How long did the resolutions last?

Happy new year and I hope this year brings all you hope it will.

By now a large proportion of smokers who made that new years resolution to quit will be back on the evil weed. It's the same every year. There is however a big glimmer of hope for those who failed but really want to quit. You see quitting is only as hard as you make it yourself. There is a big percentage, around 45% who find quitting very easy and never go back to cigarettes ever again. Smokers 'trying' to quit however rarely hear about these. And why should they, there is no money to be made out of them, but they are there all the same. You probably know someone in this category. The overwhelming consensus amongst the general public is that it's hard to quit. They even tell you that in all those hideous nicotine patch ads and NHS information broadcasts. Why is this the case? Well there is still money to be made out of the poor smoker even when he decides to quit, if he believes it is hard to do. i.e he'll need some kind of 'help'!

Just remember this, around 45% of smokers who quit, find it easy. If you really believe this and it is a fact, then you too will find it easy. A simple formulae in therapy states, expectation+belief=your experience. Don't be fooled by the drug companies or the nationalised health services they serve! Pick a time when you want to quit, find an alternative coping strategy to help with stress utilise some form of habit breaking technology (my habit buster on the left will do) and you can quit easily.

Resolution Madness

THE HARDEST TIME TO QUIT!

It’s that time of the year again when many smokers who want to give up smoking choose to do the deed and banish the evil weed. We ask, is this the best time to do it?
Statistically 50% of New Year’s resolutions have been broken by the end of the first week. There is some very sound reasoning why this is the case and particularly with smoking. According to government figures only around 7% of smokers who rely on willpower will succeed in quitting on the first attempt. New Year’s Day is perceived by many to be a time to make a fresh start or turn over a new leaf, but in actual fact it’s quite probably the hardest time to quit smoking.

By the last week in December the days are at their shortest and cases of Seasonally affected Disorder (SAD) are coming to a peak and the cold is starting to bite. Christmas is a welcome fillip to the gloom with celebrations and indulgence being the order of the day. However as the year draws to a close, the festivities are over the decorations come down and the unwelcome credit card statement drops on the door mat, merriment can in some turn into less uplifting mood states. Add that to the still long dark nights at the coldest time of the year, it’s a recipe for a dose misery or worse a bout of depression. This is the time of the year when any coping strategies (tobacco, alcohol etc) would be most needed by those who have adopted these behaviours. Hardly the best time to consider quitting! However as stopping smoking is almost certainly the single best thing a smoker can do for their health, stopping at any time is most certainly a positive step. I recommend that should you decide that this is the time when you’re going to quit smoking then you really need the best advice about the easiest way to go about it. One thing is for sure if you rely on willpower alone then unless you now how to use it effectively, statistically there is around a 93% failure rate. In my book and CD I show you how to use your willpower effectively which alone can increase your willpower up to five times. This even without any other intervention would give you a statistical chance of success of around 35%, nearly double the success rate of the NHS stop smoking service!
You need not only get the best advice about how to use your willpower but also new coping strategies which can be installed using effective hypnotic intervention and NLP.( the change technique that is used by mind game TV personalities. These techniques are highly effective and work) All this gives you a far higher chance of success.

To get a copy of my Book and CD, leave your details in my secure comments section and I'll attach them in an email to you. Your details will not be on view as my comments section is regulated . If you really want to quit smoking now, do yourself a favour and make it easy on yourself, use an effective method!

Have a very happy new year....

Nigel.

You are being conned by cigerette producers

Are you addicted to nicotine?

