Quitting Is A Journey – A Very Long Journey

So, quitting is a journey? A journey that is pretty darn long? Yes, it is! I think that a lot of smokers who want to quit fail to realize that successful smoking cessation is something that is done over a long period of time. And by a long period of time I am talking about your whole entire life. This is why so many smokers fail to be quitters in the first place. A smoker who thinks that quitting can be done with some sort of magic aid and denies the fact that they are going to really have to work at it, is a smoker that has set themselves up for failure.

The truth is that stop smoking aids can help tremendously with the process of quitting and can even make the process a whole lot easier, but it does not mean that a stop smoking aid will totally eliminate the work that needs to be done – the work a smoker must put in in order to abolish their addiction.  Likewise, there are no magic techniques or tips that can take the responsibility off of a smoker when it comes to doing their part in warding off addiction and cravings.

Quitting smoking is a journey. It is a journey that requires continuous effort and a journey that never really ends. Yes, it is very much possible to quit cigarettes. The point of this post isn’t to dissuade you from trying to quit cigarettes and to make you think that quitting successfully is absolutely impossible. Rather, the point of this post is to get you to realize that the process of quitting isn’t something that can zapped away and is something that you must always work at. What I mean by always working at it is that you are always going to need to push yourself mentally to fight off and deal with cravings. Cravings do get better over time but they will most likely never go away. So, if you are able to let a craving pass with willpower and focus then you’ll be just fine. Just know that it will require effort. Now, go start (not) smoking!

Chewing nicotine gum regularly in order to deal with cigarette addiction is a rather tricky method. What I mean by this is that you are fighting fire with fire. Smoking cigarettes is obviously a lot unhealthier than chewing nicotine gum but it is the nicotine that gets you addicted to cigarettes in the first place. So, when you consider the fact that you are substituting nicotine with nicotine you can begin to see how this particular method can be counterproductive. The use of nicotine gum does allow a smoker to deal with withdrawal symptoms and kick the habit of smoking, but it does not totally eliminate the underlying addiction. With that said, it is important to note that the proper usage of nicotine gum is to cope with cigarette addiction as opposed to ending it entirely.

Chewing nicotine gum will not allow you to simply end your addiction to smoking cigarettes. The idea is that you chew nicotine in order to deal with the effects of withdrawal and cravings. You can’t simply “beat” your addiction with nicotine gum. It just doesn’t work that way. Rather, you are supposed to use it to get through the early stages of quitting cigarettes in order to get used to not smoking  and to make changes for the better in your lifestyle. A typical usage period of nicotine gum is 12 weeks. What this means is that you to use nicotine gum for this period of time and then gradually stop using it. If all goes well, the nicotine gum will help you to become accustomed to a non-smoker lifestyle, eliminate triggers for smoking, and end your addiction to nicotine. However, as I said before this type of stop smoking method can be counterproductive.

You can’t use nicotine gum forever which means that you need to have a cut off point for its usage. Typically, you don’t want to use nicotine gum for more than 12 weeks. So in the time span of 12 weeks you’ll want to have reduced the amount of gum you are chewing and then finally end its usage completely. There is a problem here, though. As long as you are using nicotine gum you are still technically addicted to nicotine. You are no longer smoking cigarettes to fuel this addiction but you are getting your nicotine in another form. At some point you are going to need to rely on your own will power as nicotine gum cannot totally remove your urges to smoke. It can help you get on the right path and it can help you to get used to not smoking cigarettes, but you are the ultimate decider as far as whether or not you will smoke another cigarette. This is something you need to think about when considering the use of nicotine gum. Nicotine gum is a great aid to get you on the righteous path of quitting but it also cannot do all of the work for you and it still technically has you addicted to nicotine.