So I had to come on here and brag a bit, I just passed the 4 year mark for quitting smoking.  I have not had a single puff, not a single bit of nicotine in that time period at all.  None!

Pretty cool, huh?  Actually I missed the day and was mad because I wanted to buy a cake to celebrate.  But I forget and then realized later that I now had my 4 years in.

So I guess you could say it gets easier over time…..

Let’s take a look at my stats, shall we?  What have I gained from not smoking for 4 years?

* I have avoided smoking approximately 37 THOUSAND cigarettes.

* The cost savings from not having to purchase those cigarettes is just under $7,000 dollars.

* The time I would have spent actually smoking those 37 thousand cigs?  128 days.

128 days of continuous smoking!

If you are still smoking I want you to really think about that.  Imagine smoking, non-stop, for 128 days continuously, without stopping to eat or sleep or anything else.  That is how much time I would have actually been smoking if I had not quit 4 years ago.

Folks, that is crazy.  Just plain nuts.

I don’t really care about the 7 grand, I mean really, who needs another iPod these days, right?  And I’m not even that appalled with the 37 thousand cig total.  But folks, do you realize you are wasting almost an entire month out of each year, engaged in the act of smoking?

We all sleep about 7 to 8 hours a day….so with your remaining, waking hours, you are giving away about a quarter of your life to the act of smoking. This is insane!  A quarter of your free time!  To a mindless activity!

Think of the things you could be doing…..trust me, there are all sorts of things that do not involve smoking.  Exercise is a good one, for example.

I actually run now, on a regular basis.  Quite a bit too.  Pretty sure that quitting smoking has been a driver of that good habit.

“But I actually enjoy it,” you say.

Hah!  No, what you enjoy is avoiding the onset of nicotine withdrawal.  You are confusing avoiding pain with pleasure.  If you measure your happiness, contentment, and ability to handle stress, you will see that all of that stuff gets better after you are nicotine free for a few weeks.  Yes, withdrawal is a major struggle, and not much fun, but if you get through it, you will see that the cigarettes have you fooled……

Want to quit smoking forever?  It’s actually pretty easy to do.  All you have to do is…..change everything.

OK, so that is not easy to do.  But it is pretty simple.  It is just a lot of work, a lot of effort, and you have to make this effort in all areas of your life.

“But,” you protest…”I just want to quit smoking.  Forever.”

And you will.  But in order to stay quit, forever, you need to do some serious work.

So what needs to change?  What do we mean when we say that you have to “change everything?”

It means that you have to change every single thing about your life, from the inside out.  The way that you deal with problems and stress has to change, among other things.  But even more than that, here are some other changes that will help insure long term success when quitting smoking:

1) Daily exercise – those who do not exercise on a regular basis are making it at least 5 times harder on themselves.  Why?  Because regular exercise practically replaces the effects of smoking completely on a chemical level.  The amount of “feel-good” endorphins that you get pumping to your brain is very similar to someone who is smoking cigarettes all day long.  And yet so many people will find a mountain of excuses to avoid this most crucial step.

2) Rituals – you get in the car, you light up a cigarette.  You finish a meal, you light up a cigarettes.  It seems like everything you do is defined by smoking.  If this is the case, then you will need to redefine all of these rituals after you quit.  Getting through these situations will be difficult at first, but it will get easier each time you do so without caving in.  In time, you will have established new rituals that do not involve smoking, and may not involve much of anything.  But it takes time to reprogram your brain to realize that the old reward is gone.

3) Social circles – everyone knows about the little huddle of people who stand together outside of work.  It’s the smokers!  Well if you quit smoking, you obviously are not going to be joining them any more out there, and this might require a bit of a shift on your part.  You can still be social of course, you just have to do it in a different way and possibly with some new people.

If you need quit smoking advice and you are struggling to stop smoking cigarettes then I would urge you to follow these recommendations.  This is a very simple and yet powerful 2 step approach that will help to treat both the short term effects of quitting, as well as the long term effects of quitting.  This technique is not easy to do but of course there really is no “easy” way to quit smoking….you are in for a battle no matter what you do.  But, if you do these 2 things (which are hard) then it will make the quitting smoking rather easy.

First thing, for help in the short term when quitting smoking:

Getting through nicotine withdrawal is hard.  Most people do not make it past the first few days because the withdrawal symptoms are so uncomfortable.  So here is how you can overcome that.

When you smoke your last cigarette, you need to do 2 things: one is to stay awake for the next 36 hours.  No sleeping, no naps.  Period.  This sounds outrageous but it will really help.  The other thing is that you need to start drinking large amounts of cranberry juice.  Try to drink at least one full bottle over the 36 hour period.  Drink lots of water too.

