming it or you can drag it out over twelve profitable weeks if you’re feeling a bit gung ho with taxpayer’s money. Either way combating the effects of nicotine cessation is actually a little easier than slipping off a Teflon coated log floating in a pool of oil. The cold-turkey quitter and the NRT quitter both have exactly the same battle against stopping smoking but the NRT quitter chooses to purge the nicotine from their system gradually, both very different things.
No-one started smoking for nicotine, no-one smokes for nicotine and no quitters relapse onto nicotine. Smokers relapse to smoking every time.
You don’t even have to believe me, I’m not trying to sell anything, the exact opposite in fact. In these times of coming austerity I’d rather the NHS didn’t have to prescribe one useless single NRT prescription and let my gran have a new hip instead.
Smokers do smoke because of cravings, but cravings are nothing to do with nicotine or any other part of the smoke.
Cravings disappear when the smoker lights up, but that is because a craving is simply a mental prompt to repeat the habitual behaviour, triggered by the brain, not by falling nicotine levels, but experienced as a physical compulsive urge that seems to the smoker like a real bodily need. The craving disappears long before the cigarette is smoked and well before the seven second myth of nicotine to brain transit.
Staggeringly the craving is often gone without even lighting up. (Damn clever stuff that nicotine, it’s not safe even being in the same room as it..)
Now that NRT has no novelty value it’s no surprise to see cessation rates stabilising around 7% which is comparable with cold-turkey, placebos and bupropian (Zyban). This is just as you’d expect for being prescribed a toxic insecticide to somehow combat a compulsive habit of tobacco use. Similar results can be expected from prescriptions of liquorice allsorts or green tea and I’m more than happy to volunteer for their trials.
The big winners, acupuncture, hypnosis and Mr Carr’s clinics still seem to be achieving 30% success rates and hopefully sooner rather than later the world will wake up to the reasons, which are:
We quit smoking in the subconscious as that’s where we smoke. There isn’t a magic pill that stops us smoking but a method that directly or indirectly passes the message to the subconscious that we no longer have any desire to smoke is proven to be the most successful. Any method with support shows better results that the same method without.
Of course many of us quit without any help or even the “wrong” help by getting “our minds right” (is this self-hypnosis?)
I used to have a nagging question. I repeatedly tried and failed to switch from cigarettes to rollies. It used to frustrate me and I’d find myself lighting up a proper fag pretty much straight after I’d smoked a rollie. On at least two occasions I managed to wean myself exclusively onto rollies for a few months and then I’d have a relapse back onto normal cigarettes. It wasn’t until I quit this time that it finally dawning on me I was simply craving a cigarette. I wasn’t craving a smoke, a cigar, a pipe, nicotine, burning paper, singed flesh or tar, I just wanted a cigarette and only a cigarette would feed the crave.
My advice is to spend one smoking day, maybe a couple, looking at how you smoke. Not just when but also how. See what triggers you to light a fag and how much you smoke and how much you wave it around. If you’re feeling very honest with yourself make a note of how many lit cigarettes you wish you’d not lit because they’re now getting in the way of what you were previously doing.
Once you know why you smoke the steps to cessation become a lot clearer.
Season’s greetings.
Written by
austinlegro
11 Years Smoke Free
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Wow, some very sound advice there. I really enjoyed reading that so thank you very much
You're right in saying that many times thinking of it as an "addiction" can make smokers scared of stopping or fall easier into relapse (e.g. "I want to quit, but I'm addicted, there's not much I can do" or "I can't help it, I'm an addict, I needed that cigarette"). And I'm also glad that you acknowledge that at times after quitting it can be beneficial to see it as an addiction (I personally think this is because it gives you something to 'fight' against).
Ultimately, it's how you say - it's about support and flipping that switch which dissipates any ideas that smoking actually helps you at any point in your life. Allen Carr gives very similar advice to that which you're giving and I wish I had read this post (or his book) before I quit as I think the first 2 weeks would have been a lot easier if I saw my smoking for what it was.
Good luck for any New Years/Christmas quitters out there and happy holidays to you Austinlegro!
Just one question. Where does the 30% success rate for AC clinics come from? I just started his book, and believe he claims > 90%. That quite a difference.
Michael.
Allen Carr claims 93% success rate which is based on the fact that only 7% take up the money back guarantee offer that he makes. As we all know, some of us have many 'trial' quits before we get a successful one going. I'd previously tried Allen Carr and was unsuccessful...however I didn't take up the guarantee.
Yes I too think austins post is well worth the read. Just hoping that the sure to be january quitters aren't ambushed by the trolls under the bridge. Ooooh how I love stamping on them
I gave up smoking on 15th Nov 2010. I have no idea about Michael F, and I really don't care. I think that when you give up smoking you should be supported wholeheartedly by people who have also given up. If they don't support you, then they have not given up. If they try to ****yse why you have given up, then (IMHO) they have not themselves given up.
