Sections:
* Why you need an awesome plan
* Planning in advance and setting a quit date
* Getting through withdrawal with a sledgehammer
* Massive distraction for the win
* So do you need a quit smoking aid or not?
* Living with freedom from nicotine addiction
Why you need an awesome plan
This is an awesome plan of attack for quitting smoking and if you follow it exactly you will have no problems quitting. Plus, this plan is pretty much free. I am not selling you products or services here. This worked for me and I was a hard core smoker who was addicted in the worst way.
So let’s get to it.
Nobody quits smoking on their first try. It is almost impossible. The reason for this is quite simple: everyone underestimates how tough it will be. At least initially they do. When they have never even tried to go through with it cold turkey, the have no idea what they are even up against. It is not impossible and of course it can be done, but nearly everyone underestimates the task at first.
Most people have tried to quit smoking several times, in fact. I think I read a statistic once that the average smoker has tried to quit six times. Of course, some have never tried at all.
Many people who have tried to quit initially tried to go it alone, cold turkey. This is actually not a bad strategy, and I believe that anyone who is persistent with the cold turkey method will eventually prevail. But most do not believe that they can actually do it. And so they give up on cold turkey and believe that they need more help, so they might try the patch or the gum or something. But their hearts are still not really in it, and when those methods fail them, then they really get discouraged.
I know what all of this feels like because I went through it myself. I failed to quit smoking over and over again, using a variety of different techniques. At some points, I sort of just threw up my arms and resigned myself to be a smoker.
This is the worst thing you can do. Instead, you need to make a commitment to yourself, right now, that you are going to become an ex-smoker, and start enjoying all the freedom that comes along with it. Make a promise to yourself right now that you will stop at absolutely nothing until you achieve this goal. This is the most important thing in your life, by far. Fix this, and a whole world of opportunity and freedom will open up to you. Just consider 3 benefits of quitting, although there are many more:
1) Save money. Smokers spend thousands each year on cigarettes (not to mention tens of thousands in future medical bills).
2) Save time. The average smoker spends just under 1 full month out of every year engaged in the act of smoking cigarettes. Imagine how much more time you will have.
3) Mental obsession. Smokers lose mental energy every single day, mentally obsessing over when to smoke their next cigarette, where to smoke it, how many they have left, etc.
There are other benefits, but these 3 are enormous. They represent 99 percent of the time and energy that is wasted on smoking, keeping you from a more effective and happy life.
The bottom line is that you need a massive plan of attack to pull this off. You’re in luck. I have just such a plan for you.
And it works.
Planning in advance and setting a quit date
So here are three things that you need to do before you even try to quit smoking. I would strongly recommend that you do all 3 of these things if you are serious about this. I promise this will work for you if you follow it as planned, because it contains excellent preventative measures for nearly every pitfall that a smoker can run into when they try to quit. Believe me I have done this enough times, and when I finally pulled it off and quit smoking for good 4 years ago, I knew that I had uncovered a truly wicked formula for kicking the habit.
So here are the 3 things:
1) Pick a quit date. Most will need to make this at least 2 to 3 months in advance, due to the other 2 requirements.
2) Start exercising every single day, if you do not already do so. This must be a minimum of 30 minutes per day. No excuses! Do it.
3) Take time off work for the quit. Preferably 2 weeks. Don’t say you can’t. Just move the quit date further ahead and save more money. No more excuses. Do it if you want to quit.
So these are your preparation steps. You need to start exercising every single day, without fail. This cannot be missed. If you do this it will make it so much easier to stay off of cigarettes forever. You need two weeks off work in order to really make this work right and you also need lots of extra money. Save it up. Don’t say you can’t. That just means you want to keep smoking and die of lung cancer. Make a decision that you are going to do this for yourself, it will be awesome and you are going to have fun doing it.
Getting through withdrawal with a sledgehammer
OK so here is what you need to do. You are rapidly approaching your quit date and you have some time off work too. On your quit date, smoke your last cigarette and then throw everything away. Throw out your lighters, ashtrays, have a cleaning party. Try to get rid of all the negative, lingering effects of your smoking habit. If you try to hang on to any cigarettes at this point then just forget it and go back to smoking, you are not ready yet. You MUST throw out any remaining cigarettes. Soak them in water and throw them in the garbage. If you don’t do this then you have already failed.
Go to the store and buy 3 big containers of cranberry juice. Also buy some chewing gum, chewing toothpicks, and bic pens that have clickers on the ends of them. You might use the gum, the chewing toothpicks, and possibly candy in order to keep your mouth busy over the next week. You might also use the pens and the clickers on the end of them to keep your hand busy while you are walking around in nicotine withdrawal. It helps a little.