Here is what will happen if you do these things.  You will effectively be flushing your system out very quickly and speeding up the detox process.  This will make your withdrawal much worse and more intense than if you did not flush with all these fluids.  However, the staying awake part is going to help you out, because if you manage to stay awake for 36 hours, then you will be entering the worst part of your withdrawal right when you go to sleep.  If you do this right then you will sleep right through the worst part of your detox.  When you wake up, you will almost be through with the nicotine withdrawal and you will be feeling much better already.

Next: the action step to help with long term quitting:

Exercise every single day.  Period.

No one likes to hear that, and they will argue that it is not important for quitting smoking, and they will try to find all sorts of ways to weasel out of it.  Just do it.  If you want to quit, start exercising every single day.  No exceptions.  No excuses.  Just do it and know that it will increase your chances of staying nicotine free.

Should you try acupuncture to stop smoking?  Absolutely.  It is a decent secondary strategy that can help assist you in quitting smoking.  If you do go have the procedure done, you will notice that your craving to smoke will have decreased after the procedure.  As such, you might have a couple of sessions before you are really ready to stop smoking.

There is no reason to be nervous about the needles.  It does not really hurt much, if at all, and pretty much nobody complains about pain from the needles.  It is a very clean and clinical thing, not messy or scary at all.

Now if you plan to quit smoking with acupuncture, you should actually go far beyond just having this as your basic plan and come  up with some other strategies to help you to quit smoking.  Acupuncture can certainly help but it will probably not do the entire trick on its own.  In order to be successful at quitting, this will just need to be one part of your overall strategy.  Does that mean that you should not even use this method?  No, it is still worth being part of an overall quitting plan.  But you need more in order to insure that you are successful at staying stopped.

What are some strategies that can go along with acupuncture?  The main one is exercise.  You should be exercising every single day, and if you are not, then you should start.  It should be the type of exercise where it is somewhat vigorous and you are working up a sweat.  This can be a brisk walk if you like, or just about anything else, as long as you get your heart pumping and get your endorphins going.  You should aim for 30 minutes per day of vigorous exercise.  If you do this, it will be a huge addition to your acupuncture, and might even be a more important part of the equation.  It will help you tremendously.

Another strategy that you might try is to get some chewing sticks for your mouth and some Bic pens for your hands.  The chewing sticks are like fancy toothpicks that you can get at the health food store, and they usually have tea tree oil in them and are flavored.  The Bic pens you can keep in your hand and push the clicker button all day long so that your hand has something to do when it wants to hold a cigarette.  These strategies might sound silly, but you will not think so when you are going through nicotine withdrawal!

Here is some stop smoking advice that finally did the trick for me, even though it was a tired cliche that I was sick of hearing: “Never quit quitting.”

That really is one of the fundamental principles of quitting smoking.  The reason it is fundamental is because no one, no person in the history of the universe, has ever quit smoking on their first try.  Never.

We always underestimate how difficult it will be at first.  It was only through repeated attempts at trying to quit that I learned how challenging it was.  And I witness this in other people over and over again.

The whole secret for me was to make a mental shift in my head: “OK, I failed this time.  But I am not going to allow myself to smoke freely.  Those days are over.  I am going to quit.  No matter what.  I am not going to stop trying.  No more mindless smoking.  No more resigning myself to just being a smoker.  I am going to keep trying.  I am not going to quit quitting.”

That was the mental shift that I needed to succeed.  Once I made this commitment with myself, that I was going to quit no matter what, that is when I got serious enough to make it work.

This mental shift is what did it for me.  The rest was details, and they are secondary to this mental shift that I made, but I will give them to you anyway, because some of the techniques might help you:

1) I took a vacation from work and planned to quit during the vacation.

2) I stayed awake for 36 hours following my final cigarette and was flushing my system HARD with cranberry juice.  At the 36 hour mark I was in heavy, heavy, nicotine withdrawal and I crashed for about 14 hours straight.  When I woke up, I was basically through the worst of my nicotine withdrawal and it was already fading and I knew that I had it beat.

3) I started exercising every single day BEFORE I quit smoking.  Of course I continued with the exercise and this helped tremendously in the long run.

Those are the details and if you struggle during your first week of quitting, then you should take a long look at point number 2 there because it works like a charm.  Drinking the cranberry juice will help to speed up the withdrawal, make it much faster, and of course much more intense and uncomfortable.  But you will not mind that much because you are going to sleep through the worst of it.  It’s brilliant!

Can you use a laser treatment to stop smoking?  Sure you can.  It works in much the same way that meditation helps people to overcome physical pain.

