The Smoking Addiction

Why do tens of thousands go back to smoking after they’ve stopped? Because smoking consists of three parts and they often haven’t dealt effectively with the one major, but largely overlooked, component of their addiction—the psychological angle.

Nicotine

Is nicotine really the problem? Contrary to popular belief, nicotine’s not the big culprit when it comes to getting rid of cigarettes, cigars or pipes. In three days, virtually all the nicotine’s out of your system.

Nicotine dependence is only about 10 percent of the problem—yes, that’s all! Because nicotine leaves the system so quickly, physical cravings subside rapidly.

Think about it. How many times have you, or smokers you know, quit, and after a week or two, or even many years later, gone back to smoking; possibly as much or more than before?

Former smokers talk about “craving” cigarettes months and years after they’ve quit. A dictionary definition of “craving” is a powerful, often uncontrollable desire for a drug—in this case, nicotine. But if the smoker’s drug is out of the system in a few days, is he or she craving nicotine? No. What the former smoker may experience long after quitting, is powerful thoughts of smoking. These thoughts are triggered by stress, socializing, environment or emotions—not by the body’s craving for nicotine.

SO WHY DO PHYSICIANS, PHARMACISTS, AND TV COMMERCIALS TELL SMOKERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO GET RID OF THEIR NEED FOR NICOTINE, THEY SHOULD FEED THEIR SYSTEMS MORE NICOTINE FOR WEEKS? THAT’S THE SAME AS RECOMMENDING COCAINE GUM TO GET DRUG ADDICTS OFF THE NEEDLE, OR PRESCRIBING ALCOHOL PATCHES TO WEAN THE ALCOHOLIC OFF THE BOTTLE.

"The addiction is a more complex process than we have previously believed," says Richard D. Hurt, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Centre.Many smokers come to us getting far more nicotine from their nicotine replacement products (NRTs) than they were receiving from their cigarettes. What’s wrong with this picture? They may be getting their advice from people who’ve never smoked, or people who don’t really understand the complexity of the smoking (not nicotine) addiction.

Habit

Habit accounts for a further 10 percent of the addiction—approximately. But habit doesn’t trigger relapse after you’ve quit for a few weeks.

We all make and break habits throughout our lifetimes. The experts tell us it takes three- to six-weeks to make or break a habit. So surely habit doesn’t cause a smoker to start again after many weeks, months or years.

Any successful ex-smoker will tell you how surprisingly quickly habits decline. Habit is one of the easiest parts of quitting to cope with. Many smokers strongly disagree with us initially until they discover, through what we teach them, that smoking is primarily about…

Psychological Addiction

Emotional attachment, or psychological addiction accounts for a good 80 percent of the smoker’s challenge. And yet, most systems essentially overlook this most important component. That’s why so many ex-smokers never completely forget about their cigarettes. X Smokers helps you break free emotionally by showing you how to comfortably come to terms with the psychological facets of your addiction. Consequently, you’ll not only learn how to enjoy your freedom, but because of your changed outlook, you’ll forget about smoking almost completely in a surprisingly short time.

But you probably know smokers who haven’t had a cigarette in decades. And they say they still miss smoking, they think about it at times and would enjoy smoking today if they could get away with it. These people are still smokers! Sure, they’re not using cigarettes, but they still think like smokers. Many of the triggers that caused them to light up in the past, continue to make them think about smoking. In other words, they’ve never become non-smokers—mentally.

"Still take breaks with fellow workers who smoke and have no desire for a cigarette."
Ron GoyX Smokers’ greatest strength is helping former smokers become non-smokers. By our definition, non-smokers are people who simply aren’t affected by smoking, don’t crave cigarettes and aren’t bothered by others who smoke (many of our alumnae live with smoking spouses or partners with no difficulty). Before long, our graduates become very comfortable in their new non-smoker’s skin. Nearly all the mental smoking connections are entirely broken in a relatively short time. This is because we help our people to think completely differently from how they thought when they smoked.

In other words, we help smokers change ingrained, lifetime belief systems. As long as a smoker still believes that smoking alleviates stress (it doesn’t), relaxes, enhances social occasions, or does a hundred and one other things, she or he can revert to full-blown addiction years after quitting.

And many of those smokers have joined X Smokers for that very reason. They’d quit for five, ten, twenty or more years but, one day, they picked up a cigarette for one of the above reasons. Some of their old smoker’s beliefs were still at work (they were still smokers mentally), convincing them that they needed just that one cigarette. Of course, it doesn’t stop there. One cigarette leads to another and another and another…

Because of this, X Smokers has welcomed a number of members who’ve not smoked for months but who weren’t comfortable without their cigarettes and sill missed smoking a great deal of the time. Through X Smokers’ cognitive therapy approach, these people finally learned to walk away from the mental hold cigarettes still maintained over their lives.

Many of us start smoking when we’re kids and have never known ourselves as adult non-smokers. Consequently, unless we truly learn how to live comfortably without the crutch that’s assisted us with daily living for decades, we’re never truly free of our emotional attachment to smoking.