So I quit smoking the EasyWay

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yes, the EasyWay. It’s from that book by a guy named Allen Carr.

It’s weird, because the truth is that I didn’t even plan on quitting. I sort of stumbled upon this book of his and I basically realized that I had to quit sometime. I can’t remember exactly what I was doing, but somehow I read about this interview with Ashton Kutcher and he mentioned how he quit smoking.

I have to admit it has been pretty easy. Although I do have a weird thing going on now. Basically I quit about a week and a half ago. After three days, I went out with my friends and caved and smoked a pack. Then I quit again and went another three days and decided I could take going out again, and this time I ALMOST made it. I only smoked four. That was last Wednesday. Now it will probably be at least until Wednesday until I go out again, and I’m just hoping that I can go the entire night without smoking.

At the very least, I have no desire to smoke when I’m at home. The weird thing is this, though. Whenever I’d have my serious after-dinner cravings, my mouth would water. I also had this after coffee in the morning. Talk about pavlovian…Well in the past few days, I haven’t had any desire for cigarettes at all, but my mouth has been watering non-stop. I suppose it isn’t harmful, but kind of annoying that I have to pay attention to it.

I don’t do the snacks, or gum, or anything like that though. I suppose that’s the important part. I guess it will go away on its own?

The annoying thing is though, I’m not particularly happy to have quit. It doesn’t make me much happier. I know in the long-run I will thank myself, and that’s why I continue to stay dedicated. The only time I can genuinely say that I regretted smoking was after a night out where I smoked a lot, but I certainly can feel the difference in my lungs. I live on the 5th floor and I am less out of breath when I climb the stairs.

I dunno though, this mouth-watering thing is strange to me. I have no idea where it comes from and it’s distracting. When I first quit I had, after the third day, a really great feeling. I felt so far away from smoking and I felt for the first time all kinds of small pleasures in life. Just enjoying the weather, or just being able to daydream, etc. Now I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel like smoking, but I’ve lost this really cool sense of well-being that I had after I first quit.

Anyway, for anyone trying to quit, I heavily recommend reading this EasyWay book by Allen Carr. It is kind of weird, but the thing is that it has a high rate of success. And when you read it you don’t feel like giving up is a big deal. Hey, I read it out of curiosity and gave up because of it.

2

For those of us who haven’t read it, could you provide what makes the “Easy Way” easy?

3

Sure no problem!

It’s more of a mindset than anything. Essentially the book explores what it means to be a smoker. What are the real reasons for why we smoke? Is it purely nicotine addiction or other stuff? The goal of the book is to rid yourself of the social conditioning that we all experience about smoking, whether or not we smoke. The goal is to rid yourself of that conditioning first and then you quit, only having to deal with the nicotine withdrawal symptoms, which are vastly exaggerated. I’ll give a few examples.

He lists a few reasons why people smoke and one is “relaxing” Now this is true for nearly any smoker. We all find smoking relaxing. But his argument is this. The only relaxation that we feel from smoking is because we are feeling tense from nicotine addiction. He likens it to walking around wearing shoes that are too tight. The point is that when we smoke a cigarette we are no more relaxed than a non-smoker. Why is this? Remember when you first started smoking? It was probably quite awful, but you kept doing it because you expected to feel the positive effects of smoking. But in the beginning the only feeling you’re likely to get is a bit queasy from the nicotine. That’s it really. But we’re trained from birth to believe that nicotine in itself is a relaxing drug, when it’s really a stimulant.

The key here is that when you give up smoking you won’t be giving up anything. You won’t need to smoke again because you realize that you really aren’t giving up anything. It’s not like drinking, or doing drugs, because there’s no positive effect. It’s only addictive. It would be the same to be addicted to water, essentially, except water has no bad effects.

That’s the point, when you read it, most people will realize that it is essentially true and that when we smoke, we only do it to feel normal. Of course we aren’t happy about it either. When you quit, you don’t think about moping around. You don’t feel sad that you’ll miss anything. Instead, you look forward to getting over the minor period of nicotine withdrawals and onto a better life. It truely can give you a positive outlook, because if you’re a chain smoker like me it prevents you from relaxing in the usual ways. I’ve recently discovered daydreaming. I never did it before, but now, I’ll sort of daydream a lot now, and I am really feeling a lot better for it.

90 percent of withdrawal symptoms are psychological. A very small percent is actually physical. I basically had indigestion and difficult bowel movements for a few days, after that I was fine. Even when I did smoke, when I did cave in, I didn’t enjoy it. I felt like I let myself down. And that’s the thing, when you know that nicotine addiction is more psychological than anything else, it feels like you’re letting yourself down, rather than succumbing to immeasurable pressure.

Hope that helps. I’d suggest you read it simply for the information. You’ll probably end up quitting too.

4

I had the mouth water-ing thing too when I gave up. Weird thing was, after a few days the taste in my mouth sort of disappeared. It was then I realised that I was just tasting my own spit, not all the smoke-related crap that was leeching out the skin inside my mouth. I saw that as a victory!