Huh?  What does that mean?  It means that it is largely a placebo effect, and if you pay good money for a laser treatment to help you quit smoking, then you might get good results simply based on the money you paid.

The problem with laser treatments for smoking is that they have not done any rigorous studies yet.  They have been asked to produce some studies to verify that the technique actually helps people, and they have failed to do so.

Basically what needs to happen is this: a group of people needs to be split into two, and they all must be smokers who desire to quit.  One group receives the laser treatment, the other group receives a “fake” laser treatment.  Neither group is told whether they are getting the fake or the laser treatment.  In fact, the people administering the study cannot be allowed to know which laser treatment they are administering.  Only the organizers of the research, who will eventually collect all the data and determine the results, will know which group had the real laser treatment and which had the fake laser.

The laser treatment industry will not subject themselves to this level of testing (known as a double-blind study, which is a very high standard) because they know they will fail the test.  They are selling people something, but it is not a very helpful laser treatment.  What they are selling is a worthless laser treatment that people believe has the power to help them.  Does it?  Only to the extent that the placebo effect can work on someone.  Only to the extent that they want their 500 dollars to really help them to quit smoking.

What is the alternative?  The alternative is to use hard work and serious action to quit smoking.  Set a quit date, find support systems, start exercising every day, and find other helpful strategies on this website that will allow you to put in a ton of effort and get the results you really want.  Sound like fun?  Not really.

Quitting smoking is actually a lot of work, so most people would rather pay 500 dollars and have a laser shot into them, in the hopes of a magic cure.  Talk about a waste of money.  If this stuff really worked it would cost 5 thousand dollars, not 5 hundred.  Save your money.

There are several methods to quit smoking and you need to find the one that works best for you.  If you are still smoking cigarettes then you need to take it on as your own personal responsibility to figure out a method of quitting smoking that actually works for you.

It is not OK for you to say “I’m just going to smoke and not worry about it right now.”

The situation is much more urgent than that.  If you could fast forward into your life if you continue to smoke and watch yourself die from lung cancer, you would realize just how serious it is that you quit right now.  You no longer have time to mess around.  It is time to quit for real.

There are many methods to stop smoking that might work for you, but I am going to outline the best course of action based on what worked for me.  I know this works if you apply it to your life.

WARNING: It is a lot of work.  Do you really want to quit though?  I can pretty much assure you of success if you follow what I tell you to do.  Plus, this method is free.

Set a quit date for a month from now and take a week off work to accommodate this.   If you are quitting on October 15th, then you need time off work from at least October 16th through October 22.  Give yourself 7 days of vacation in order to pull this off.  If you can’t take the time off then push it forward a month or two.

Right now, before you even quit smoking, commit to daily exercise.  This has to happen no matter what.  If you want to quit, get out there and walk for 30 minutes per day minimum.  You can do other exercise and you can do it for longer if you want.  But the bare minimum is 30 minutes of walking every single day.  No exceptions.  No excuses.  Do it first thing if you have to.

Now after you quit smoking this habit will be a big key.

The other key is that you should stay awake for 36 hours straight after you smoke your last cigarette.  Stay up with no napping for 36 hours.  Then when you finally hit hour 36, you can crash out, and you will sleep right through the worst of your withdrawals.  This works awesome and combined with the exercise, should be enough to get a committed quitter well on their way to success.

Does stop smoking laser treatment really work?  This is the procedure where you pay a couple of hundred dollars to go into an office and have them shoot a “cold” laser into your body at various acupuncture points.  It is a “cold” laser because it does not do any cutting or burning of the skin.  Instead, the laser is thought to stimulate endorphin production, thus making you “feel better” during nicotine withdrawal.

Well take a look at what else these same clinics are doing with their laser therapy….they are using them to promote weight loss in people.

Huh?

What does quitting smoking and losing weight have to do with each other?  Since when does success in one area correlate to success in the other?  Is there some secret link in our biochemistry that has to do with both quitting smoking and losing weight?

I don’t think so.  No medical journal or scientific study has ever produced such evidence.  Nor have there any been any studies that show any sort of success rates for the stop smoking laser treatments.  They industry is refusing to have clinical trials conducted, probably because they know they will get lousy results with them.

A clinical trial would include people who are getting a “fake” laser treatment as well.  So basically, if they had similar success rates to the “real laser treatment,” then it would prove that it is no better than a placebo.

This might give you an insight into the way that many quit smoking products work.  They might give you a mental boost, but in most ways, they do not actually do anything to help you quit.  The core motivation has to come from within.  People secretly hope that a quit smoking aid will give them the desire to quit smoking.  It never works this way.  You have to have the desire for yourself first, and then follow that up with a strong decision to quit and real action.