I have friends who have not given up and I do not expect as much support from them. I do expect it from people who have apparently given up on here (Michael F) but if you want my opinion on what I would call a survey.... then yes I think you are a TROLL. .....did you know, I had no idea what a troll was (except the billy goats gruff) until I looked it up on here.
I appreciate all the people who have supported me in my quest so far. And I have no idea why some people are so destructive in other peoples quest to be smoke free :mad:
Please allow me to help bring it back on message, Rachel.
There will be a load of prospective quitters looking in checking the place out as a possible avenue out of the hell of smoking. New Year and national no smoking day are both proven to be expectional days were huge numbers of smokers attempt to stop slowly poisoning themselves to death and chose a more healthier lifestyle. This forum has proven very beneficial to many because it does, as Rachel says, provide solid support from those going through the same experiences. And then collected here a fantastic treasure trove of valuable advice which through time is constantly added to. The OP and his post is but one example.
But then there is a down side with joining a forum: spammers and trolling. Just as one would prepare by reading up prior to stopping smoking on ones quit day, chosen method, etc, one should be aware that trolling does exist. Do make use of 'ignore' facility which you'll find in 'User CP' on the ruler top left. Spamming, well you just have to skirt past that until it is removed.
But overwhelmingly there are decent people quitting here, willing to be supportive and adding to the 'good' of this site :cool:
There will be a load of prospective quitters looking in checking the place out as a possible avenue out of the hell of smoking. New Year and national no smoking day are both proven to be expectional days were huge numbers of smokers attempt to stop slowly poisoning themselves to death and chose a more healthier lifestyle. This forum has proven very beneficial to many because it does, as Rachel says, provide solid support from those going through the same experiences.
But overwhelmingly there are decent people quitting here, willing to be supportive and adding to the 'good' of this site :cool:
Thanks Cavalier. My point exactly, but much more eloquently put.
To all those would be quitters, go on go for it I promise in a couple of weeks months you will wonder why you didnt take the plunge before, there are loads on here all saying the same thing, if I can do it so can any one.
Have a happy health New Year and make 2011 the first year of the rest of your smoke free life.
Ok - I know people have strong feelings regarding NRT...but just thought I would mention there is a write up on the Beeb website about Pharmacies giving out free patches for the new year.
Personally I think it's a good idea. To all new quitters, be welcome here. Being free is worth the effort.
...but just thought I would mention there is a write up on the Beeb website about Pharmacies giving out free patches for the new year.
I was already writing to my MP asking for his resignation and suicide until I realised that having free prescriptions in Wales has meant we've been dishing 'em out for free for years.
With sales plummeting it's no surprise that they've got to get rid of their stock somehow.
A New Year bonfire might have been more festive I think. :rolleyes:
I was already writing to my MP asking for his resignation and suicide until I realised that having free prescriptions in Wales has meant we've been dishing 'em out for free for years.
With sales plummeting it's no surprise that they've got to get rid of their stock somehow.
A New Year bonfire might have been more festive I think. :rolleyes:
Maybe it's not such 'good news' for you lucky lot then.
Regardless of the cynicism I still think that anything that supports those who want to give up....whatever method, it's all good.
We may get some lovely newbies off the back of it....
... I still think that anything that supports those who want to give up....whatever method, it's all good.
I can see where you're coming from but surely if the prospective quitter turns up at the surgery looking for support then 'we' should have the common decency to offer them the best we can. I don't subscribe to the 'rubbish support is better than no support' view.
If businesses with bizarre products want to take out peak-time tv slots to pedal their wares then it's a (relatively) free country and there will always be someone gullible enough to take the baited hook.
When times are hard and best value is king and even normally docile students are beating people up it's bound to ruffle a few feathers when the NHS start handing out magic beans.
As it’s nearly Christmas and there might be the odd prospective New-Year quitter searching for a little guidance I thought I’d post this nugget in the hope that it might be the catalyst to help someone along the happy road of freedom.
Well it’s that time of year when a smoker’s thoughts often turn to giving up the evil weed and it’s a bit scary what with being an addict and all that…
Smokers do not really smoke because of nicotine at all, even if they are utterly convinced they do. (Were you expecting that I wonder?) If they’re addicted to anything it’s possibly dopamine but even then it’s stretching things a bit.
At first glance the nicotine addiction theory holds a lot of water and luckily any leaks can be plugged by an astonishing amount of myths and creative statistics. Bear in mind that it’s part of a multi-billion dollar industry and there are good grounds for its success.
As sophisms go it’s not dreadful, after all, if a smoker can use their perceived nicotine addiction as a weapon to quit then it’s advantageous, however, the reverse is more often than not the reality.
