You will be surprised to know that experts sometimes recommend smoking MORE before quitting. Why you ask…. Smoking cessation experts think that if you can make smoking less pleasant it will be easier for you to quit. The logic is that if you start to associate smoking in bad feelings, that memory will last after quitting. There are a number of ways that you can make smoking feel awful.
- Smoking by the clock is the most commonly recommended method. This means figuring out how many cigarettes you typically smoke during the waking hours of your day, then smoking that many per hour you are awake on a schedule. So if you are awake 17 hours a day and smoking usually smoke 2 packs of cigarettes, you will smoke at the beginning and middle of each hour all day. So for example, if you get up a 7:00 am, smoke a cigarette at 7:00, then 7:30, then 8:00, and so on. Or if you smoke significantly less than that just smoke at the typical time on the hour each hour. Just don’t smoke more than 4 cigarettes in one hour. The idea is that you will make yourself smoke a cigarette even if you don’t want to, making smoking unpleasant.
- Another common recommendation by the experts is to switch brands of cigarettes or switch to a flavored cigarette like menthols. Menthols are a the only flavored cigarette available in the United States so if you are going to try a flavor you are limited. You have to make sure that if you switch to another brand, it is a brand that you don’t particularly enjoy the flavor of, that is assuming there is another brand that just doesn’t taste good to you. Either way, before quitting this is another way to make smoking less pleasant.
- The prescription drug Chantix sort of works in this way. The drug works by stopping the absorbsion of nicotine into the neurons in the brain. Pfizer, the maker of Chantix, recommends smoking for at least a week while on Chantix. The purpose is somewhat similar, if nicotine is not being absorbed then smoking is just a burning sensation in the mouth and lungs and therefore unpleasant.
- There is another product sold in Europe that is the exact same idea, blocking nicotine absorbtion, but is not a pill and so doesn’t mess with your brain and cause awful side effects like suicidal thoughts. The product is a liquid that is injected into the filter of the cigarette right before smoking. The liquid sucks up the nicotine and so it never enters your body with the smoke.
Then are the mental tricks. I always like to remind people how unglamorous cigarettes really are with pictures of someone really unattractive smoking.
These tricks to make smoking less pleasant may or may not work to help you finally quit. There are statistics that show people only actually enjoy the first few cigarettes of the day, and the rest are only smoked out of habit or cravings for nicotine. Either way, any of these tricks are definitely worth a try, anything to help kick the habit.