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!