Most smokers believe that they are and if you are one of these then let me ask you another question. If you were not addicted to nicotine would it be easy for you to stop? The belief that nicotine is a very addictive chemical is a common one and fuelled partly by the government and partly by the tobacco manufacturers. I believe they want you to think this. I totally disagree with this notion! Before you say ‘well I am addicted and you can say what you like’ just listen to my reasoning. In America a few years ago a Large Law firm commissioned a study to find out whether nicotine was an addictive chemical. They were taking a large cigarette producer to court on behalf of clients with tobacco related diseases They commissioned the leading experts in the field of chemical addictions and these experts produced a 600-page report. None of them said categorically that nicotine was an addictive chemical! Kind of interesting eh? As a therapist I look at people from a behavioural point of view, so if I want to find out if something is addictive I compare it with a proven addiction. So let’s take heroin, (generally accepted as a strongly addictive chemical) as an example. An average Heroine Addict suffers terrible physical withdrawal symptoms, (sweats, shakes, heart palpitations, vomiting, nausea, hallucinations and more). Now when was the last time you stopped smoking and suffered such horrible physical symptoms? You might get grumpy and lose your temper more easily you might even over eat but you don’t get such horrible symptoms. Also your average heroine addict cannot make it through the night without their body waking them up for more heroine. The only heroine addicts that get full nights sleep are also alcoholics (because the Alcohol numbs their brain). The only trouble being that when they get up in the morning they have to take all of the Heroine that they would have taken during the night just to get out of bed! Now When was the last time that you had to smoke all the cigarettes that you would have smoked if you were awake all night? It never happens. You might wake up and smoke one or two but you don’t have to smoke all those that you would have smoked if you were awake. So why do you only want a cigarette when you’re awake? Because if you were an addict that means your body requires the chemical, so why does it only want it when you’re awake?

Now here’s the low-down, the proof that what I’m saying is true. Have you ever tried to stop using Nicotine replacement therapy or NRT? (Patches Gums lozenges) These all contain huge amounts of Nicotine. The average regular strength cigarette contains around 1 milligram of Nicotine, (low tar and ultra lights even less), you can check if you like by looking at the box. Nicotine replacement treatments vary in the quantity of nicotine they supply your body with and contain up to114 milligrams! Now That is a massive dose, that's more nicotine than 2o boxes cigarettes! And you use the same amount every day. For at least six weeks! That’s 210 boxes of twenty. Now if nicotine was such an addictive chemical why don’t you get addicted to patches, I've never seen a private patient asking for help getting off patches. Call me cynical but where do you think the patch manufacturers get their nicotine? Do you think it could be the tobacco manufacturers?

Now One of the ‘traditional’ ways the experts get a heroine addict off the heroine is to give them a replacement drug called methadone (very similar to heroine in nature). This is more safely available at special clinics set up for the purpose. The idea being to gradually wean the addict off this replacement. These same experts are saying ‘one of the ways were going to get you off the cigarettes is to give you a patch that contains more nicotine than you’ve ever had in your entire life’! That’s like saying to a heroine addict ‘have some more heroine’. That really is crazy. And why are there no clinics to wean you of the patches? And what’s even crazier is that the government has been funding nicotine replacement therapy with millions of pounds every year! Now here’s the thing, according to the governments own statistics, if you’re trying to give up smoking using willpower alone then around 6% of those trying will succeed. Of the people trying to stop using the nicotine gums then around 10% of those trying will succeed. Of the people trying to stop using nicotine patches then around 16% of those trying will succeed. What that really means is that at least 84% of people trying to stop smoking using Nicotine replacement DON’T SUCCEED! Which means it doesn’t work! Because it’s not a nicotine addiction! The people who managed to stop using NRT (16%) only did so because they were convinced that it works, it became a self fulfilling prophecy, commonly known as the placebo effect. This is an effect caused by the belief that something is going to work irrespective of the actual content. So basically if you really think something will work then it will !

Why smoking makes you feel good

That's of course if it still does!

Smoking is a coping strategy. Every time you feel stressed or bored, or hungry, or any negative feeling the unconscious will try to make you feel better. That's it's job.... cast your mind back to the first ciggie that you ever had... Was it because all of your peers were smoking and you felt left out? Cos if it was, that is why you smoke. Feeling left out is the worst thing in the world, especially during your formative years. Fitting in is the best feeling in the world at that time. The cigarette then gets linked via the process of anchoring, ( chaining certain feelings to certain things), to that best feeling. Fatal... from that moment on your unconscious has an easy root to a good feeling. You have been conditioned essentially like sheep! Now it might not have been your peers, it might have been your parents who smoked, or an elder brother or a sexual partner, whatever, the mechanism is the same. Something about the actual act of smoking linked you to a pleasurable experience. IT WAS NOT THE NICOTINE. Nicotine addiction is a myth A persons first cigarette always make them feel physically unwell, a human does not need nicotine at all. In fact every time you have nicotine in your body your unconscious is doing it's damnedest to get rid of it, even if you 'Want to smoke and have no intention of quitting!!

