Why do smokers believe that quitting is hard?

Crossing a road is pretty easy, but only if you do it right. If you try to cross a busy highway, in fog, at night, wearing dark clothes, blindfolded, drunk and walking on your hands, you can make something that is basically pretty easy into something extremely difficult. And so it is with quitting smoking.

Smokers believe that quitting is hard for a couple of reasons: firstly, everyone tells them it is. Smokers are bombarded with messages from other smokers, drug companies and quit smoking ‘experts’ (many of whom have never smoked a cigarette in their lives) that smoking is ‘harder to quit than heroin’. I’ve never been a heroin addict, but I’m guessing that quitting the stuff is no picnic. Who could think of a worse mindset with which to approach a problem?

Secondly, throughout their smoking lives smokers have been told that smoking helps them relax, cope with stress, concentrate, keep them thin and so on. Any smoker who believes these things will retain a desire to smoke in those situations, and will need to use willpower to try to overcome that desire. This creates a conflict; part of them wants to quit, but part still wants to smoke and it is this conflict – not physical withdrawal from nicotine – that creates the symptoms of fear, panic, anxiety and irritability that so many smokers associate with quitting.

Thirdly, smokers are seriously misinformed about nicotine – in particular about how addictive it is and bad withdrawal is.

But despite these horror stories, every so often you come across one of those people that say: “Nah. Quitting smoking was easy.” I am one of those people and I want to share my experience with you.

I started smoking as an eleven year-old and for the next twenty-nine years never went a day without smoking. By the time I quit I was smoking 40-60 cigarettes a day. I tried to quit smoking many times over many years. I tried the patch, the gum, hypnosis, acupuncture, laser therapy, cold turkey, herbal treatments, homeopathic remedies – you name it, I tried it. I never made it to a single day smoke-free using these methods for the reasons I have already explained above: My expectation was that quitting would be difficult and unpleasant, that I would feel deprived of my pleasure or crutch, and that physical withdrawal was brutal.

As soon as I was able to change these beliefs, it was ridiculously easy to quit.

First, I decided to stop listening to people who found it difficult to quit and start listening to people who had found it easy. There are a surprisingly large number of such people.

Second, I learned how to challenge the beliefs that created the desire to smoke. If smoking relieved stress then why was I so stressed? If the cigarette was an appetite suppressant then why was I 60 lbs overweight as a smoker? If the cigarette aided concentration why weren’t smokers smarter than non-smokers? If the cigarette aids relaxation why aren’t chain smokers the most relaxed people on the planet? By challenging these beliefs I was able to realize that actually there was nothing to give up, apart from illusions I had acquired as a smoker – most of them as a very young smoker.

Third, I learned the facts about nicotine. It’s a powerful drug, but only in the sense that it hooks you very quickly. Believe it or not, there is an upside to the speed with which nicotine works – it gets out of your body very quickly too. Most smokers believe that they only go into physical withdrawal from nicotine when they try to stop smoking, but this is not true. The process of withdrawal begins as soon as a smoker puts out a cigarette. The reality is that just 20 minutes after putting out a cigarette the body is 50% nicotine free. After six hours of not smoking, the body is 97% nicotine free. Smokers sleep through physical withdrawal from nicotine every single night when they go to sleep, yet it is so mild that it doesn’t even wake them up. If withdrawal didn’t bother you as a smoker, why would it bother you as a non-smoker?

Equipped with this new mindset (courtesy of Allen Carr’s Easyway seminar): that quitting could be easy, that there was nothing to give up but illusions and that physical withdrawal was straightforward (having slept through it every night as a smoker), the confidence levels with which I approached my final quit were much higher than in the past. There was none of the fear and doubt that had plagued my earlier attempts to quit.

After smoking heavily for 29 years, I just walked away from the whole thing. That was nine years ago. I have never once missed smoking or had the slightest desire to light up. In fact, the sense of empowerment, freedom and accomplishment was amazing.

Knowledge is power and when you have the power instead of the cigarette, quitting is easy.