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Avoiding Nicotine Withdrawal While Quitting (It’s Easier Than You Think!)

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Nicotine withdrawal is one of the most feared difficulties that may arise quitting smoking. It’s one of the reasons why quitting is supposed to be hard, but it’s easier to avoid than you may think.

Nicotine withdrawal can be characterized in two ways: physical symptoms arising from nicotine levels decreasing in the body, and cravings for cigarettes. It’s important to know that these two are different.

Physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal won’t make you want to smoke. They’ll make you irritable and impatient, among other things, but they won’t actively make you want to smoke. Physical withdrawal symptoms from smoking are easy to deal with: simply wait and they’ll go away.

Cravings for cigarettes, however, can be a bit more difficult to deal with. If you’ve ever tried and failed at quitting with the nicotine patch or something of the like, you’ll realize that cravings for smoking can easily take over your mind and prevent the greatest physical remedies for nicotine withdrawal from working.

Smoking works by convincing your mind that it needs to have a cigarette in order to function. You need a cigarette in order to be on the phone, you need a cigarette in order to deal with the drive home from work, etc.

This isn’t exactly the case, however. It is possible to go through the day without even wanting a cigarette. Sure, cigarettes can be addictive, but if you know how to remove yourself from the addiction, it’s a walk in the park, and you’ll never look back.

I tried quitting smoking about a million times through the various quitting methods that everyone says will work, including nicotine gum, some anti-smoking pill, and a couple other home brew methods. They all work from the same flawed principle, however: smoking is not a physical addition, it’s a mental one…

I finally was able to quit after picking up a couple of online books about quitting. It’s amazing just how easy it is once you know the secrets. Learn just what that secret is from these books on quitting smoking and start your life anew today!

Avoiding Nicotine Withdrawal While Quitting Smoking

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What’s Stopping You From Quitting Smoking Today?

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Once you’ve gotten into the mindset that you want to quit smoking, you’re on the right path towards actually getting cigarettes out of your life. Many people, sadly, don’t make it past there though. The real question is, “why aren’t you quitting right now?”

I Don’t Want To Lose My Smoking Buddies!

You don’t have to. Far too many people, especially those who have never smoked and don’t understand the camaraderie between smokers, suggest that you just get away from everything that makes you want to smoke. You don’t want to give up your close friends just to give up cigarettes!
Don’t worry, you don’t have to. Read on!

I Can’t Afford To Spend The Next Six Months Dealing With Withdrawal!

Another myth surrounding quitting smoking. If you quit smoking the wrong way, yes, you will have to deal with a long, drawn-out withdrawal period where you will, sadly, likely relapse into smoking. Your addiction to smoking is all part of your frame of mind, and you’re going to learn how to drop it like a nagging girlfriend (substitute something else here if you can’t get seem to rid of nagging girlfriends)

Quitting Smoking Is Hard!

It’s only hard because everybody says it’s hard. That sounds absurd now, but you’ll see how it’s actually true.

The reason why quitting smoking is hard, impossible, or whatever else people have convinced you that it is is simply because you believe that’s the case. If you want to actually quit smoking and never have to look back, you’re going to have to first understand more about how smoking actually affects you.

To quit, you’ll need to know how a smoking addiction actually works. You’ll be surprised as to how much it differs from what most people think. Start by taking a look at this site on how smoking works

What’s Stopping You From Quitting Smoking Today?

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Natural Methods For Quitting Smoking (You’ll Be Amazed at What Works)

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

When most people think of quitting smoking, they turn to the standard over-the-counter remedies, generally either the nicotine patch or nicotine gum. If you were to look into their success rates you wouldn’t really want to buy them, but forget about that, they’re accessible, right there, and you want to buy them right now, right? Yeah, didn’t think so.

Picture another industry. Let’s say that Company X releases a product that works less than ten percent of the time, offers no refunds, and gives you bizarre dreams, upset stomach, and drowsiness. They probably wouldn’t make it very far, would they?