If you want to quit then all you have to do is find some other convenient healthy activity that makes you feel really good, chain some type of harmless action to that activity, then every time you feel bad, fire off that action, or every time you would 'normally' smoke fire off that action. this really does work. Some smoking cessation specialists utilise this in their clients to brilliant effect.

Quitting smoking therefor is for all intents and purposes much easier that the drug companies and health organisations would have you believe.

Are drugs really the answer for quitters

The Logic seems plausible; using chemicals to interfere with the brains nicotine habituated receptors. and the percentage of people still quit after six months has increased but where is this leading us?

More and more smokers are being prescribed the 'wonder quit drug' Champix or one of it's many sister drugs, but ultimately the habit will still need to be broken and taking drugs to help with the initial quit is in my view still akin to sweeping the dirt under the carpet. And for what my opinion is worth I am not convinced that there has been nearly enough testing of this group of chemicals and analysis of the side effects. My feeling is that all these drugs will be proved more harm than good. Its only a few months ago that the government has started to back pedal about the 'right category' for cannabis having discovered that it can cause psychosis. Common sense will tell you that replacing one drug with another cannot be the way forward.

The psychological effects of habit breaking are what essentially makes quitting difficult for around half of people who quit. Understanding the psychology of smoking is the real secret to quitting, don't believe the hullabaloo about nicotine addiction, it's over egged hype, mooted by the tobacco companies and government health organisation to frighten people into using there products. Nicotine is gone entirely from your body after 48 hrs. Stopping smoking is for all intents and purposes no more difficult than stopping going to school or stopping biting your nails. If you go about it in the right way, utilising a positive outcome as your reference, illicit a new healthy coping strategy,and eliminating negative harmful self talk and visualisation, then it is actually ridiculously easy to quit. Obviously you will need some kind of help toward these ends and there is plenty of help available. Here I am bound of course to mention my product ...
'1-2-Free', which you can find out about by clicking the words or going via my link buddies. But there are lots of other effective programmes to choose from.

Smokers who want to quit do need help finding out how to quit without drugs and without traditional side effects. My system uses a variety of technologies proven in private treatment based upon Hypnosis and NLP (the relatively new science of change using language and representational systems). A crude form of which was used by The Koreans to psychologically trick and convince their American Prisoners of War to become communists and Anti American, without any torture or truth drugs. They just got them to change the way they saw themselves using simple suggestions and then got their fellow prisoners to see them differently but utilising what they had said... Very simple But highly effective.

Legal age to buy cigarettes increases to eighteen.

But will it help?

It is always amusing to me how the Government go about reducing the numbers of people smoking. As far as I can see from my experience of dealing with smokers who want to stop, everything the Government does is likely do have a polarity response .i.e. making people smoke more or encouraging people to smoke. And being a bit of an old cynic I could interpret this as a deliberate elicitation.
Anybody with teenage children will tell you if you tell them not to do something they're more likely to do it. So raising the age at which children can buy cigarettes is doing what?
Well first of all it's throwing down a challenge to 'get away with looking older'. Secondly those that do manage to con the 'innocent' shopkeeper will appear more of a hero to their peers and therefore more likely to be copied. And of course the proposed age increase only affects the actual buying capabilities, as the legal age at which smoking is allowed remains the same! What hypocrisy!

The Government claim to have studied models from other countries and these show mixed results. The trouble with studies is that you tend to find what you’re looking for. The big question we need to be asking ourselves as a nation is; What are we doing that is making smoking still appear so attractive to young children. Well a number of factors appear to be in play. Children basically begin smoking because their friends or parents smoke or because it makes them feel older or rebellious. We as a society need to question ourselves as to why being grown up is so attractive to children. Most teenagers tend to be repelled by anything that would make them appear remotely 'sensible or grown up' like their parents. However smoking and possibly drinking seems to be an exception.

Before the teens a large amount of children aspire to be like their parents. Hence little girls dressing up in Mums clothes and make up and little boys playing with Fake tools like Dads. If children could experience being grown up and all its problems they would soon realise that the state they are in really is the most appealing. How many adults actually want to appear to be older? It seems that both groups are suffering from 'grass is greener syndrome'. Children smoke to appear older, what do adults do to appear younger? They spend a fortune on cosmetics, surgery and numerous regimes but ultimately the clock cannot go backwards and ageing is an unfortunate by-product of life that adults do there utmost to avoid. Stopping smoking is one of the single most effective things a smoker can do to prevent premature ageing.

