Quit smoking within 3 days, Day 3: the torment isn't permanent

Quit smoking within 3 days

Day 1: face up to your desire to smoke
Day 2: The choice is yours

Day 3: the torment isn't permanent

Well done. You're not smoking. If this is your second day, then your body is almost free of nicotine - but you might find today even more difficult, because the desire to smoke will enter your mind frequently.

Whether you stay off the cigarettes will depend on how effectively you manage this desire.

To beat the desire, you need to experience it. When you tried quitting before, you might have avoided parties, driving or whatever other activities have the strongest associations with smoking, but sooner or later your desire to smoke will return.

Whether you leave it for a day, a week or a month, the desire will resurface in circumstances where you always used to smoke. It will be just as strong however long you leave it, so it's best to tackle it right away.

What works best is to confront the urge to smoke. If you associate smoking with concentrating on a piece of work, try doing that work now.
If you think you can't enjoy yourself without cigarettes, go to a party - but don't drink so much that you lose all inhibition.
If you think you can't have a cup of coffee without a cigarette, don't switch to herbal tea because you'll be in trouble when you finally do have that cappuccino.
The more time you allow to elapse before you start retraining your brain, the more complacent you will have become - and the more vulnerable you will be to being ambushed by the mid-brain, which holds on to the association between smoking and these activities.
There has to be a first time for everything you do without having a cigarette in your hand, so start to chalk them up now.
Party; tick. Row with partner; tick. Difficult meeting; tick. Finishing a meal without eating seconds; tick.
Of course, doing it just once will not be enough to erase the connections built up over many years. Giving up smoking is not an event, it's a process, because the only way to set up new brain pathways is through repetition.
It won't be easy. The desire to smoke will be acute, but you will be prepared for it. At times, you may feel deprived, but those feelings will go away if you remind yourself, by using the sequence that you learnt yesterday, that you have a choice.
You could give in to the desire, or you could think of the reasons why you don't want a cigarette on this particular occasion.
What you cannot do is choose to smoke now and again, because that's not how an addiction works.
This, as with most things to do with smoking, has been thoroughly studied: 88 per cent of those who have even one puff after they have stopped will return to full-time smoking. On average, they have their second cigarette nine days later and return to full-time smoking after six weeks.
It's an all or nothing choice between being a smoker or an ex-smoker, but don't let that frighten you.
You aren't making a decision for the rest of your life. Stay in the present. It's not that you can never have another cigarette, it's just that you aren't going to have this one puff right now.
"I might get away with it," your mid-brain might tell you, but it's overwhelmingly likely that you won't. Then what? You could end up smoking every day of your life. Do you want to risk it?
Each time you refuse to satisfy the desire to smoke it will be a struggle but, over time, the desire will fade. You won't be in a permanent state of torment.
After a while, it may recur only for 30 seconds once every couple of months but, even if it strikes for only a few seconds, that's long enough to light a cigarette, so it's smart to be mentally prepared. In that instant, you don't want to forget how much you like not smoking.
REMEMBER
The longer you stay off smoking, the greater your chance of staying stopped. After a year, there is a very small chance of going back to it. But don't think about that too much; just do it for now.
Pay attention to the desire
Work through it using the sequence below
Don't get a false sense of security: it really is possible to smoke again
THE SEQUENCE "I have a desire to smoke. I have the freedom to smoke. One puff and I'll be smoking..."
To that, you can choose to add either "I choose to return to smoking" or "For now I choose not to act upon this desire so I can enjoy the benefits of not smoking.."

Quit smoking within 3 days, Day 2: The choice is yours

 Quit smoking within 3 days
 Day 1: face up to your desire to smoke

Day 2: The choice is yours


Today is quit day. Are you sure you want to stop smoking? If the answer is no, don't worry.

But why not give it a try? It doesn't have to be for ever, and if you don't like not smoking, you can go back to cigarettes at any time. It's your choice.

No matter what your wife or boyfriend says, you can, if you want, smoke for the rest of your life. There may well be unpleasant consequences, but it's your choice.

That's why I hope you followed the advice I gave yesterday about not telling anyone that you are even thinking of quitting.

