ALCOHOL
For some people alcohol and cigarettes go hand in hand. The habit aspect of smoking can be particularly strong here, so if this applies to you and having a drink tends to trigger a major craving for a cigarette, you may need to consider cutting down on drinking certainly in the early days.
If you feel you cant avoid drinking altogether, it may help to use the habit changing technique set out here so that the trigger is less strong.
The idea is to put as many changes into the habit routine as possible, so that your brain doesnt recognise it as the same old habit. For instance if you always have the same drink, drink something else for a while; if you always hold your glass in one hand, swap hands. ANY small changes you can make will help.
Another danger is that after a few drinks there is a tendency for the sod it factor to kick in (when all your good intentions and sober-minded resolve fly out the window and you say sod it, Ill have a cigarette). Warn your friends that you really dont want to smoke and to encourage you not to if the worst should happen.
If you are really worried about this, Hypnosis can be used to build a bridge to the alcohol-related memory set so that what the sober part of your mind has decided as regards smoking, is accessible in a drunken state too.
A word of warning if you are used to having a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, you probably habitually take alternate sips/gulps and puffs and could find that without the cigarette you drink twice as much! You can lessen the danger of getting horribly drunk by having a soft drink or a glass of water in your other hand and drinking from each glass alternately.
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CRAVINGS
Not everyone gets bad cravings and as a general rule, the better prepared you are for dealing with cravings and the more determined you are to ride them out, the milder the cravings are and the quicker they disappear.
What happens when you get a craving
Along with ANY kind of craving comes a certain amount of anxiety. With any anxiety comes physical tension. As a smoker, when you get a craving you also become tense. Having a cigarette satisfys the craving AND causes the accompanying tension and anxiety to melt away. (This is how smokers come to associate smoking with relaxation).
Dont let a minor craving become desperation
When you stop smoking there is no immediate release for the tension that accompanies cravings so you need to learn a technique for dealing with it. If not you just get more and more tense, and more and more irritable (see Irritability), and what may have started out as a minor pang can grow into white-knuckle desperation for a cigarette!
When you get a craving
Treat each craving as a separate entity. Deal with each one as it comes, and know that it gets easier and easier with practice
1 The very first and MOST IMPORTANT thing to do is to let go of the physical tension that accompanies a pang or craving. (see Relaxation Key)
2 Gather your thoughts - Remind yourself that you are a non-smoker because you WANT to be a non-smoker. A craving is uncomfortable but IT WILL PASS in a matter of minutes or even seconds
3 Avoid dwelling on it do something to distract yourself
Remember:
- It is only nicotine addicts who crave nicotine. Your body is nicotine-free in only 48 hours. The cravings quickly get weaker and weaker after this.
- Every craving makes you stronger! The more practice you have at beating cravings, the stronger you get. The stronger YOU get, the weaker the cravings get.
- Don't be tempted to snack. The only thing that TRULY satisfys a cigarette craving is a cigarette. Eating won't fully satisfy the craving and will just leave you wanting more food... and more...
- Remind yourself of all the reasons why you WANT to be a non-smoker.
- Make cravings work for you: If you do 10 tummy pull-ins every time you get a craving, you get the pay-off of a well-toned tummy at the end. Doing something like this turns a negative into a positive, making it easier to deal with.
- Don't kid yourself that one cigarette won't hurt - THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'JUST ONE' CIGARETTE.
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HABIT CHANGING
When a 20-a-day smoker quits he/she is left with 20 gaping holes in the day where he/she used to have a cigarette. Each one of these is a potential danger point and a potential craving trigger, so it is as well to avoid them wherever possible certainly in the early days.
One way is to change your whole routine. If you can time quitting smoking with a positive change in your lifestyle, so much the better eg in a new home, new job, going away, with a new partner, etc etc. (However, dont plan to quit while undergoing a particularly stressful change in your life).
Most people are not in a position to make a major change in their lifestyle, and the following technique will help instead.
What makes a habit?
Habits can be VERY powerful as they are literally hard-wired into the brain through constant repetition. A habit is something you dont have to think about or plan it just happens automatically. It involves an inbuilt routine in which one thing just naturally follows on from the next.
You may have no cigarettes in the house and so be in no danger of accidentally lighting up, but just arriving at a part of your routine where your inbuilt habit expects a cigarette can trigger a craving.
The answer is to put certain changes into the routine to signal to your brain that this is NOT the same old habit pattern, so there is not the same subconscious expectation of a cigarette.
The beauty of this system is that these changes do not have to be drastic they can be tiny yet significant.
The best way to describe the technique is by example. The following is the typical daily morning routine of Mrs X:
- Mrs X wakes up to the alarm at 7.00am
- She goes downstairs and puts the kettle on
- She then lights a cigarette and smokes it while she and gets the newspaper from the hall floor and makes a cup of coffee
- She finishes the cigarette sitting at the kitchen table, with the cup of coffee, reading the paper.
- She lights a second cigarette to finish her coffee with
- She then goes upstairs to shower and dress
- She leaves for work (late, as usual)
Mrs X decided to make the following changes:
- Wake up to the RADIO alarm (at the same time, 7.00am)
- Stay in bed for 15 minutes listening to the news
- Then shower and dress
- Then go downstairs and drink a glass or orange juice
- Pick up the paper on her way out the door
Note that her routine was not drastically different and was, very importantly, comfortable and easy to follow. (Avoid a regime that you may not stick to - such as taking an icy shower at 5 in the morning, followed by a 6-mile jog! If you slip up one day you have nothing but the old routine to fall back on).
The very first change Mrs X put into the routine is probably the most important. A difference right at the start (waking to the sound of the radio instead of the alarm) means her subconscious mind does not recognise this as the start of the old habit routine.
She lies in bed listening to the news instead of sitting reading the paper later. Sitting at the table with the paper would have felt wrong without a cigarette.
She avoids the coffee which always went with the first cigarette, and has orange juice instead, and takes the paper to work to read it in her lunchbreak.
These particular changes suited Mrs Xs lifestyle. Yours will be different.
Note that none of these changes are drastic or difficult, yet they break the old unwanted smoking habit pattern and replace it with a new, practical non-smoking routine that feels comfortable and avoids many of the old smoking triggers.
TOP TIP - dont just take cigarettes out of the routine, leaving holes. Instead, CHANGE THE ROUTINE.
we will do it, thanks for the support ladies 