Clearly just telling children that they will regret starting smoking when they are older is futile as any parent will tell you. Telling them not to smoke is even worse. Like waving a red rag to a bull. Even showing them what tobacco does with actual tar infested body parts seems not to be enough. There is a vast amount of information available at schools advising of the terrible effects of smoking. This still fails to significantly reduce the number of young smokers. It would appear then that they quite probably take up smoking with the knowledge of the harm that it can do. Why would they do that? Surely they don't think that they are immortal? Well this may well be the case from their point of view. How long did it take for Christmas to come around as a child? Well I remember it seeming almost forever! So could it be that children think that they will be able to try it and stop at will, 'some time in the future.....' regardless of the damage? This is almost certainly the case; they have an inbuilt mechanism that makes them braver when they are children. Just go to Disney World and see how many young children 'don’t' want to go on the scary rides. Further there is also conflicting advice because adult smokers are always told how quickly they will experience better health when they stop. A presupposition that they can stop! This of course reinforces the belief in the youngster that they will be able stop. What they fail to see is that it can be much harder to do when the time arrives. (It’s actually very easy to stop but only if you understand the mechanism behind the habit forming part of the brain, or if you are by nature a positive thinker) Unfortunately the Government and the NHS bombard adults with negative messages about how difficult it will be to stop. So by the time the child arrives at the adult place where they want to become non smokers, they have been conditioned to believe that it will be hard to quit smoking. This is why only 7% of smokers quit just using will power. It has become a self fulfilling prophecy.

So what is the answer to the question of reducing the numbers of young smokers? In an ideal world leading by example can usually set young people on the right path. So this means not smoking as a parent as a bare minimum. Making children more aware from a young age (below six) that putting foul tasting chemical laden smoke in their mouth is a bad experience. Even actually letting them taste it would also most probably be enough to turn them away from it when they're older. That’s how Phobias work.... personally I see nothing wrong with giving them a phobia of tobacco. Not very PC of course, but an idea that could be adopted by the government anti smoking campaign designers. The same idea is used by traffic safety organisations!! In other words teach them younger. Don't wait until they start.They also do it with sex education. The nation needs to understand what role peer pressure, fashion and the media have in developing a healthy population. This means quite literally blanket banning of all smoking in any image in all media. This is in place to a certain degree but not by any means far reaching enough. It also means removing any possibility of children seeing adults smoking. Pie in the sky? We to have a blanket ban in public places?? Why not go the whole hog and have an outright ban on the sale? After all what we are talking about is saving around 350 lives every day, when you think about it tobacco is the only product on general sale that Kills people when used as designed. Guns kill far less people and are much harder to get hold of.

What would happen if cigerettes were banned from sale completely?
Well most probably the whinging freedom of choice pro smoking action groups would be up in arms initially. Freedom of choice? Are they really saying that they think people should be allowed to kill themselves anyway they see fit? And in doing so set a great example that will lead many children along the same path? It is my experience when dealing with people who defend freedom of choice that it's only their choice that they defend vigorously. Would they also defend the choice of those who wish to exist in a society that doesn't allow children to become embroiled in a habit likely to kill them when used as designed? Because until the problem item is totally removed the wheels of disease and death caused by smoking will continue to turn. Of course we now slip into the realms of the world of politics where the Government of a democracy is supposed to enforce the wishes of the majority. Mr Spock from tv.s 'Star trek' espoused the view where the need of the many outweigh the need of the few, and was prepared to die for it. I know its fiction on TV but That’s how it should be. Why is there urgent policy not in place to get rid of tobacco outright, instead of their target of a two percent reduction by 2010! That's another 638750 deaths!! The majority of the population do in fact want that? Well does Government really work that way? Could it be so influenced by big business or huge tax revenues that it allows itself to be dragged into the mire of hypocrisy? Are we really able to do without the eight billion pounds generated by tax on tobacco? A tax on something that makes people feel good but also kills them! Is the government the ultimate Drug dealer? Is Gordon Brown the man on the corner with the bling and the gold tooth?