So here is how you dominate your nicotine withdrawal in a big way:
Smoke your last cigarette and start drinking the cranberry juice. Do not go to sleep for 36 hours straight.
Review that last sentence again as it is extremely important: Do not go to sleep for the next 36 hours. You are going to stay awake on purpose in order to cut your withdrawal time in half. This actually works, I have done it. It worked perfectly.
Stay up for 36 hours and keep drinking the cranberry juice while you do this. You don’t want to over do it of course, but you want to be drinking the stuff steadily over the next 36 hours. Keep sipping it. You will get sick of it. Keep sipping it anyway. It will obviously make you urinate quite a bit. Drink as much as you comfortably can. Keep it reasonable. But keep sipping it.
What you are doing is flushing the nicotine out of your system much faster than usual. This is going to make your withdrawal much faster and much more intense and much worse. However, you are going to sleep through it! That is the beauty of this system. Stay up for the full 36 hours and keep slamming the juice, then crash out at the 36 hour mark and go to sleep.
When you wake up, your withdrawal will be very close to being over. Completely.
This is a beautiful system and if you do it perfectly then you will only be in withdrawal for about 24 hours instead of for 7 days straight. It will be a little bit crazy when you stay up for the 36 hours and slam your juice, but you can have a party and celebrate your new smoke free life while doing this. Or you can just hang out or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Make it through this portion of it and you are home free, at least as far as acute withdrawal is concerned.
Massive distraction for the win
The next part of your quit smoking strategy is to make it through day 4 through 14. You already made it past the acute withdrawal stage in days 1 through 3 by sleeping through most of it. Now you are almost out of the woods but you are still on shaky ground. You need a distraction to get you through to the 2 week mark.
This is why I recommend a vacation from work. If you are stuck back at work and you are comfortable smoking there, then that will be a huge trigger. Not a good distraction. What you need is a family vacation. If your family all smokes then take a personal vacation. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. But I would plan to go somewhere as both a celebration of your quitting smoking and as a distraction to help you to stay quit in the early stages.
You want a vacation planned where you actually do stuff. Sitting around on the beach all day is probably not the best thing for you. Think more along the lines of “amusement park, running around with kids all day until you’re exhausted.” Yes this might have some stress associated with it, but it is better than sitting idle and ending up relapsing because of it.
Take off work and plan a vacation. The trip will help you to transition into a life of non smoking. And it doubles as a nice reward strategy.
If you say you can’t afford it, then you are not planning properly. Save your money and push your quit date further ahead. Are you going to do this or not? No excuses.
So do you need a quit smoking aid or not?
No you don’t. The strategy outlined here will obviously work without any quit smoking pills, cures, patches, medications, hypnosis, or lasers. All you need is some planning and the will to do the footwork. And there is some footwork in there.
You have to plan a vacation and tell yourself that you deserve it. You have to take time off work. And you have to pull an all-nighter. Not a big deal for most people, but we tend to be lazy. Plus, who is willing to exercise every single day?
How bad to you want to quit?
This is a free system, basically. Some will argue that they have to take time off work or take a vacation or buy cranberry juice and all that stuff costs money. Well, yes and no. Most people are going to take a vacation at some point anyway…they are not going out of their way or losing money by quitting smoking during time off. They are just purposely making the two things coincide.
The cost of the minor supplies for this like cranberry juice and toothpicks and Bic pens and stuff is NOTHING compared to the cost of smoking. It is not worth mentioning. You will save thousands per year if you go through with this.
This is an extreme method of quitting smoking because I was so hopelessly addicted. If you are hooked badly then this will work for you too. Yes, it takes some effort.
Keep in mind that you cannot buy the will to quit smoking. You cannot purchase the desire to quit. This is what I struggled with for so long. I could not see that I was blocking myself from quitting. I had to let go of the gimmicks and the quit smoking aids and figure out how to want this for myself. I had to commit to it without reservation. I found I could not buy a magic bullet. I could not cheat my way in quitting smoking. I had to want it all for myself.
Living in freedom from nicotine addiction
You might not be ready for all of this.
Doing this takes guts. You have to face the world without your familiar crutch.
And, there will be an emotional loss when you quit smoking. You will mourn it in a way you might not be expecting.
It is a hard thing to do. This is a no-nonsense, extreme strategy for attaining complete freedom from nicotine.
No distractions. No pills. No nicotine products to keep you hooked for months. No expensive procedures.
But it will work. If you put in the effort it will work for you. Follow it exactly and you can hardly help but succeed.
The only question is: do you have the guts to put in the work?
