How to Quit Smoking Cigarettes

“The nicotine patch has been proven an effective way to give up smoking!” “Nothing helps smokers quit better than Nicorette Gum.” “This little pill called Zyban is guaranteed to stop your cravings for cigarettes or your money back!” “A prescription for Chantix will end years of nicotine dependency.” “Following my simple one hour session of hypnosis, you’ll throw away your cigarettes and never want another one again!”

And for those of you desperate enough to quit that you’ll try anything: “Rest assured that no other method is more effective at getting you to give up cigarettes than acupuncture.”

Are you a lifelong smoker? Have you tried one, several or all of these methods without any measure of long-term success? If you answered yes, I can tell you in one simple sentence why they all failed: you don’t really want to quit. Oh, you may have convinced yourself consciously that you want to give up the smokes, but on a deeper level you simply aren’t ready to do this, which is why, despite the claims, not one of these methods is 100% successful.

 You can always go to a shrink, pay hundreds of dollars an hour to have your mind analyzed to get to the root of your addiction and your subconscious desires to continue hurting or even killing yourself with cigarettes, but that probably won’t help any more than the other methods. Why do you think that people who see shrinks continue doing so year after year? It’s because they rarely cure anything.

So by now you’re thinking that this article was just a tease and won’t provide you with any useful information… and maybe you’re right. That’s entirely up to you. The only way to quit smoking and stay off the cigs is to truly want to quit; after that, the addiction is the only thing to overcome, and there are ways to make that painful process less difficult (namely every method stated at the top of this article; any one of them should help if you are really determined and have an actual desire to quit).

Of course, there are a few no-fail techniques to quit smoking, get past the craving and clear all the residuals of the tobacco from your system, though they aren’t all that pleasant.

 The Overlord Method: Pay a stranger to follow you everywhere you go and hurt you every time you try to light up (if you have a friend willing to do this for you, you are in dire need of better friends). Eventually, your mind will be programmed to believe that should you have a cigarette—even when the overlord is no longer following you around—pain will follow. This worked for Pavlov’s dog and Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, and it can work for you, too.

 The Isolation Method: Have yourself deposited on a small island with enough food and supplies to last you at least two months (and no tobacco products, of course). You’ll go nuts in blissful privacy until the addiction passes. And it need not be an island: you can isolate yourself anywhere where there are absolutely no tobacco users, as long as it’s so far from any kind of store or in such an inhospitable place that you’ll risk your life should you decide to hoof it to the nearest tobacconist. Of course, in this situation you’d have an audience to poke fun at you while you climb the walls due to the intense cravings and you’re likely to make enemies out of everyone present, so be sure you don’t take any friends along with you.

 The Coma Method: This technique is rather costly, extremely time-consuming and sometimes fatal, so I don’t recommend you try it voluntarily. However, should something bad happen to you that lands you in the hospital, where you’re completely incapacitated and, preferably, comatose until the addiction passes, I have seen great results from this particular method.