The Hook

I have had a love hate relationship with cigarettes over the years, I love to have one on the odd occasion and then hate it when that one becomes a habit I can’t break. I have passed the stage of nicotine withdrawals multiple times but a month or two or even years down the line I get drawn to wanting one and then find myself back in the same loop of trying to quit. I think I have figured out the psychology, at least from my perspective. When you smoke regularly you get an instant relief from anxiety the minute you light up, this relief is from the anxiety caused by the nicotine withdrawal from the previous cigarette. The body now is programmed to believe that smoking offers relief from stress and anxiety, so once a smoker stops and all the nicotine withdrawals have passed, should a stressful situation arise, the body is still associating the relief from stress with having a cigarette. So we reach for a cigarette in these situations based on false beliefs and end up right back on the hook. If the urge now arises, I just need to remind myself and my body that the relief we seek was never truly from a cigarette but rather it masks the discomfort caused by cigarettes in the first place. This perspective is well explained in Allen Carr’s book, “Easy way to stop smoking”.