When I look back at my own quit I’m quite surprised how long I managed to stick with the addiction theory, modifying it to suit the way I smoked even to the ludicrous conclusion of separating my fags into “wants” and “needs” so that I was able to identify those smokes that fed my addiction and those that were casual fags for the fun of it. I managed to answer most of my questions but there were some biggies that seemed to have accepted answers that were frankly rubbish. Bizarrely in every packet of fags I smoked there was my morning fag, my after eating fag, my after sex fag and my calming bedtime fag. There were a few ‘calm me down’ smokes, a few ‘perk me up’ smokes and one or two ‘help me concentrate’ smokes and despite looking, not one of them was labelled yet I managed to select the correct one each time.
Every study I read, every published paper I worked through added more questions and fewer answers until I realised I was looking in the wrong place. The vast majority of stop smoking data is indirectly connected to the pharmaceutical companies and therefore biased towards their products. Not unsurprisingly the pro-smoking groups with the burden of the smoking ban chip-on-their-shoulder are very good at winkling out the data and had done a fabulous job. Of course their reasons were more of a battle with the smoking ban, their loss of ‘freedom’ and the myths surrounding secondhand smoke. Exploding the nicotine myth is very low on their agenda and I’m sure a goodly proportion of them think of themselves as addicted. (Addicted to a substance more addictive than Heroin apparently, but sold on the lower shelves of ASDA, fancy that.)
Nicotine is a toxin, one of many in cigarette smoke, and certainly present in nicotine patches, gums, sweeties, puffers, lozenges, creams, cheese slices and Nick O’Tine’s medicinal jam. Unfortunately it’s not actually physically addictive, despite a lot of research, and you can’t get lab rats, monkeys and beagles hooked on it. The tobacco giant denied its addictiveness for years until it was in their interests to change their tune.
As smokers we eventually learn to tolerate its presence in our bodies and when we stop consuming it our bodies take a week or two to acclimatise to its absence. You can purge it quickly by just stopping consuming it or you can drag it out over twelve profitable weeks if you’re feeling a bit gung ho with taxpayer’s money. Either way combating the effects of nicotine cessation is actually a little easier than slipping off a Teflon coated log floating in a pool of oil. The cold-turkey quitter and the NRT quitter both have exactly the same battle against stopping smoking but the NRT quitter chooses to purge the nicotine from their system gradually, both very different things.
No-one started smoking for nicotine, no-one smokes for nicotine and no quitters relapse onto nicotine. Smokers relapse to smoking every time.
You don’t even have to believe me, I’m not trying to sell anything, the exact opposite in fact. In these times of coming austerity I’d rather the NHS didn’t have to prescribe one useless single NRT prescription and let my gran have a new hip instead.
Smokers do smoke because of cravings, but cravings are nothing to do with nicotine or any other part of the smoke.
Cravings disappear when the smoker lights up, but that is because a craving is simply a mental prompt to repeat the habitual behaviour, triggered by the brain, not by falling nicotine levels, but experienced as a physical compulsive urge that seems to the smoker like a real bodily need. The craving disappears long before the cigarette is smoked and well before the seven second myth of nicotine to brain transit.
Staggeringly the craving is often gone without even lighting up. (Damn clever stuff that nicotine, it’s not safe even being in the same room as it..)
Now that NRT has no novelty value it’s no surprise to see cessation rates stabilising around 7% which is comparable with cold-turkey, placebos and bupropian (Zyban). This is just as you’d expect for being prescribed a toxic insecticide to somehow combat a compulsive habit of tobacco use. Similar results can be expected from prescriptions of liquorice allsorts or green tea and I’m more than happy to volunteer for their trials.
The big winners, acupuncture, hypnosis and Mr Carr’s clinics still seem to be achieving 30% success rates and hopefully sooner rather than later the world will wake up to the reasons, which are:
We quit smoking in the subconscious as that’s where we smoke. There isn’t a magic pill that stops us smoking but a method that directly or indirectly passes the message to the subconscious that we no longer have any desire to smoke is proven to be the most successful. Any method with support shows better results that the same method without.
Of course many of us quit without any help or even the “wrong” help by getting “our minds right” (is this self-hypnosis?)
I used to have a nagging question. I repeatedly tried and failed to switch from cigarettes to rollies. It used to frustrate me and I’d find myself lighting up a proper fag pretty much straight after I’d smoked a rollie. On at least two occasions I managed to wean myself exclusively onto rollies for a few months and then I’d have a relapse back onto normal cigarettes. It wasn’t until I quit this time that it finally dawning on me I was simply craving a cigarette. I wasn’t craving a smoke, a cigar, a pipe, nicotine, burning paper, singed flesh or tar, I just wanted a cigarette and only a cigarette would feed the crave.