Now if you want to know what is really going to help you to quit, take a look at the basic facts about quitting.  Many of the people who have enjoyed long term success in quitting actually quit cold turkey.  What does this tell us?  Quite a lot, actually.  It shows that it is not about gimmicks or new technologies that are going to suddenly cure our problems.  You have to roll up your sleeves and make a real effort if you want success with this.

Does a quit smoking laser really work?  Can it help you to quit smoking?  The idea is certainly seductive enough for any smoker who has struggled to put down cigarettes before.  It is like the promise of a new technology, a bit mysterious, and so there is secret hope that this is the magic cure that everyone has been waiting for.  It is effortless and takes no real commitment on the part of the smoker.  Just lay down and let them shoot this laser beam into your body at certain pressure points.  You feel no pain and in fact feel nothing at all.  And the idea is that it will stimulate endorphin production and make your brain and your body feel better while you are going through nicotine withdrawal.  That is the idea anyway.

Does it work?

No one knows for sure, because the companies that provide the service have refused to allow clinical trials to be conducted.  Clinical trials are not just some study that is loosely thrown together, they have to be controlled and double blind in order to be rigorous and thorough.  That means that you would take a large group of people who want to quit smoking, and give half of them the laser therapy, and give the other half a look alike “fake laser therapy” without telling any of the participants whether they were getting the real laser therapy or the fake stuff.  Then you measure the results.

You see the quit smoking laser therapy people will not allow this type of rigorous, controlled study to be conducted because they have a good idea as to the outcome.  They know that their laser therapy is basically a sham and might only help people a tiny bit, but not enough to really affect much.  It would be like charging people hundreds of dollars to help them quit smoking and then just show them how to sit quietly and meditate for 10 minutes each day.  Is that a scam?  Sort of.  It might help a bit, but does it really cure smoking?  Is it targeted enough and helpful enough to really make a difference in clinical trials?  The answer is obviously NO.  If it was, then the industry would run the trials and use the positive outcome as a huge selling point and the industry would explode, because it would actually work and be beneficial.

If you want to use a quit smoking aid to help you, look to see proof from clinical trials first.  Those are the standard of proof that you should demand when you are going to subject yourself to treatment of any kind.

It can sometimes be difficult for people to take that first step to quit smoking. There are several factors that can complicate even the tiniest attempts to stop or reduce your smoking habits. Be sure you are fully able to make the commitment before deciding to quit, otherwise your efforts will be very short lived with no results. Sometimes you will get unexpected side effects that you hadn’t planned on, but with extra care and patience these will be irrelevant to your success. One of the main effects that you will notice is emotional changes. You may go through stages of denial, depression, and then when all else is over you will feel a sense of contentment. There will also be some sort of weight gain, because you are no longer having the constant nicotine filling up your appetite. There may also be smoking dreams, from where your body is ridding itself of the smoking toxins within your lungs. This is nothing to be alarmed about, and doesn’t mean that you should automatically start smoking again. They are just dreams and should be treated as fiction. All of these examples are just demonstrations of what you may be up against when you decide to quit, but with careful planning, baby steps, and several tips and tricks, you will find the best way to stop smoking.

First, try not to view this as quitting forever. Instead, think about it as quitting for an hour, then progress to days, then months, and eventually years. After each goal has been accomplished be sure to reward your efforts, so that your body will want to work harder for success. Try and find a close, personal quitting buddy to help you with your efforts. This should be someone who has stopping smoking for more than a couple of years or a complete non smoker. Try not to use crutches while trying to quit because they only delay the effects that are inevitable. If you decide to quit cold turkey, you can try the aid of nicotine gum so that you may focus on the mental and physical side effects without going completely through the nicotine withdrawal of the cigarettes. The most important rule would be to never take another puff ever again. Taking another puff of a cigarette will cause you to relapse, and then your hard work would have been for nothing. Try to conquer craving triggers head on so that your mind can get rid of the normal smoking routines. These tips and tricks will come in handy for those who truly need a push in the right direction.

The best ways to stop smoking are the ones that work for you.  If you fail at trying to quit, then you need to get back on the horse as fast as possible and try something else.  Don’t just mindlessly let yourself smoke.  This is the worst thing you can do.  Keep experimenting and pushing yourself to quit.

Remember that you can do this and that you are strong. If it were easy then everyone would have success with quitting, but you will prove them wrong by showing them that hard work and dedication can lead to satisfaction. Keep the tips listed above in mind and put them into practice when times get tough. They may not be completely the way to stop, but can aid in the progression. So take the time to think about it, and want this for all of the right reasons, and you will be well on your way to a life without smoking.