How to Stop Failing to Quit Smoking Nicotine Monkey

Part 1. How to fail to quit smoking
Quitting smoking is very hard. In fact, many former smokers say it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. However, if you follow the steps described below in the NHS Stopvember yearly anti-smoking campaign and refrain from smoking for 28 days, you’ll be five times more likely not to fail in making a subsequent quit attempt.

Step 1. Write down on a piece of paper all the reasons you can think of for not smoking, and remind yourself of them by re-reading the list every day on waking up in the morning.

Step 2. Plan ahead to set a quit date in the future when you intend to start thinking about trying not to fail to quit smoking.

Step 3. Visit your friendly local specialised quit smoking clinic to receive the following evidence-based tools to help you on your quitting journey:

a) Nicotine maintenance products, such as gum or patches, to deal with your cravings
b) Quit smoking prescription medicines in case you suffer especially strong cravings
c) Appointment for ongoing behavioural support from a highly trained specialised quit smoking counsellor or from a highly specialised trained quit smoking counsellor
d) Information about nicotine withdrawal symptoms nicotine and how to deal with them by putting more nicotine into your body with the gum or patches, keeping in mind that these symptoms include headaches, depression, stomach upsets, sleeping difficulties, tingling in your arms and legs, coughing, feeling irritable and anxious or anxious and irritable

Step 4. If none of the above work, when a craving hits, try the following:

a) Eat a healthy snack such as a raw carrot or celery stick
b) Drink plenty of fluids, or if these are not available, drink water
c) Distract yourself by doing a crossword puzzle, phoning a friend to arrange a kick-about in the park, taking up a new hobby like Pilates, or starting to learn a musical instrument such as the bass tuba

Step 5. Keep a quitting dairy in which you write down every day before going to bed what your cravings were and how bad you felt on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows:

1. Felt as if you could have murdered a ciggy
2. Were on your hands and knees, slavering at the mouth
3. Felt as if you wanted to jump out of the window
4. Very unhappy at the thought of losing a dear friend – your cigarettes
5. Desperation at the thought of never being able to enjoy anything in your life without cigarettes

Step 6. As a last resort, try e-cigarettes (vaping) – the latest evidence-based tool for continuing your nicotine addiction, likely for the rest of your life, but in a way that is hoped will be no more harmful than drinking coffee.

Step 7. Remember, if you fail to quit smoking with the above approach, you haven’t really failed. You just need to try harder!

All right, Dr Symonds, that’s enough satire. Now here’s how to stop smoking with the Symonds Method.

Part 2. How not to fail to quit smoking
You know perfectly well why you want to stop smoking, so there’s no need to write anything down to remind you.

As a smoker, you have an urgent need to quit right now. Therefore, don’t set a quit date. This will merely emphasise the imagined difficulties of quitting and make it harder to quit. And what’s going to be different in a week, ten days, or a month’s time?

You don’t need a specialised, or even an unspecialised, quit smoking clinic. Dr Symonds will help you to demonstrate to yourself – very easy! – all you need to know to quit smoking straightaway and without a struggle. You won’t even need willpower if you don’t want to smoke anymore! And no, it’s nothing to do with hypnosis.

So-called evidence-based treatments are a red herring. Since smoking is a voluntary activity (although the urge to smoke may be hard to resist) the idea of evidence-based treatments is a distraction. What matters is the experience of the many smokers who have found it easy to quit with the Symonds Method.

It’s illogical and counterproductive to try to cure nicotine addiction with more nicotine. That’s why the idea of nicotine replacement therapy is wrong, and why I call it nicotine maintenance therapy – but what’s the good of that?

What happens when you don’t smoke for a while? The suggested answers under Step 3. d) above are all grossly exaggerated or untrue. Then what does happen? Nothing much. All that the so-called cravings mean is that you’re probably thinking about smoking a lot and and are mildly uncomfortable, as if something is missing. Good – that’s what we want. It’s the nicotine that’s missing, and you want it to stay missing for the rest of your life. This is marvellous! It’s not something to be feared or in need of treatment with quit smoking drugs.

You may feel mildly anxious and irritable, or mildly irritable and anxious. The problem is the fear that these slightly uncomfortable feelings will become intolerable. They won’t. The important thing is your attitude. If you’ve been brainwashed to believe you’ll go through hell when you try, that is, fail, to quit smoking, what will happen?

The above is an outline of the simplicity of the Symonds Method. Contact Dr Symonds for his personal attention to find out how easy it is to return to the happy state of being a non-smoker.

Picture credit: Creazilla on Creative Commons