Yet for some reason the nicotine patch continues to be sold, and people continue to buy it. Why? Because nobody seems to understand just how to quit smoking.

Smoking isn’t like a cold, you can’t take some magic pill and make it all better. A visit to the doctor won’t really help, because the doctor is there to treat illnesses, which smoking isn’t.

What does this all mean to you? You want to quit smoking, not line the pockets of some company that makes a product that doesn’t work! You need to understand just how smoking works as an addiction.

Think about the first time you lit a cigarette. You can probably remember that. You were probably out with some friends, and you probably absolutely hated it.

Now think about the time when you decided, “Hey, I’m going to make this smoking thing a habit, I like not being able to breathe very well!” You probably can’t remember that as well.

Smoking is something that works on your subconscious, through connections in your brain with various events. You probably have a few friends that you always smoke with. If you’ve tried quitting, you dread meeting them because you know that you’re going to crack and start smoking again, right?

To keep reading about how to quit, take a look at this article on How Smoking Addictions Work

Natural Methods for Quitting Smoking

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Smoking Cessation Methods That Don’t Work

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

There are a number of ways to quit smoking that are floating around. Annoyingly, however, there is also a great number of smoking cessation methods that don’t work, undermining peoples’ confidence in the working ones. Read on to find out what to avoid!

Nicotine Replacement Therapy
You’re not addicted to cigarettes because you crave nicotine, you crave the cigarettes! You want the tactile stimulation of holding the cigarette, the outlaw look, the whole atmosphere that smokers have. Granted, that’s all a facade, but it’s hard to see that. Treating smoking like some kind of disease ultimately leads to failure, as the poor success rates of NRT users are indicative of.

Meditation
I wasn’t going to put this one on here, because it sounds a bit ridiculous, but I’ve seen a ton of people marketing products that will somehow “hypnotize” you into not smoking. If you were to look at it objectively, you’d know that it was rubbish, but the desperation of people who want to quit smoking is capitalized upon and they still manage to stay afloat.

E-Cigarette
I’ve only recently started hearing about this thing, and every time I see it I feel my stomach churn. The whole point of quitting smoking is to not take nicotine into your body. How does replacing one kind of cigarette with some fancy electronic nicotine delivery doodad really solve anything? Exactly.

An unfortunate side effect of the number of wonderfully poor cessation methods out there is that people who want to quit find themselves discouraged and give up or postpone the idea of quitting.

Luckily, there are a few methods that actually do work. Take a look at my easyquit system review to see what can work for you right now!

Smoking Cessation Methods That Don’t Work

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Dealing With Nicotine Withdrawal – You Can Survive It!

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Quitting smoking has always carried the burden of dealing with nicotine withdrawal, one of the scariest and most difficult parts of quitting. Luckily, it can be easier in a few easy ways.

First, you should know exactly what’s going to happen. The symptoms of nicotine withdrawal will tend to pull you back towards smoking.

You will be irritable. Things will wear your patience thin very, very quickly. People will probably remark that you’re being short tempered.

It won’t make you want to smoke, but you’ll likely feel cold-like symptoms as well. Coughing, sniffling, and the like are all the body’s response to the poisonous chemicals you’ve been putting in it by smoking.

You’re also going to feel a sense of depression or regret. I went through three days of feeling like I was going nowhere as I was quitting. Annoyingly, the conditioned response to being depressed is to smoke a cigarette, which would undermine the entire thing.

The good news? The symptoms go away. It takes a couple of days, but after the first three days are over you’ll notice that they’ll drop to a fraction of their intensity, and they should be gone after a full week.

If you know what you’re getting into, it becomes more manageable to deal with the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. The first time I tried quitting (cold turkey, I might add) I became extremely depressed and confused on the second day, because I had no idea why I was experiencing those symptoms. I tried several times to quit cold turkey, but never lasted more than two or three days.

Incidentally, the way that I finally quit was with something called the EasyQuit System which is a behavioral therapy book on curing your mind’s need to smoke. After reading through it, I found quitting to be exceptionally easy and quit without looking back at all!