If you do let on, you might find that others' words of encouragement pressure you.
You don't want that because it might make you rebel. Make sure that if you do stop smoking, it is because you want to be an ex-smoker.
It's important to keep reminding yourself that you have a choice, because that's what's going to get you through.
It will stop you from feeling desperate, reaching for a box of chocolates or drifting back into smoking. By consciously choosing not to smoke on each individual occasion, you will gradually retrain the reward-seeking mid-brain that prompts you to give it a dopamine buzz by lighting up another cigarette.
The way you calm that voice in your head is via your pre-frontal cortex, and you do it by acknowledging your freedom to return to smoking.
This is a challenging concept for most smokers. You don't ignore the desire to smoke - rather you predict it when you can, focus on it, even seek it out by taking a pack into the garden and confronting it. That way, you'll become really good at being in charge of it and won't be vulnerable to ambush.
But first, a warning about what to expect from your body and your brain once you stop smoking.
During the first 24 hours, while the nicotine is leaving your body, you may feel light-headed and strange. You may worry that you won't sleep so, to improve your chances, don't have caffeine late in the day. But whatever physical symptoms you experience, they will be short-lived, so don't be too concerned.
Concentrate instead on something that won't go away so quickly: the desire to smoke.
Cigarettes are the most addictive things on the planet so there's no escape.
Cravings are your mid-brain calling out for a dopamine buzz, just as Pavlov's dogs salivated when a bell was rung because they had been conditioned to associate the sound with food. The dogs were under a delusion that food and bells are linked - just as smokers believe that cigarettes do all kinds of good things for them, while ignoring the evidence that with every inhalation they not only get a small amount of nicotine in the bloodstream but also 4,000 other unnecessary and harmful chemicals.
You may, for example, believe that smoking helps you to wake up in the morning, while others credit it with helping them to sleep: well, it can't be both a stimulant and a sedative, can it?
Some people believe that smoking keeps them slim because it speeds up their metabolism and suppresses their appetite. Not only is that doubtful, but it's a strange delusion because not all smokers are slender.
Similarly, the sense of help and comfort that smokers experience when they smoke is nothing more than a placebo effect. If you give yourself the chance, you will discover that you can do all sorts of things without the support of cigarettes.
The way to discover this is to tame your buzz-seeking mid-brain. That's going to take time because, while your body will automatically adjust to not smoking, your mind will not.
It will remain the mind of a smoker who is not smoking, and it takes a real effort to alter those response pathways because your mind has been conning you for a long time.
Three cigarettes are enough to set up the conditioned reflex in the mid-brain and, if you've been smoking for some years, you will have reinforced that behaviour many thousands of times.
The good news is that each time you choose to say no to that desire it will get weaker.
Your pre-frontal cortex will gradually silence the mid-brain. If you see this as an experiment that you take one day at a time, each day you will be proving to yourself that your delusions about cigarette dependency are completely fictitious.
Stopping smoking by making a series of conscious choices not to smoke is, you will find, not only effective, but - though this may be hard to believe - enjoyable because you will feel powerful. It's the opposite of that feeling of being a victim that you had when you felt you couldn't smoke because you were trying to give up. This time you will know that you can smoke at any time, but you choose not to.
Take a minute to remind yourself what went wrong when you gave up before. Did you feel deprived, hungry or over-confident?
Whichever it was, be ready to fight those unhelpful feelings by using the pre-frontal cortex and the sequence below. This is your weapon in the fight against the mid-brain. Learn it and be prepared to say it to yourself every time you feel the desire to smoke which, to begin with, will be often.
"I have a desire to smoke. I have the freedom to smoke. One puff and I'll be smoking..." To that you can choose either to add "I choose to return to smoking", or "For now I choose not to act upon this desire so I can enjoy the benefits of not smoking..."
Each time you say the sequence, remind yourself of the benefits of accepting the desire without satisfying it: better health, more money, etc.
Don't throw away your cigarettes - you need to know you can have one at any time. Instead, create a barrier to grabbing one on impulse; perhaps tape up the pack, so that if you make a decision to smoke, it's conscious.
Welcome the discomfort of wanting to smoke because it is the healing process.

Quit smoking within 3 days, Day 1: face up to your desire to smoke

Quit smoking within 3 days

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