Where else would he get the money from?
Well as far as I can see the only reason people smoke tobacco is because it makes them feel good. Nicotine addiction is a myth. This then presents the question what else could people be doing to make themselves feel good? The sky really is the limit. Let’s just say that instead of spending five pounds on a box of cigarettes every day you could spend five pounds on something else to make you feel good that doesn't kill at the same time? What did people do before Walter Raleigh brought back the weed? And let’s hope that G Daddy Brown doesn't then put in place a feel good tax because at the end of the day that's what he's getting from smokers. Smokers are paying the government to feel good. And in the big picture of things the loss of the revenue could be absorbed. On the other hand he could raise taxes (shock horror) to cover the loss or cut back arms spending. Wouldn't a responsible society want to pay for our children’s future health?
According to the Royal College of Physicians A ban on smoking in public places would save the British economy £4bn a year, according to latest research. Most of the savings identified in the study, would come from increased productivity as workers took fewer cigarette breaks. The report, 'Going Smoke-Free', also refutes the "myth" that banning smoking at work would increase smoking in the home. An outright ban would also save around 1.4 billion in anti smoking advertising and the cost treating smokers in the NHS. Of the 12,000 deaths caused each year by passive smoking, just 500 are due to smoking at work. Professor John Britton, chairman of the college's Tobacco Advisory Group, said: "The big problem with passive smoking is the number of people affected by smoking at home." How do we address that? The evidence shows that, if you make public places smoke-free, a lot of people who smoke quit. "You become used to the idea that smoking is not normal and you don't do it in front of other people. To have loopholes or exceptions is illogical and counterproductive," he said. Prof Britton said children who passively smoke face increased risks of cot death, asthma and other respiratory problems. The £4bn predicted savings to the UK economy would come from increased productivity, lower NHS costs and reduced insurance, cleaning and fire-related bills. Prof Britton said the impact of a smoking ban in Ireland and other countries had been examined and added: "Wherever smoke-free policies have been introduced they have been very popular and very successful, with no policing or compliance issues to speak of." The popularity of the measures increase substantially between the government announcing them and implementing them and then still more after it happens. So really revenue cannot be used as an issue.

The simple facts are raising the age where children can legally buy tobacco will have very little effect on reducing the number of young smokers. The other government technique in practice at present on TV in NHS backed campaigns of trying to frighten or humiliating people into stopping is equally useless. When smokers are frightened or worried or stressed or unhappy it's a negative state which makes them feel bad. What do smokers do to make them feel good again? That’s right ..........smoke.
By now the answer to the question of how to get people to stop smoking and how to stop children from smoking should be clear. Teach people other strategies to make them feel good. Remove tobacco completely from society so children cannot be led up the garden path by peers and role models and for goodness sake let’s start realising that good feelings can happen without narcotics. It's not that hard, in fact feeling good is remarkably easy, something we teach in our booklet . Individuals, who find good feelings hard to come by, need to address the question of what it is that they are not coping with that necessitates anesthetizing. And what about the freedom of choice brigade? Well sadly they are the poor individuals without freedom at the end of the day, they only have two choices....to smoke or not, having only two choices is not my idea of freedom!

Blind leading the Blind

If you are trying to give up smoking then getting help from an expert would appear to be a sensible move. It is however very dependant upon whom you go to for advice. There is a plethora of stop smoking agencies on the Internet and available through national health organisations like the NHS who would appear at first to have your best interests at heart plugging away with NRT or champix or zyban... just more drugs.

Why Support groups don't help!
While these groups do provide sympathy and understanding they do generally not greatly increase the percentages of success amongst people who want to give up smoking. It’s true that many of them are organised by former smokers but statistics point to the fact that the group therapy route isn’t as effective as it could be. I believe there is one main reason for this.

People who try to give up smoking using group therapy have usually already exhausted all the choices they have as individuals in terms of ways to give up smoking on their own. This is obvious as they are now at the group stage. They are then confronted by a number of other people who are trying to give up smoking who are suffering from the same problem and/or a mentor who is 'experienced' in dealing with this type of issue.

