Stop smoking in October. It is easier than you think. Blog #9
Thank you NHS !
We are pack animals and as much as it is often the reason why many people start to smoke at the first place, it is also often easier for us to create changes with a support network. Every year the NHS raises a 28 days campaign to spread awareness and provide support for people who want to stop smoking. As a therapist addiction is one of my specialisation and since I have been a heavy chain smoker myself for 18 years there is not much about that topic that I don’t know.
My relationship with smoking
I can remember a story about my Grandad. He always used to light up a cigarette with a previous cigarette he was finishing. When asked why ? He would reply: “to save matches”. He died of lung cancer. My Dad and at least 2 of my uncles had lung cancer too. Despite all this I started to smoke 3 packs of 20 Marlboro Red at the age of 12 every day as a rebellious act. When you think about it there was not much rebellion going on as everyone used to smoke in the 80s everywhere and anywhere in France.
And then in 2000 at the age of 30 I stopped. It was my 3rd attempt. It was easy, immediate and definitive. Although it would take me another 8 years to stop drinking alcohol, my addiction to smoking cigarettes was sorted. Why was it so easy that time and not the other times ? Because I figured out how my mind worked in regards to this.
A cigarette is a status, a lifestyle, a fashion accessory...
First and foremost are the associations we attach smoking with. For many years cigarettes meant James Dean, David Bowie and Jacques Brel to me. I understood later that they also reminded me of someone I liked a lot: my Dad. And then Dad died of cancer number 5 in 1999. And suddenly smoking was no longer anything glamorous or cool, just a habit I picked up from my teenage attempts at belonging.
The biggest lie about smoking
There has been times I wanted to stop. But because everyone around me struggled with it and that overwhelming sense of difficulty seemed to be the general consensus shared by the medias, I too ended up believing that to stop smoking is hard. As I picked up the belief that smoking was cool, I also picked up the belief that to stop smoking is hard. And because the body manifests anything the mind believes I could never overcome that prophecy I have been invoking subconsciously.
Feel the pain
The first action I took consciously to eradicate that habit was to associate smoking with pain, suffering, illness, hospital bed, discomfort, tubes going through the nostrils all the way down to the lungs… There has been dreadful pictures of consequences of smoking on the cigarette packs for years now. The reason they don’t work is because those pictures only evoke an idea to smokers, not a feeling. As often the most overlooked aspect of us is our emotional relation to all things. To create an association we must aim at the heart, not just the head. We want to associate smoking with the actual feeling of physical and emotional pain, the sensation of helplessness and despair when loosing health, looks, freedom, and everything we take wrongly for granted. Not just the idea of some lungs covered with nicotine. Not just some random pictures of things we believe will never happen to us.
Believe it is easy and it will become easier
Once we have created new associations to remind us that we no longer find smoking appealing in any way, we want to understand that to stop smoking is actually easy. Not hard. We grow, evolve and learn constantly new things in our life. Smoking is just another one of those things we do and can stop doing if we wish so. There is nothing special, mystical or magic about smoking. As we learn to start and stop anything, we can do the same with smoking. When we let go of the belief that when we are addicted there is nothing we can do about it we can start doing something about it. When we let go of the belief that it is hard to stop smoking, it starts to become easier.
Reframe the mental commands
Back in the days when we were cavemen anything rare and scarce was precious. If there was nothing to eat and only one apple left on a tree everyone would fight to have it. If there was abundance of apples and food on the other hand those apples would not be coveted. We have kept that survival instinct.
Every time we think:” I don’t want to smoke, I can't smoke, smoking is bad, it is not allowed and forbidden to me” we are making smoking much more attractive and enticing by subconsciously and repeatedly sending the message to the mind that cigarettes are rare and special. We are increasing the appeal of the very thing we want to end.
We want to reframe our thoughts in the right direction: “If I want I can go and buy a pack of cigarette and smoke them all, I am a grown up, I am free, but I am not interested anymore, I have done it long enough and I am now choosing health and freedom over smoking and I have chosen to feel great about it”.
There is no smoke without fire
In my experience stopping smoking was easy because I had other addictions to keep me going. Smoking is never the real problem. The problem is the reason why we smoke and why we believe it is hard to stop it.
If we address only the habit of action (smoking) by taking the cigarettes away, but not the habit of thought that triggers that action, we will either smoke again as soon as the hand can get hold of a cigarette, or we will develop another addiction to make up for it.
Different smokes for different folks
The invention, use and popularity of vaping as a better alternative reflects the poor state of our relationship with our health and the limitless and ever profitable market of gullibility. Why replace a poison with another one ? Because we believe that we will not be able to make it without it. We have been conditioned to believe that those companies have the best interest at heart for us when all they want really is for us to buy and consume and get addicted to more of their products...
Conclusion
That article is not meant to provide a fit all solution, only an insight of a different perspective most smokers I like to believe will find pertinent. Ultimately each individual’s state of readiness to change is down to the overall emotional balance in their life and their sense of connection. Everyone is different and more help from the right people are always welcome.
But although there are many methods out there we are well aware that not all methods are equal. I have personally treated many cases of general addiction including smoking with tremendous success and I am happy to offer anyone in October a free 30 minutes consultation on Skype or face to face in my office in Kings Cross London to discuss stopping smoking and what are the best options available today.