Dealing with Nicotine Withdrawal

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Irritability While Quitting Smoking (And How to Avoid It)

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm

Increased irritability is one of the strangely accepted facts about quitting smoking. As nicotine is slowly removed from the bloodstream, you become irritable and unable to concentrate. Why?

The accepted scientific cause for irritability is that it’s a part of nicotine withdrawal, and has to be dealt with just like the rest of the symptoms of withdrawal. This isn’t exactly the case, however.

Virtually everybody who quits smoking begins to regret their decision a few days in, as their learned connection between daily activities and smoking cause them to have cravings for cigarettes. You become frustrated weighing the benefits of quitting versus the immediate gain of being able to concentrate instead of constantly thinking about smoking.

It’s all understandable, I went through the same thing the first few times I tried quitting smoking, unsuccessfully, I might add. Eventually, you give in to the cravings and go right back to smoking. Alternatively, you could stick to your guns and push through…and keep having the cravings for months. That doesn’t sound very fun at all.

The trick to quitting smoking and not having to look back is to convince your mind, from the beginning, that it doesn’t need cigarettes in order to function. Remember, non-smokers don’t feel the urge to light up when they’re stressed, why should you?

You feel the urge to smoke when, for example, you’re stressed because you’ve trained your mind to believe that smoking somehow eases your stress. Sure, it may take your mind off the fact that you’re stressed, but it doesn’t really solve anything.

Do you want to learn how to quit right now, without feeling any withdrawal? Take a look at these guides on quitting and stop believing that you need cigarettes!

How To Avoid Irritability While Quitting Smoking

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The First Few Days of Quitting Smoking – What to Expect

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm

The first couple of days after you quit are the hardest to deal with. It gets easier as time goes on, but the first 72 hours are the absolute hardest. Luckily, if you know what to expect, it makes it easier to cope with.

Why 72 hours? It takes about that long for your body to completely stop the effects of nicotine. While there are still traces of nicotine in your blood after 72 hours, it has stopped affecting you at this point.

As the nicotine levels in your blood decrease, you will begin to experience the physical symptoms that come from nicotine withdrawal. Irritability and cold symptoms are the most noticeable, but there are a few others that generally won’t be noticed unless you’re looking for them.

The irritability and general lack of patience will be the most noticeable. You may notice yourself less able to concentrate, and more likely to snap at friends and colleagues. Explain to them beforehand that you’re quitting smoking and what to expect.

On the third day, cravings will be at their worst. You will generally experience frequent cravings for cigarettes, and it may take completely over your thoughts and cause you to be completely unable to work, thinking that smoking will make you able to think once again. This is the way that cigarettes keep you hooked, by making you believe that you need them to function.

Keep pushing through it, and your mind will slowly realize that it doesn’t actually need cigarettes to keep working. As time goes on, you will feel fewer and fewer cravings, and will be able to function better.

Quitting smoking doesn’t have to be hard! I quit in an afternoon while reading these guides on quitting and, surprisingly enough, smoking as it tells you to do.

The First Few Days After Quitting Smoking

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Physical Recovery and Changes After Quitting Smoking – What to Expect

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm

One of the best things about quitting smoking is just how quickly your body recovers from the ill effects of smoking. While it takes many years to completely recover, your body starts healing itself in just over a quarter of an hour. These are some of the things you can look forward to (and be wary of) in the coming days after stopping smoking.

About twenty minutes after quitting smoking, your blood pressure and heart rate are back to a normal level.

12 hours after stopping, your blood oxygen saturation has become normal, and nicotine levels in the bloodstream are a twentieth of their levels as a smoker.

One day after quitting, you will start to feel the anxiety and withdrawal that comes with quitting smoking. You’ve made it this far, don’t turn back!

Between two and three days from the last time you’ve smoked, your irritability will be at an all time high. You’ll experience several cravings per day for cigarettes, but as time goes on their length and intensity decreases. It also becomes easier to breathe, as your lungs are healing.