You’re doing a good thing, giving up. Good luck!

mm

5

Thanks for the summary Merkwurdigliebe! Sounds interesting, and congrats on going this long without smoking.

Oh, and I’m not a smoker btw, but it might be worth reading anyway to make sure I stay that way :slight_smile:

6

this is also an excellent book for people that are “starting” to smoke. Essentially those that only smoke once a week, etc.

7

Congratulations.

Giving up nicotine would go a long way towards explaining why your second post in the “broken microwave” thread sounded so cranky to me. :smiley:

8

:o :o

:cool:

9

Congratulations Merkwurdigliebe! Wishing you luck keeping it going.

10

Very glad to hear it, Merkwurdigliebe…Carr’s book was what finally enabled me to knock off the smokes after 25 years

Hell, it should be required reading for 12-year-olds.

11

Yeah, but I suppose it’s really hard to get all the stuff unless you’ve smoked a few butts. It’s kinda difficult to relate to a lot of this stuff if you haven’t been hooked

12

Congratulations and good luck, but you aren’t quite out of the woods yet. Remember that every time you smoke (even for a night), you have to detox all over again. I had to avoid going out to bars (or even drinking at home) for like a year because it was such a trigger for me.

Like you said, one you’ve detoxed, you don’t even really get anything out of smoking anymore anyway. That pleasant little fusion of noctine and alcohol isn’t there anymore. You just end up feeling queasy or headachy from the heaters and then you feel like crap for ruining your non-smoking streak the next day.

Carr’s book is very accurate (and he knows how to talk to smokers. He doesn’t lecture or wave his finger. He knows exactly how smokers think and how they respond to that kind of thing), especially in how he’s able to get across the point that the only thing noctine addicts get from using nicotine is relief from nicotine withdrawal. That relief feels good when we’re jonesing, so we associate pleasant feeling with smoking when really it’s just a relief from tension caused by smoking. That pleasant feeling is no longer there when we’re no longer addicted so the rewards we expect to get if we smoke again after we’ve detoxed (it was always nice to have a smoke after a meal) are no longer there (well that just made me feel kind of sick…and now I ruined my streak again).

After about a month, you’ll pretty much be over it. You’ll still think about it off and on, but nothing too serious. What you have o be wary of is the nostalgic feelings you’ll get from time to time and an urge t have one for old time’s sake because you remember how much you used to enjoy a smoke after dinner or at the bar or whatever. Just remember that the reward won’t be there anymore. The irony of smoking is that you can’t really enjoy it unless you’re going through nicotine withdrawal.

13

Congrats on quitting!

I’m not sure how well it would work for me, though. I’m already well aware of the fact that the vast majority of the addiction is psychological. It’s something you do and in particular, something you do as routine during or following certain activities, such as after a meal, while you’re at the computer, when you watch TV, going for a walk, or whatever. You’re just so used to doing it that not doing it makes you feel like you’re missing something – the periodic, repetitive action of smoking. And when you’re not doing it, you’re not really sure what you should be doing instead, and that just makes you want to do it more – more for lack of anything else to fill the absence of activity with.

Then, too, I have trouble reconciling with my brain the idea that the “feel good” feeling I get when I have a puff after having gone without for an hour or two is really just a return to feeling normal – like scratching an itch. It feels good because the itch is uncomfortable and scratching it gives you a tingly sense of relief for having returned that particular area to feeling normal again. But I still enjoy scratching it, just as I still enjoy having a smoke, and for much the same reason: It feels good, despite knowing logically that it is only because I have scratched the itch, as it were.

I have already wrestling with all of the psychological aspects of it. I know what it does to a body. I know why I smoke. I know where most of the putative withdrawal symptoms come from, and that the vast majority of them are not from the physical withdrawal at all. This is all in my brain. But my brain seems unwilling to communicate this to my willpower, which, for its own part, isn’t taking any calls anyway.

sigh

14

I’d highly recommend you read the book I read by Allen Carr. It’s cheap compared to most stop-smoking aids and it is highly successful. Plus you don’t even have to quit once you read it. It’s just good information to have. Diogenes is right, he knows how a smoker thinks, there’s no finger wagging or trying to make you feel guilty about it.

Thanks for the help Diogenes. I realize how difficult it can be to fall back, but I have a lot of confidence that the next time I go out I won’t have that problem. I’ve had a few drinks at home this week to get myself over that association. I am quite proud that although I caved last week (wednesday) it was only 4 cigarettes and it wasn’t a total loss of control. I “quit” again after four. I feel really stupid about it though, hopefully I’ll never smoke again. As far as the cravings go from day to day? They are okay, I don’t feel like it’s a battle. It’s more about reconnecting with the version of myself before I was a smoker. What did I do all day? Well I was about 18, so it was about 7 years ago. It’s slightly difficult, but it does remind me of some really nice times I had before I started smoking.

