Stop Smoking – Are You Ready?
Anyone who has ever wanted to stop smoking has dreamed of a magic cure – an easy, effortless solution that takes the whole problem away. Smokers often want to find a way to stop and never doubt their decision, never feel tempted to smoke again and therefore never fear failure.
Most therapies and techniques encourage this dream. Those people, who threaten, needle, shock and hypnotize smokers into stopping focus on a process that reinforces the decision to quit, promising permanent success if this first step is taken.
But it is one thing to stop smoking and quite another thing to stay stopped. In one article, a hypnotist claims a 90 per cent success rate. Another, in his book, claims that 80 per cent succeed with his methods. But neither gives any reference to how long these ex-smokers remained ‘cured’.
Five minutes? Five weeks? Without that information, these claims are virtually meaningless.
According to research at the University of London (published in the medical journal Addiction in 2005) more than 85 per cent of smokers who have given up return to smoking within a year.
Perhaps you could say that if these people go back to smoking later on, it’s their own fault. But could it be that there are crucial flaws in the techniques employed; flaws that will inevitably lead die great majority of ex-smokers back to their old ways?
This website is all about how to stop smoking and stay stopped for good – it regards stopping smoking not as an event, but as part of a process. The process begins even before stopping and continues for some time after your last cigarette has been extinguished.
This is because stopping smoking is really about changing the way you think about smoking. It’s a matter of becoming aware of the kind of thinking that supports the addiction, and resolving the conflicts it creates. And that doesn’t happen in an instant, like magic.
For you, this is both good news and bad news. The bad news is that it’s not just a matter of deciding to stop and toughing it out for a few days. Most smokers have already done that at some time and still gone back to smoking after weeks or months of abstinence.
The good news is that if you recognize and understand the mental aspects of the addiction, you have a far greater chance of long-term success than if you try to pretend that it isn’t there.
Every smoker is different, but they all have much in common: a powerful, insidious and often underestimated drug addiction. If you cannot grasp how this addiction works, no amount of motivation or willpower will enable you to succeed in the long term.
To stop smoking is the first giant step, but it’s not just a matter of stopping. It’s learning the skill of staying stopped that’s the real challenge. And that’s what this site is all about.