After a week, you’ll experience fewer symptoms of withdrawal. Past the three day mark, all withdrawal symptoms are mental, as your body as cleansed itself from the addictive properties of nicotine. Stick with it, because it only gets better from here!

After two weeks, you shouldn’t feel withdrawal any more. Urges to smoke will have dissipated, and you can relax knowing that you have taken control of your life again. In the coming few weeks, irritability, sleeplessness, and depression associated with smoking will subside and you’ll be able to take in just how incredible it is to not be a smoker.

One year after quitting, you are at a massively decreased risk of coronary heart disease, about half that of a smoker. Over the next few years, the rest of your disease risks will return to those of a non-smoker.

The first month is the hardest, but if you stick to it you’ll be rewarded in the end. Make sure that your family and friends know that you’re quitting smoking and to expect you to be more irritable and anxious. The first two weeks after I quit, I was absolutely unbearable to be around, but it went away with time and I never look back and miss smoking.

Remember though, your body won’t start to heal until you’ve actually quit smoking. If you want to quit smoking today, pick up a copy of the EasyQuit System and stop the damaging effects of cigarettes on your body once and for all!

Physical Recovery After Quitting Smoking

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Natural Methods to Quit Smoking (You Don’t Need Nicotine Replacement to Quit!)

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm

You’ve decided that the right thing to do for yourself and your body is to quit smoking, but you don’t want to quit with nicotine replacement, since you’ve heard so many stories about people getting just as hooked on nicotine gum and the like. It’s easier than you think without nicotine replacement.

The problem with nicotine replacement is that it deals with the physical symptoms of the smoking addiction. That’s great and all, but your mind is far more addicted to smoking than the rest of your body.

The hard part about quitting smoking relates to how much your mind is convinced that it needs cigarettes to function properly. Not that you can blame it, you’ve trained it to connect stress, happiness, partying, and all kinds of other things with smoking. Understanding and accepting that is pivotal to quitting smoking.

Think about non-smokers. They don’t have any problem being happy or stressed without smoking. You, on the other hand, have convinced yourself that you need a cigarette whenever you’re stressed. This isn’t because of any sort of chemical need that your body has for a cigarette, it’s because you believe that the cigarette somehow helps. It doesn’t.

The key to quitting smoking is to break those connections in your mind. Try breaking one of those triggers at a time and sticking with it. Over time, your mind will re-learn that it doesn’t need nicotine to deal with stress, happiness, or being around friends. Non-smokers don’t need cigarettes to deal with any of these things, why should you?

If you want to learn how to quit smoking right now, without leaving the computer (even while still smoking!), take a look at these guides to quitting today, and kick the filthy habit once and for all!

Natural Methods to Quit Smoking

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Positive Thinking For Quitting Cigarettes

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm

When you quit smoking, you can’t go into it thinking that it’s going to be hard. That’s part of why so many people fail at quitting, and yet it’s one of the most commonly held beliefs about smoking.

The harder that you think something is, the harder it’s going to be for you. With smoking, it’s very easy to relapse into smoking and tell yourself, “well, good run, but quitting is hard”

That’s not the mindset that you want! Aside from the fact that quitting smoking isn’t actually that hard (more on that later) it sets you up for failure. Think about how many people have quit smoking without any problems. That may sound like a small statistic, but it isn’t. It’s all about setting your mind to it (and not putting it off by setting a quit date!)

Quit dates reinforce the idea that quitting is hard. When you set a quit date, you build up an ominous feeling about that day, and it’ll make you enjoy those cigarettes more up until that date, which is the opposite of what you want to do.

Why will quitting be easy for you? Because you’re not going to approach it the same way that everybody else does. You’re going to approach quitting head-on instead of trying to dodge around it as those with nicotine patches and the like do. You’re going to, soon, be able to know that you’re never going to want another cigarette, and that’s going to be a lot easier than it seems.

Instead of wasting time and money on replacement therapy, you need to break free from the mental cage that smoking has you in. To learn more about how easy it can be to free yourself from smoking, take a look at this article on how smoking addictions work

Positive Thinking for Quitting Cigarettes

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