Day 1: face up to your desire to smoke
Most smokers have tried to give up, often many times. The feeling of failure, of being trapped by an addiction, is so depressing that it is hard to summon the enthusiasm once more. Perhaps you are waiting for the moment that you are certain you want to try again.
That could be a long wait. Addictions don't suddenly lose
their grip so, as July 1 approaches, now is as good a time as any to
kiss goodbye to an expensive, smelly, carcinogenic habit. Giving up
without being 100 per cent sure of success might sound like a recipe for
yet another failure but, paradoxically, it can be good to have an open
mind when you attempt to quit.
Before you try again, I want you to think about why your
past attempts haven't worked. You have almost certainly tried going cold
turkey, throwing away a half-empty packet and avoiding the pub. Chances
are that you've also tried hypnosis, acupuncture or nicotine
replacement to escape those cravings.
Either method may have worked for a while - but then you
returned to smoking. Don't be too hard on yourself. According to a 2005
study conducted by the Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine
in London, 85 per cent of those who try to give up each year fail.
However, your chances of success will improve if you try the method that
I used 27 years ago. Since then, I've taught it to thousands of
smokers, the majority of whom said they were not smoking a year later.
Tomorrow and the day after I will tell you how to stop smoking - and
stay stopped - but first we are going to look at why so many fail.
I find that people fall into three groups, the first of whom
I call the Martyrs. These quitters find giving up a desperately
miserable experience. They think about cigarettes all the time. They are
so cross without their prop that they feel a duty to start again, for
their sake and their families.The second group, which mostly consists of women, eats so much when they aren't smoking that they return to cigarettes because they can't afford a new wardrobe. Let's call them the Starving.
In the third group, I put those breezy types who are so good at giving up that they do it again and again. After a few weeks, the Blithe are doing so well that they let themselves have just one cigarette, perhaps at a party, and then, before they know it, they are smoking again.
The Martyrs, the Starving and the Blithe may sound very different, but they have something fundamental in common: they are all failing because they have not faced up to the core conflict of an addiction.
An addiction to cigarettes is viewed as physical, but the root of addiction lies in the mind. The physical dependence on nicotine is only a minor part - within 24 hours, the body can be cleared of the drug. Since most quitters last far more than a day before they succumb, we know it's not the body that leads them to smoke again, it's the brain. To be more precise, it's the mid-brain screaming out for the buzz it has come to associate with cigarettes.
The mid-brain is the impulsive, sensation-seeking, primitive area that becomes bathed in a neurochemical called dopamine when you repeat an action that, in the past, has provided excitement. It is dopamine that drives the addiction, setting up cravings that delude smokers into believing that they can't function without it.
That's rubbish, of course, but no one can simply wish away the delusion of being unable to concentrate, deal with emotional situations, or enjoy a party without cigarettes. Help is needed, and the best help is not a patch or an acupuncture needle, but the use of another part of the brain - the pre-frontal cortex, a more evolved area that makes choices.
Using one part of the brain to retrain the conditioned responses of another might sound like word play, but it is crucial. Most stop-smoking programmes don't engage the pre-frontal cortex (instead of offering choices, they dictate and prohibit) and that's why they may work for a few weeks, but will fail over the long term.
Let's look at the causes of failure in the groups. The Martyrs "know" that they don't function well without cigarettes. When denied their fix by a stop-smoking programme, they feel so ill and distracted that it "proves" their need to smoke. But it's not nicotine deprivation that makes them feel dreadful, it's feeling bereft of their freedom to smoke. Eventually they rebel and return to smoking.
The Starving think that they can conquer their desire for cigarettes by eating instead. This need not be manic bingeing - it could just be another helping of supper - but it's enough for them to start to balloon. That's depressing, so they usually return to their first addiction, smoking.
As for the Blithe, they bask in a false confidence that they have conquered the habit because they avoid situations in which they would normally smoke, as many quitting programmes advise them to do. It works until they get a parking ticket or get drunk, then they give in to the temptation that they've been avoiding.
All three groups have not faced up to their desire to smoke. Once they do, and engage the pre-frontal cortex in choosing whether to give in to that desire, failure turns into success.
Prepare to quit
Want to try? Then prepare for tomorrow's session on how to quit
Write down your reasons for giving up
Set a date for quitting but don't tell anyone of your plan (I'll explain why tomorrow)
Delay lighting up every now and then so you can practise paying attention to your desire to smoke
A former smoker and over-eater, Gillian Riley has been teaching her successful techniques for stopping smoking since 1982. She is the author of several self-help books on the subject, and led courses on giving up cigarettes for 15 years. She is a regular guest on TV and radio
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