Smoking is a way to implement our wishes and feelings. Otherwise we would never smoke.
To give up smoking, one has to investigate the motives for smoking and elaborate new models of behavior in the situations when previously we resorted to smoking; then replace the old models with the new ones.
Notice that a non-smoker do not need a cigarette to communicate with the others, a non-smoker do not start smoking when he/she wants to have a break or, otherwise, to think about something.
On the contrary, a smoker cannot normally implement many of his/her wishes without the help of smoking. Sometimes, certainly, he/she can do this (but typically does not want to), but he cannot do without cigarettes all the time!
In most cases (almost 100%) a smoker does not realize his/her real wishes. With time he/she starts mixing them with the wish to have a cigarette!
Some people believe that the main problem of refusing smoking is nicotine addiction. But this is not really so. Or this is not a problem at all. The main problem is the inability to live through various situations without a cigarette.
If you have ever tried to quite smoking for more or less lengthy period, you could notice that this was not the nicotine addiction that brought you back to smoking (as if you had real chuck horrors as a drug addict), but some definite situation: stress, a holiday with alcohol, a heart talk near the fire and so on. You felt a strong desire to react to one of your wishes with the help of the way you have trained multiple times during the years - by smoking.
Thus, the task of quitting smoking can be reduced to three relatively easy steps:
- Understand the reasons of your smoking
- Develop new models of behaviour
- Fix those models.
There is one more important barrier. It is called the fear. You are afraid that the quality of your life will get worse. You will be more nervous, will not be able to relax and will suffer without cigarettes and so on.
The irony is that the quality of your life will significantly improve. Even more, it will improve in all aspects. Proving this fact is not a rewarding business, however, the Internet gives us certain opportunities, one of which is learning from the experience of other people exposed in the electronic format.
10 facts describing what happens with the body if you quit smoking right now:
- In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
- In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.
- In 2 days your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
- In 3 days your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
- In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
- In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
- In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by 50%.
- In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.
- In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
- In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
Legends about Smoking – Part 2
Truth and Legends about Smoking – Part 1
Needles against tobacco. Our organism has certain points, influence on which helps eliminate unpleasant vegetative and psychical symptoms resulting from the dropped smoking habit. This method of struggling with tobacco addiction is called acupuncture. It has shown itself to good advantage, therefore a lot of clinics offer acupuncture services advertising the possibility to get rid of smoking addiction in one session. However, it is not absolutely true. Typically, to get rid of the wish to smoke and eliminate unpleasant symptoms, at least 3 and more often 5-6 sessions, are needed, which depends on the person’s condition.
Head shock. Cranial electrotherapy stimulation is influence on the specific points on the smokers head by a low intensity electrical current. This guarantees liquidation of all disturbing symptoms in 10 sessions, including vegetative and vessel symptoms, psychic symptoms, improvement of mood and sleep, and elimination of irritancy. The advantage of the latter method from the acupuncture is that in this case unpleasant feelings may be completely avoided, and this method will undoubtedly suit people who are afraid of being infected through the needles.
Mountain air. Tobacco smoke contains carbon oxide, which connects with hemoglobin when a person is smoking. As a result carboxyhaemoglobin (COHb) – a very toxic substance displacing oxygen – is formed, which leads to the lack of oxygen supply to the body tissue and, thus, to hypoxia. An only advantage of hypoxia is that immune system is working actively at this moment.
The work of the devices that is called Mountain Air is based on the fact that a smoking quitter is breathing in a gas mixture with a reduced oxygen content. No toxic substance is formed in this case, and hypoxia has a curative effect. This treatment helps to reduce the wish to smoke, on the one hand, and to induce active work of protective forces in the organism, on the other hand.
Let’s breathe right! Today substance abuse professionals are actively using the device called "Biological Feedback". It is intended for adjustment of emotional condition of a person with the help of right breathing. If a smoking quitter is breathing correctly, the PC screen shows pictures, painted figures and builds mosaic. Abdominal breathing is taught during 5-10 sessions. After which, in stress situations when a person wants to smoke, he/she may recollect the right breathing and his/her emotional condition will get closer to the normal, and abnormal impulse to start smoking will reduce.
Smoking and Lack of Communication
In order to finally abandon cigarettes, it is not sufficient to fight the wish to smoke and get rid of unpleasant symptoms during the quitting period. Integrated treatment should necessarily envisage communication of the former smoker with psychologists and psychotherapists. First of all, the specialist tries to define whether the patient is ready to cope with his/her problem, investigating his/her attention, thinking, memory, level of motivation and self-assessment. Each psychotherapist uses individual techniques for work with smokers and solves related tasks in addition to the main one – to stop to be the nicotine captive.
Liquidate the need. Gestalt psychologists work with expansion of the patient’s perception field, so that the former smoker could look differently at what is happening to him/her and could find the points of support that could help him/her restore the original balance. The specialists consider addictions as a way to fight the needs that a person cannot satisfy. It is believed that people addicted to cigarettes and alcohol are thus trying to substitute their wish to communicate. When the so called gestalt situation is not closed, it presses upon a person by its incompleteness, and he/she begins to smoke, as he/she does not no any other method to cope with this problem. The specialists help the smoker understand what is happening to him/her in reality. Sometimes they resort to such therapy methods as psychodrama where problematic situations are acted out.
A command to drop the cigarette! Work with psychologists and psychotherapists is always built on an individual basis. Auto-training may suit some people better, while hypnotic pithiatry, that is hypnosis sessions, when a nicotine captive receives a command to quit smoking (such treatment will be effective, if a person is easily hypnotizable), may suit the others. Almost always the smoker has to take a consultation of a psychiatrist/substance abuse professional (SAP), unfortunately, smoking may sometimes unfold very serious psychological and sometimes even mental problems. In this case, treatment by antidepressants and other specific medicines may be required.
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