"My Problem Isn't Quitting Smoking Cigarettes; It's Staying Quit."

Back when I used to be a pack a day smoker I wondered how I ever turned out that way. I wanted so badly to quit but quitting smoking cigarettes seemed impossible for me. When I was growing up my mom was a smoker. I can remember sitting in the back seat of the car on a winter day; the windows would be rolled up and we would be driving along in a cloud of smoke. It would make me physically ill and I remember swearing to myself that I would never smoke when I grew up.

Well, I guess a lot of those childhood promises get broken, and this one did too. Growing up I caved into peer pressure and began smoking in the eighth grade. I was not an instant pack a day smoker. I smoked on and off to varying degrees until college when I became a full fledged pack a day smoker. 

On I went for several years, puffing away, until I did eventually become disgusted with myself and my habit. I would like to be able to say that I quit smoking right away, but I would be lying. The truth of the matter is that I tried quitting smoking cigarettes for about as long as I was a smoker. It seems ridiculous looking back but I just never seemed to have enough “will power” to really quit. Something would come up and I jus had to have a cigarette. 

During this time most of my family and friends knew I wanted to quit. They would see me smoking and say: “Hey, I thought you quit smoking!” My clever reply was: “My problem isn’t quitting smoking; it’s staying quit.” It really was true; I could always manage to stop smoking and sometimes I could string together a pretty decent period of being smoke-free. But I always came back to smoking. It was my crutch, my companion, my friend in need, something I could always turn to.  

When I was in my period of trying to quit smoking I mostly went “cold turkey”. I believe the reason it took me so long to quit smoking cigarettes is that I never got any kind of decent help. Why did I eventually succeed? Well, I believe I was given a gift and really reached a point where mentally I just did not want to quit smoking anymore; the cravings just went away. But it took me years to get there. 

I believe this is the way most people succeed in quitting smoking cigarettes. The tools they use along the way are just that; tools to help them get to the point where they mentally do not want to smoke anymore. The psychological addiction to smoking; I believe, is much, much stronger than the physical addiction to nicotine. To successfully quit you need to get there mentally. 

Is it possible to speed up this process and have the mental cravings to smoke removed? I believe it is, and that if a smoker focuses on defeating their mental addition to smoking they will be successful at quitting smoking cigarettes much more quickly than smokers who go “cold turkey” or use smoking cessation aids that focus on nicotine addiction. 

The good news is that there is a technique that specifically focuses on removing the mental cravings to smoke. Smoker’s who use this technique have a much higher success rate at quitting smoking cigarettes than smokers who use other kinds of nicotine dependence based methods. It is called hypnotherapy and it is a simple technique that you can use in your own home to help you get to that point where you just do not want to smoke anymore.  

Learn more about how hypnotherapy can make quitting smoking cigarettes easy by removing the cravings to smoke from your mind. Visit our home page to learn more about this simple and effective technique.