Training to Quit Smoking

If you're a smoker chances are you wish you would quit. Chances are you also think that you can't. Rather than waiting for a bolt of lightning to push you into your nearest smoking cessation clinic, this is an opportunity to prepare yourself. After all, there is already an inner conflict: to smoke, or not to smoke. You are consciously aware of the dilemma but don't as yet have the tools to override years of unconscious conditioning. Nicotine addiction is partly physical and partly psychological. The first obstacle is the psychological conditioning that you are a smoker, and always will be. The first real barriers are the physical withdrawal symptoms. Put those two together and it is no wonder that most people recoil from stopping to smoke. It just feels like too much pain, right?

One thing that struck me was that very little has been written about training to give up smoking. Yes, I can see those eyebrows have shot up in amazement. How can anybody train to stop smoking? It just sounds like another lame excuse to carry on smoking, right? Well, not if it's done properly. As I see it, you're already in that majority of smokers who would like to stop. Rather than waiting for some divine guidance or, more commonly, a stern warning from your doctor that you're killing yourself, this is a time to look at your dilemma really closely.

What if you quit smoking right now? Yes, you've had your last puff without knowing it. What's going to happen if you stop smoking this very second? As the nicotine level in your system drops you will start to feel withdrawal symptoms. If you can get through a few days the nicotine will have disappeared but the wiring in your brain is still primed for another nicotine hit. Your desire for a smoke will manifest at every opportunity. All those behavioural triggers will start going off and you feel as if you are staggering through a minefield in a daze. What equipment did you bring with you to get you to the other side safely? Nothing, I bet.

Those smokers who go through some quit smoking programme, either online or at a clinic, will (hopefully) be given all the tools they need to quit. The problem here is that they are given the tools at a time when they desperately need them, suffering an altered state of mind and with no idea as to what works and what doesn't. Sure, there's no way to make drug withdrawal a pleasant experience, but there's also no reason to make it worse than it need be. Most things in life require some training, whether it's learning to drive, getting a degree, playing a sport or even smoking! Yes, hard to remember but I don't think any of us went from non-smoker to smoker with a 20-a-day habit on day one. Parts of our body hated those first cigarettes but parts of our brain loved them; so much so that we trained ourselves to love the whole experience in spite of our rational misgivings. So it is time to train ourselves to be free from the conditioning of nicotine.

Let me first say a few things about what I mean by training. It is not an easy way to stop smoking because you haven't as yet committed to stop smoking. The aim of training is two-fold: firstly to tip the dilemma in favour of quitting to smoke; and secondly, to practise those techniques that will help you navigate through those desires to start smoking again. I repeat, training is not the real thing – you have not yet given up smoking. Thinking that this is a gradual path to cessation is wrong and will inevitably lead to a feeling of failure. Except that you cannot fail because you haven't quit yet. So relax and start to learn something about yourself, your body and your mind. When you're ready to quit you'll know it.

I would bet that there is nobody in this world who would sign up to run a marathon with absolutely no training – nobody. The strain on the body would likely kill the runner before half way. Training for a marathon has both a physical and a psychological dimension to it. Slowly increasing the distance run is sensible. Running just 5 or 10 miles during training is not a failure to complete a marathon because you're not running in one – you're training. Similarly, there comes a distance at which every runner feels they can't go any further, that their body just can't do it, that it's physically impossible and that other marathon runners must be either superhuman or crazy. Then they discover that they too can carry on and go all 26 miles. Passing this barrier is both a physical and psychological test and both tests need to be passed to be successful. This barrier never completely goes away, but with training the runner can recognize it for what it is and breeze past it with confidence. Training to stop smoking has the same aims: to experience and learn how to breeze past those barriers to total smoking cessation. Hopefully, the former smoker only has one marathon to run, so best be well prepared.

One other myth I'd like to dispel: that this training is somehow a gradual quit smoking technique. One consequence of the various techniques may well be that your smoking will decrease slightly, but this is a side-effect and not the main aim. I think to quit gradually is a recipe for disaster. Cutting down from 40 to 30 cigarettes a day may not make much difference, but everybody is going to hit a brick wall when they get down to the minimum smokes needed to maintain their nicotine level. At that point you will be suffering permanent withdrawal symptoms and still be nowhere near quitting. At that point you may well be ready to sling those cigarettes away for good and commit to stop, but that is a decision you have to make consciously. Experiencing and learning to manage withdrawal symptoms is part of the training but there is no point in feeling so miserable that you give up both the training and the desire to quit smoking altogether. If a technique is not working then find one that does. Much better that you discover what works for you now than finding out when you really need it. Remember, there is no relapse from training because you haven't quit smoking yet.

Let me go back to what I see as the two pillars of this training to quit smoking. These are Motivation and Techniques. As I said at the start, most smokers would like to quit. They are therefore already aware of a dilemma, but the reflex action of a nicotine addict is to reach for the next cigarette. The first aim is to study this dilemma more closely until you reach the point where the desire to quit is overwhelming. All the bad news about smoking related deaths and all the smoking bans in the world are not going to stop an addict getting his or her nicotine fix. But just as there are triggers for smoking so there will be triggers that make you sit up and seriously think about quitting. The art is to use your rational mind to retrain your unconscious mind. It isn't going to be easy but you can do it.

Imagine driving along a superhighway at full speed. Those years of smoking have created a kind of psychological motorway that links your nicotine product to your pleasure circuits in the brain. It's a wonderful piece of engineering and gets you from A to B in 10 seconds. But you're tired of this and long for a better experience. You get off the motorway and try a more scenic route, only to find a dirt track. The scenery is indeed great, the air is clean but the road is terrible. However, this is your new road of choice. As you drive up and down this track it starts to get smoother. You will soon find that your dirt track gets a layer of tarmac, and you can still see the motorway in the distance overgrown with weeds and potted with cracks and holes. You now have a great road and great scenery – you have re-engineered your brain.

The second aspect is to learn various techniques you will need to navigate those inevitable withdrawal symptoms. These are both physical and psychological in nature and, sadly for the addict, those memories of nicotine dependence never entirely disappear – that motorway may look abandoned but it is still there to entrap you if you ever for a moment consider using it again. Where the motivational aspects are more intellectual, the techniques have a more practical basis, although the two should be done at the same time. The first horrible lesson is that you are a slave to nicotine. The second lesson is that you also have the keys to your own freedom. Luckily, the brain is plastic and our minds flexible. We can train ourselves to take a more detached stance towards our body and our mind. What may be experienced as an insatiable craving for a cigarette is just a bunch of chemical signals – the bark of your slave master ordering you to fetch that nicotine. But you've broken free of your jail; you can still hear the bark and you can still see the prison but you're perched on a hill and can ignore it all.

The techniques come from a range of sources and largely involve in some way re-engineering ourselves. Freedom from nicotine is a return to your natural mind but it has probably been so long since you thought for yourself that you may be surprised at what you discover. To think that you can just throw the nicotine addiction away with the cigarettes is, I feel, simplistic. This is an opportunity to learn new things about yourself and new abilities you perhaps had never considered. To start that journey before committing to quit smoking may actually create the motivation that has so far been lacking.