Most people who want to stop vaping or smoking are looking for something to help them quit. They initially search for products such as the patch as a form of “nicotine replacement therapy”, pills to block out the cravings, or they choose anything to replace the need for a hit or a cigarette, such as candy, or celery, or soda. I have seen folks carry around something else than a cigarette or a cartridge such as, a plastic cigarette. When those products don’t seem to work after time, many people try hypnosis, or they search the internet for a free supply of the gum or patch combined with a free hospital or state program that offers “conventional wisdom” like find ways to block out your “triggers”, those things or situations where you associate your urges to smoke or vape.
Personally, I tried all the above. Some I tried several times, but I kept going back to smoking being completely baffled by my failure when I had given it my all to control my use, and hopeless about my ability to stop. I assumed I was a weak willed, hopeless loser.
I had plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. I even got pneumonia to where it was painful to breathe. But that didn’t stop me. It slowed me down, but it didn’t stop me.
So, if all the above methods didn’t work for me, and perhaps you too if you are reading this, what was the reason, and how did I finally succeed where I had failed in the past so many times?
First of all, I didn’t understand the nature of addiction to nicotine, and because of that, I kept thinking that I had to control what is uncontrollable. You see, there is nothing outside of you or me that can take away the fact that we became hooked on nicotine. To be hooked means to be powerless over the substance we are hooked on. To be powerless means we have completely lost our ability to control it. And the solution therefore is not to redouble our efforts, but to give up trying to control our use and let go of trying. It is about accepting that when it comes to nicotine, we either fight it and lose the battle, or we give up fighting it and let it go. Nothing or no one can take away our need for nicotine or the inevitable withdrawal that comes when surrendering the fight.
I know that is very bad news and probably not news you want to hear. And I also know that the idea of allowing yourself to undergo withdrawal without an “aid” is scary, if not terrifying. Like you, I was convinced that I would need something to help me get through the withdrawal. But the truth is, anything you turn to outside of yourself to help you “get through” becomes as important to you as the nicotine itself. You see, you have a dependency on nicotine, a psychological attachment. And so, by replacing that attachment with an attachment to another substance is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. You don’t get rid of an attachment by replacing it with another attachment. Where is the recovery in that?
Unfortunately, with an addiction the urges don’t “blow over” with time. Replacements and substitutions merely reinforce the same behavior of trying to block out the craving for nicotine just as smoking or vaping did. You smoked or vaped to get rid of the need for nicotine. Now you are choosing another substance to block out the craving, not realizing you are in fact, reinforcing the need by attempting to block it out. So, you end up going back to smoking or vaping because you don’t really get satisfaction out of a plastic cigarette when deep down you still want nicotine.
If all the above is true, what then is the answer? I came to accept and learn that the way to escape withdrawal was by going through it. Now, like you, my first response was an emphatic “hell no!” The thought of going through withdrawal was not at all appealing or what I was interested in doing. Surely there was an “easier, softer way”!
Here is where I invite you to keep doing your research to find that other way out. I sincerely wish you good luck!
I only get clients who are willing to consider going forward engaged with what I have to say because they have already tried all the other ways and failed. It has thus brought them to this point of being willing to entertain the possibility of a new way to go through withdrawal that is not miserable, not a fight, not a trapped situation where the urges are constantly a foe, where they are imprisoned and trapped in self-pity, rage or fear, obsessing endlessly about how to get out of prison for “just a hit!” This program offers a clear, doable path to follow using new tools and tricks to try that you have not been tried before. It will help you escape the misery you created in the past by the old approaches you took.
I do not have a single client who died, needed to be hospitalized, or required psychological therapy by taking the Choose a Smokefreee/Vapefree Life Program. All my clients were convinced like you that the process was going to be hell. They are baffled when it isn’t. They all thought they were hopeless, unable to be reached, convinced they couldn’t stick with it. Yet, I have an 80% success rate.
Do you want to be a winner like my 80%? Contact me by booking a session on my Choose a Smokefree Life website or call me at 512-758-1910.
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