Smoking Cigarettes - Is It REALLY a Drug Addiction or a Powerful Habit?

Firstly, if smoking was all about a 'nicotine addiction', then it would stand to reason that patches should work 100% of the time for every single person. But they don't. If you're replacing your nicotine 'craving' with a patch, then why aren't they 100% effective?

Patches have actually been shown to be only 7% effective. That means that 93% of people who try patches to quit fail! You see all nicotine replacement treatments have one fundamental assumption, which isn't entirely accurate. That is 'the only reason you're smoking is because you're addicted to nicotine, if we can give your body nicotine in another way, other than puffing on a cigarette, you'll quit'. If that's true, and I've already got nicotine in my body from a patch I'm wearing, than why do I still feel like a cigarette? Why do I still want to smoke?

Preparing Yourself With The Psychology For Quitting Cigarettes

The first thing you should know is that most smokers quit unsuccessfully several times before they quit for good. You will most likely not be successful your first time around - but you must keep trying! Each time you attempt to quit you come closer to finally quitting for good.

During or before you have your last cigarette, start to visualise yourself as a non-smoker. Visualisation is a very effective psychological technique not only for quitting cigarettes but for many other things as well.

There have been many scientific research studies to show how powerful visualisation can be. One that I recall, was a study done where athletes were wired to a machine used to measure muscle activity and asked to visualise themselves in the act of doing their event, say a 100 meter sprint. 

The 3 Most Common Excuses Smokers Have for NOT Quitting Cigarettes

1) I still enjoy it. When I hear this from my clients I tell them that it's fine if they are still 'enjoying it'. Just because you might be enjoying it, that doesn't mean that you're not ready to quit. If you are waiting for some time in your future when you hate every single cigarette before you decide to quit, chances are that time will never come and you'll just continue to kid yourself.

If you think about all the cigarettes you smoke in a day, how many would you say that you are really there, in the moment, 'enjoying' that cigarette? If you're like most of the people I've seen, probably not many. If you think about it, most of the cigarettes you're having are just getting in the way of something else and you're not really enjoying it at all. Often you might be having them in a rush, to just get your little 'fix' so you can just get on with what you were doing before the cigarette. What an inconvenient hassle right? If it is something you truly enjoy why wouldn't you encourage children to do it?

How To Quit Smoking - With Plain Cigarette Packaging

At the time of writing, the Australian government is about to introduce a law requiring cigarette companies to market their products in plain green packaging. I imagine they are thinking that, when a person asks how they can quit smoking, they think about the packaging.

Tobacco giant Phillip Morris is threatening to sue the Australian government.

Past efforts such as grisly images on packaging, no smoking signs and scary television ads have had little impact on smoking numbers. Smokers freely admit that quite often seeing an advertisement with a smoker dying in a hospital bed actually makes them want to smoke.

One client while watching television with his son, reported that as his young lad was becoming upset and pleading with him to quit, all he could think about was going outside to light up a smoke.

Stop Smoking Now - A Motivational Approach

Having taught motivational psychotherapy for many years at university I believe this is probably one of the best ways to give up smoking. It doesn't rely on teaching you stuff you already know or assuming that you don't know how to give up, but aims to kick start your intrinsic motivation so that you really, really want to stop smoking.

Let me ask you a very important question; what do you like about smoking? Think about it hard, and don't say "nothing." If that were true you would have given up by now. The reason that you haven't is because you still get something from it, be it the nicotine rush or relaxation or a hundred and one of the other things that cigarettes provide. Write out, or think about, a list of what smoking gives you and be honest with yourself. Include all the things that you feel you shouldn't own up to; be as honest as you can.

Health Effects Of Smoking - For People Wanting To Quit Smoking

Awful health effects of smoking are for the most part are always addressed whenever an article is written concerning facts about smoking. They emphasize that the smoke in cigarette contains poisonous nicotine drug and many other unsafe substances which are damaging to the lungs. The dreadful and scary statistics about death as a result of cigarette smoking is never missed to be included in these articles and reports to sway people away from smoking.

Yet smokers continue on inhaling this drug making it difficult for people who don't smoke to comprehend why. Well, besides being addicted to nicotine, people smoke tobacco to help calm themselves in dealing with difficult situations in their lives, such as peer pressure both for kids and adults, as their need to belong to group, and be perceived as cool and tough guy or gal; to name a few.

How To Prepare For Your 'Quit Cigarettes Day'

One popular way to quit cigarettes is to choose a "stop smoking day". As the name suggests, the point of choosing a day is to make the commitment to yourself that on a particular day, you'll stop smoking. Your goal is to fully load up on anything you may need on your journey towards becoming a non-smoker. So, how do you prepare for this day?

The first step is to write your intention and desire for quitting on a piece of paper, or an index card. Write down what you want to do and why. Then every morning after you wake up, read this note and reinforce your desire to quit smoking. You should also refer to this card any time you are tempted to smoke after your "stop smoking day". What you want to do is really start to generate some strong emotional traction around quitting and remaining a non-smoker. The more emotions you can develop around quitting and remaining a non-smoker, the more likely you'll be successful.

How Do Related Pulmonary or Lung Diseases Affect Quality of Life?

COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is not just one disease, but a group of lung diseases mainly consisting of:

♦ Emphysema;

♦ Chronic bronchitis.

These are the two symptoms of COPD.

Since COPD is a progressive disease, it gets worse over time and makes it harder and harder to breathe. Coughing is a result of this disease and produces not only large amounts of mucus but shortness of breath, tightness of the chest, and wheezing.

How To Quit Smoking When You Suffer From Depression

It can be hard enough to quit smoking at the best of times, but if you want to know how to quit smoking when you also suffer from depression you are going to need to get support on several fronts.

Depression has both organic and emotional components. The emotional can be assisted by professional therapy, such as cognitive behavioural therapy. The organic aspect is usually well managed with specific selective Serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications such as Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil.

A person with depression will need the support of their medical specialist to assist and monitor their medications and their emotional state when they quit cigarettes.

'Help Me Stop Smoking' - How Hypnosis Can Help You

Knowing how powerful hypnosis can be to help someone quit cigarettes once and for all, it's a real shame that many people out there will never consider it simply because of the misconceptions they have about hypnosis, what it is and how it works.

My goal here is to share some information with you. It's the exact thing I tell people when I meet a smoker, I tell them what I do and then immediately they say to me "help me stop smoking!"

So how does hypnosis help people quit this horrible habit? It's quite simple really. It just takes away that huge overwhelming URGE TO SMOKE. At the end of the day, once you have decided to quit, you wouldn't smoke if you didn't feel like a cigarette would you?