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.