The urge to smoke is the most common craving smoking-quitters face.
It can occur at any time and last for five to 10 minutes before either passing on its own or morphing into another type of craving (like a food craving, which might prompt you to drive by your favorite fast-food restaurant).
When you smoke, chemicals from cigarettes and smoking damage your lungs and blood vessels. This can cause cancer, heart disease, and problems with your baby if you are pregnant. Smokers have a greater chance of having lung disease than non-smokers do.
Each time you resist smoking when faced with an urge, it will get easier and easier until smoking cigarettes becomes insignificant in your daily routine. Other nicotine withdrawal symptoms include:
- Irritability
- Restlessness
- Hunger
- Anger/Frustration/Annoyance
People smoking cigarettes are smoking them for two reasons. Nicotine is the primary psychoactive chemical in cigarettes. For most people, smoking is a positive feedback system: smoking causes pleasure/relief so smoking more causes more pleasure/relief.
For most people, smoking cigarettes has nothing to do with smoking or smoking cessation being pleasurable or beneficial. It is smoking itself that causes pleasure, but smoking cigarettes does not actually provide any benefit to the smoker other than the nicotine which is physically addictive. Smokers are smoking because smoking makes them feel normal or comfortable when they’re smoking. If smokers were smoking because smoking was pleasurable for them, then smoking cessation would be dependent on whether these feelings of pleasure could be replicated by another activity that did not involve inhaling smoke into their bloodstream.
Keep in mind that while cue exposure therapy has been shown effective in the smoking reduction and smoking cessation, smoking reduction and smoking cessation are two very different things.
If you are reading this article right now, then it can only mean one thing, and that would be for quitting smoking once and for all! However, getting rid of the smoking habit entirely seems like an impossible task. Well maybe not totally impossible but it is definitely challenging and you will need some determination and patience to be able to get rid of smoking forever.
Try nicotine replacement therapy
The only way to break this cycle of smoking being positive reinforcement is to stop smoking while taking an antidepressant or applying cold therapy on oneself in response to wanting to smoke. If smoking has negative consequences, one could theoretically just avoid these consequences by not smoking when they’re happening until they aren’t anymore. The best way to do that is to have something else you can do when you are experiencing these consequences that do not involve inhaling smoke into your lungs which then enters your bloodstream and travels throughout your body causing immediate damage everywhere. Nicotine patches are the most non-physically addictive smoking cessation tool, but smoking is psychologically addictive so smoking cessation tools must be used in tandem with antidepressant treatment to break smoking addiction for good.
Cold Therapy
If one intends to quit smoking using cold therapy, then cold showers should replace cigarette breaks throughout each day. Positivity should be applied in response to wanting to smoke while practicing cold showers since it triggers the same neurological responses as smoking but with none. People smoke because they have brain damage from all of the chemicals which build up over time and generally speaking only smoking cessation can reverse this brain damage.
Avoid Triggers
For anyone who wants to quit smoking, this is the first question that they will be asked by their family members or friends. It is also highly likely that if one party wants to quit smoking, it means there are more people smoking in the group.
No matter how much you try hard to suppress your smoking habit, trying to look cool is never easy especially when everyone around you is enjoying themselves with a cigarette or two after consuming some alcohol.
Benefits of Quitting
What smoking-related benefits might I receive if I quit smoking?
- Increase in energy levels
- Increased sense of brain
- Fewer wrinkles from smoking less before age 30
- Greater financial freedom as smoking costs a lot of money
If smoking a cigarette is what your heart desires, go ahead and do so.
Just remember that smoking more than one pack of cigarettes a day increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer – two very serious smoking cessation symptoms.
And again, smoking reduction (which includes smoking less cigarettes per day) is NOT advised since smoking less does not mean “less bad” for you – smoking any amount of cigarettes still brings you down the same road to death and disability.
Reinforcement: You can learn how to cope and control nicotine withdrawal and cravings by attending a smoking cessation class or by enrolling in an online smoking cessation program like http://beyondtalk.info
