11.30.04
Stopping Smoking
I went to a seminar on Friday by a lady working for ‘Alan Carrs easyway to stop smoking’. I went with the full intention of walking out a non-smoker, and indeed I did. The easyway method works by doing nothing more sophisticated than convincing your brain that smoking is a really stupid, disgusting, useless, pleasureless and expensive trap that every smoker has fallen into. Nicotine combined with psychological conditioning, virtually unnoticable physical withdrawl symptoms an overactive sub concious trained into telling you ‘I want a cigarette’ at lots of moments throughout the day, get us all (well all of us that smoke) trapped.
It is a strange fact that due to the physical withdrawl symptoms of nicotine being so slight, the mental symptoms seem so much greater; and it is these that alan carr and his easyway method focus on.
By the end of the session you smoke your last cigarette and walk out of there a happy non-smoker – indeed you are a non-smoker from the moment you put out your last cigarette, with a bullet list of mental armour against the odd ‘I want a cigarette’ popping into your head.
- Relax
- Acknowledge (Dont ignore it)
- Figure out why (why is your subconcious saying you would like a fag)
- Tell the truth (I used to need to smoke on this cocassion but now I’m a non smoker)
Anyhow the reverse brainwashing is fairly effective, and I’m a happy non-smoker for a few days now and planning on being for a lot longer. However there are strange feelings I get as a side effect of stopping. Most (as with most things about being a smoker) are completely ridiculous.
1. What Purpose.
Since smoking is really a chain of addiction with the first cigarette creating the need for the next and on and on and on, when I gave up somewhere in the back of my mind was the feeling of ‘Well that was a waste of time’. All those years of inhaling smoke, spending money and having to excuse yourself in awkward non-smoking social gatherings has been for nothing. Smoking serves no purpose. At least if you dont give up you can fool yourself into believing it has some purpose.
2. What Use
Its interesting that the only ‘smoking memories’ that you allow yourself once you have stopped are the ‘happy’ ones, but really think about those memories, was it the smoking that made them happy. Remember the catch in your throath, the smell on your hands. All the little things that make smoking just a bit silly.
I’m not home and dry yet, and although I dont completely fall for the ‘no willpower’ claim of the easyway offering, its not the kind of impossible feat of will that the other methods ask you for. Hopefully by blogging about this, it will help me to keep it clear in my head, and remain a happy non-smoker for the rest of my life.
Here’s a piece of software I wrote recently to keep track of how much money I spend on fags, and then how much I save once I stop.