Just recently I came across this blog;
“When we quit smoking, most of us go through a fair amount of junkie thinking – the internal battle between our addiction and ourselves. Early on in smoking cessation, the dialogue can seem relentless. It’s often persistent, annoying and exhausting. It is however, temporary, and the less attention you give to unhealthy thoughts of smoking, the better. Thoughts of smoking just one cigarette have been the ruin of many good quitting efforts. It’s important for you to realize ahead of time that these mental contortions are a normal part of the recovery process.”
There are a couple of things that I do not agree with in this blog. The first thing that I disagree with is that the author views smoking cigarettes as an addiction. It’s not! We know that nicotine has some effects on the pleasure centres of the brain, but the longer and the more you smoke the less effect it has. Smoking is a habit and like all habits you can quit smoking by breaking the habit. In fact at quit smoking in 60 minutes we replace the habit of smoking with a new habit of breathing fresh air.
The other issue that I have with this blog is that the author implies that it is normal to have mental contortions, cravings, after quitting. The combination of hypnosis and neuro linguistic programming that we use at quit smoking in 60 minutes changes the programming in the unconscious mind, so that there are no cravings for smoking.