My advice is to spend one smoking day, maybe a couple, looking at how you smoke. Not just when but also how. See what triggers you to light a fag and how much you smoke and how much you wave it around. If you’re feeling very honest with yourself make a note of how many lit cigarettes you wish you’d not lit because they’re now getting in the way of what you were previously doing.
Once you know why you smoke the steps to cessation become a lot clearer.
Season’s greetings.
Another bump for this piece. Haven't been around in a long time but glad that Austin is still dishing out frothy hot bowls of goodness. Basically everything I want to say about the subject sometimes but am just nowhere near articulate enough to pull off. Please read this all you newbies!
... but I guess if some people want to lean on 'products' to help them through the initial stages, then why not?
Too right, whatever comfort blanket dulls the pain is fine by me whether I agree with it or not. There are plenty of weird and wonderful tips and tricks to get the mind and body in the zone to facilitate a quit with minimal angst and even NRT tips the balance for some.
It's a free market and anyone can promote their products to the masses, it's the misappropriation of NHS funds that gets my gander up. If we're going to spend public money on smoking cessation how about spending it on something that produces better results. When you're just as likely to quit by just stopping as you are by consulting your doctor then you know the system is badly flawed!
If I believed in conspiracy theories I'd have to think the government didn't really want us to stop... :rolleyes:
If I believed in conspiracy theories I'd have to think the government didn't really want us to stop... :rolleyes:
Anyone done the maths as to how much extra tax each of us would have to pay if everyone in the country stopped smoking and buying cigarettes?........... i'm with the conspiracy theory
Apparently some guy in France did the math (he mustave REALLY been wondering about stuff like that!) and he worked out that the money that the government would lose on tax they would more than gain back by having to pay less for the public health service as so many illness can just be avoided by quitting.
Much of this data is lurking out there on various pro and anti websites.
The raw numbers seem to be that the costs of treating those with smoky illnesses is about £2 billion. Taxes raised from smokers are about £9 billion.
Not in the calculations are the costs that the country pays in lost GDP etc due to smoking related illnesses or the saving to be made on country expenditure due to smokers dying early. Either way there is clearly no 'financial' interest in the government successfully making the country smoke free.
The scales will always remain tipped in favour of the taxman especially seeing as they're his scales.
Off hand I can't remember the Member of Parliament that was also a non-executive director with British American Tobacco.
Did google up the Board of Directors for BAT but didn't gather the info I was initially looking for. I did however find this quote by one of the non-exec directors:
""My career has seen me work and live in many countries so as a Non-Executive Director I wanted to be involved with a global player. To find that British American Tobacco has major involvement in corporate social responsibility was a big plus for me as this is an area I have had a keen interest in for many years. I believe this will prove to be an increasingly distinguishing feature of great companies."
I'm not entirely sure that the term 'social responsibility' should apply to BAT.
I'm not entirely sure that the term 'social responsibility' should apply to BAT.
I am guessing they mean they keep that supply coming!! so as to keep them taxes coming!! Very socially responsible........still as long as no-one gets hurt.....oh:eek:
thank you for bumping it back up Austin its a shame that this and alot of other threads that get you thinking and help with the mindset change cant have some sort of timer on them to automatically repost every few weeks or so
We campaigned for "stickies" for a long time as between all the day to day banter there are some real gems of information that deserve to be more easily found. Interestingly there are a few stickies that turned up but the process is far from complete.
Karri
You could as a similar question, "why don't roll-ups fill the void like real fags do?"
It took me weeks to switch from real to rollies. The mind is a terrific bit of kit!
oh just read that about roll ups it must be the irish in me but i didnt smoke proper fags as i never felt like i had smoked a ciggy also it tasted really disgusting and i always had a sore throat afterwards :eek: on the other hand the rollies was in my mind back then healthier as they didnt have all the chemicals that proper ciggies did and i used to believe as well as saving money i was more immune to getting any cancers related to smoking living in la la land basically oh look theres a fairy and a unicorn
thankfully i saw the light so to speak and now im more educated in smoking and the harm i done to not just me but everyone i had contact with especially my family and friends :eek: i wonder wtf why did i ever ever smoke scary scary
I'd been looking for something which accurately describes how much of a mindgame this whole business is.
The difference between the physical and the psychological are very blurred sometimes. Physical pain (or anguish, call it what you like), and psychological pain are both very real, so it does not diminish the task of giving up, simply because nicotine is not necessarily the compulsive factor in this.
I know that's not what the OP is saying though, and people starting their quit, or continuing their quit, or even thinking about quitting, should read the opening post.
The more you understand the psychology of it all, the easier it is to quit. And this line of thinking is certainly something I wish I knew before I made the leap!
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Maybe it's not such 'good news' for you lucky lot then.
I still think that anything that supports those who want to give up....whatever method, it's all good.
5 months completed for the new years quitters
For all new quitters! Please read!