The one important thing that is often overlooked is that people who are trying to give up smoking are learning nothing from people who are trying to give up smoking! There is a strong tendency to 'compare notes' with sufferers of the same lack of choices. The individuals in the group just become experts in having the same problem, as opposed to finding out how to make or use new choices and strategies to become a non smoker. When individuals compare notes with others suffering from the same problem, it tends to compound the problems they have. This is due to a reinforcing of beliefs. The person trying to stop smoking usually believes that it will be hard to do. (A commonly held notion partly fuelled by the government and partly fuelled by the tobacco manufacturers). When this notion is backed up by others of the same ilk, it tends to reinforce that belief by strengthening the neural pathways to that belief in the brain. I was researching a popular Internet support forum the other day and was astonished by the horrible sense of negativity amongst 'fellow sufferers'.

Of course this makes the whole issue of finding it hard to become a non-smoker, a 'self fulfilling prophecy'. I didn't see any comments from ex smokers who found it easy to stop. (Of course not, why would they be there? They found it easy and didn’t need any help.) All these poor individuals are doing is reinforcing their belief about what a sorry time they are having. And yes its 'nice' to have a shoulder to cry on, but shoulders don't teach you much. In reality shoulders used in this way become an anchor for bad feelings! For goodness sake do yourselves a favour and lighten up! The body and mind can and does function perfectly well without the horrible cigarette and nicotine poisons.
Stop telling yourself that , "you’re going up the wall" or "I really need a cigarette" or all the hundreds of negative self pitying internal suggestions that you are delivering. Nothing is going to 'happen to you' if you quit smoking. (Apart from you becoming very much healthier, having more spare cash, extending your life etc. etc) Allow the part of you that is able to stand on its own two feet, to actually do just that, without needing something to act as 'An old friend' to look after you.
And as for this old friend, have you ever had a friend who you thought was the bees knees that you really got on well with? Then one day you found out that they had been saying bad things about you or doing stuff which a friend wouldn't do. Supposing this so called friend was slipping cancer forming poisons into your food, telling your family that you really stink, stealing your money, saying that you couldn't cope without them and that you were weak willed with no back bone. How much would you want to have them as a friend? Have you ever had a friend like that?
As far as I am aware there are no support groups run by smokers who found it easy to stop. This is a great shame as there are thousands of people who really did find it easy to give up smoking. This Begs the question: How did these people find it easy to give up smoking? The reason they found it easy is because they believed it would be. I know this is the case as I have experience from both sides of the fence. Being an ex 45 a day smoker. My Father gave up a similar habit easily and his wife (My step mother) gave up easily as well. I found giving up very hard at first until I discovered (years later while researching new ways) how my folks actually gave up and what they were thinking when they gave up smoking. Unfortunately many people, me included, tended to blank out what their parents said. If only I’d really listened way back then, it would have been so much easier to quit. I see hundreds of clients for smoking cessation therapy, and the more I see the more convinced I am about why they have found it so hard, even though I now know it is easy. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they are finding giving up smoking hard, but it is clear to me why they are having this experience. If you are trying to give up smoking it would be immensely valuable for you to contact any of your friends who managed to quit smoking easily without any help, and ask them how they did it and what they believed would happen to them. Listen to what they say and start to structure your own internal dialogue in a different way.
Unfortunately this may sound ridiculous if you already have a belief system that says that it is hard to give up smoking. This is where a little tweaking can come in handy. In the useful booklet available as part of the 1-2-Free system there are some really cool tips and exercises that really do help with this. If you could change this belief in some way so as to destabilize its influence over your decision making, with regards to stopping smoking, then you will find stopping smoking much easier. Changing beliefs is a key way to accomplish change. In his book "Using your Brain for a Change" Richard Bandler gives some extremely useful exercises to help change beliefs which work very effectively. All you really need to know is that if you change your belief, that it's hard to stop smoking, into a belief that it's easy, then your experience of becoming a non smoker will be much easier. Because as I said before it really is easy if you learn how to do it, thousands upon thousands have found this to be the case. None of them however go to support groups of forums. It's easy to change a belief; do you still believe in Santa? Most children below the age of six really do believe. Get out of yourself; stop hanging around people who don’t know how to give up smoking and really be one of the thousands who know that it was easy. There really is nothing different about them, they have the same physiology and bio mechanical make up. All they do different is they ‘know that they can stop’, and knowing this and believing this is easy, because it’s true!! Everything else is just excuses!