I think though that Allen makes the point that if you follow his logic, as a reformed smoker you’re the luckiest of all, because you never have to wonder if smoking makes you feel good, it’s really just relief of tension from nicotine withdrawals.

15

On a sad note Allen Carr died last year of lung cancer. He quit smoking in 1983 but had been an up to 5 pack a day chain smoker so the damage was already done. Probably would have died much earlier if he hadn’t quit.

16

Congratulations on trying to quit and doing a great job so far. I quit last September after 11 years of smoking, and never heard of the book but wish I had.
Let me know if you have trouble quitting in the future; maybe I can get my wife to make your life a living hell over your smoking. Worked for me!

17

Perhaps I will give it a try. I’m a natural born skeptic, especially when it comes to psychological trickery. (I like to fool myself into thinking that I’m level-headed enough to be able to both already know the common sense stuff, and to recognize and expose mind tricks when I see them.) The success rate is promising, I’ll say that about it. My wife smokes too though, so I am wondering how much more willpower it will require to stop smoking when I live with a smoker who herself doesn’t really want to quit.

18

Surprisingly enough, there’s not a whole lot of trickery. It might set off the alarm, but all that he says is what you’ve stated. Essentially we only smoke because we are conditioned to believe it is relaxing to us. Otherwise, why wouldn’t a cigarette be good from the first second you tasted it? Alcohol obviously is. Not saying beer, but Alcohol certainly has it’s perceived effects on the first time you try it. I am also generally very questioning, but I let down my guard for this one as a sort of “ends justify the means” kind of thing, so I didn’t scrutinize it, but nothing really set off my BS detector either. It’s hard to imagine, but the truth is that he speaks to smokers in ways that you really need to hear it. Your life will be better after you quit, it’s not as hard as you think to quit, etc…Hell, he went from smoking 100 a day to nothing. I was impressed.

I also think he makes a good case for why nicotine withdrawal is 90 percent psychological. First, most people don’t smoke at night, so they are able to make it for at least 8 hours, yet if you were to try to not smoke for the last 8 hours that you’re awake you’d kill someone. Secondly, think about the panic that sets in when you have no means of buying cigarettes. When is it actually the strongest? When you actually have that last cigarette in your mouth. It certainly isn’t due to addiction. It’s quite addictive, nicotine, but still not as crazy as we make it out to be. I don’t have any physical symptoms anymore (the mouth watering thing went away for the most part) The only times that I’m weak would be going out, but I’m pretty sure I can handle it next time. It’s good practice to be around smokers though, if you make it a point to remember how bad it makes you feel. The second strongest urge for me was after meals. It usually crosses my mind now, but not as a desire, but rather as an answer to, “what should I do now?” kind of thing.

Which reminds me, the first time I quit for three days and smoked a pack on the forth. I could really feel it the next day. It was a big deal to me and I could tell. It was nice to have that night and day comparison once more. The second time was a minor slip up and hopefully it won’t happen again. But next Wednesday it will be two weeks not counting any slip ups.

19

You’ve put your finger on a very critical point of self-improvement. Rather than getting a marching-band-and-fireworks celebration every day for doing something so momentous, all you have is… normal. I think a lot of us fall into the trap of thinking that if we could just fix that one little thing, our lives would be perfect. Well, you quit smoking, and your life didn’t magically become perfect. What a rip-off. (I’m exaggerating for effect here. :slight_smile: ) I think the cure to that feeling is just getting on with your life. Don’t be afraid to remind yourself of all the positives from quitting smoking, too, to give yourself a little boost.

20

Oh, I’m fully behind the 90% psychological thing. The sleep thing doesn’t really sell it for me, though – you’re unconscious, you’re not craving much of anything at that point. Rather, all you have to do is get involved in something that occupies your attention as fully as possible. While you are focused on whatever it is you’re doing, there are no cravings – or at least not nearly enough of one to disturb your concentration. I find this a lot when I get busy at work, or when I’m working on a song and I’m really heavily into it, laying down tracks and chords and stuff – I just don’t even think about smoking. Sometimes I find I’ll light one during a break in concentration, but then I completely forget about it when I return to working on it. By the time I take another break I light up another and it doesn’t feel like I’ve really missed anything having gone longer than usual without a smoke.

Therein lies the rub, though: Just what do you do to steer your mind away from smoking?

I also don’t expect miraculous life changes once I quit. I’ve heard about people tasting things differently – better, really – and being able to smell things better and such. Not that I disbelieve any of that – I’m sure it’s quite true to some degree – but I really can’t imagine how things might smell or taste different, or what it’s like to breathe more deeply. I’ve smoked since I was 17 – that’s 18 years, so really, I can’t remember what it was like. It’s not something I can look forward to exactly, so mostly I just expect quitting to feel more or less like getting a job done; satisfied that I have accomplished a goal, but not excited about being in a state of goal-completion.