How to Quit or Stop Smoking Cold Turkey
Just like me?
It was pretty hard just to quit, but for me it happened by accident.
My mind was already resolved to quit, but I just needed something to push me on, running out of cigarettes in the middle of the night was the answer, busy surfing and playing games I was too lazy to go out and get any more..
An hour passed, then another hour, then another hour, then the thought to quit came upon me, as I wanted to quit anyway, this seemed like the ideal opportunity.
Cold Turkey is actually THE most common method for quitting smoking.
It can also be the hardest or the easiest depending on how resolved you are. You really need to make your mind up and stick to it, like the tips I gave in How and Why to Quit Smoking.
An interesting statistic is that 47.5% of persons who tried to quit on their own were successful whereas only 23.6% of persons who used cessation programs succeeded (National survey by the CDC).
This shows if you really want to quit, you can do it, you just need to set your mind to it.
Here’s some tips for quitting Cold Turkey:
- Smoke until Friday, try and quit on a Saturday as you are less likely to get stressed at the weekend
- Keep yourself busy, do other things that you like, clean the house, bake some cakes or something, just DO NOT let yourself sit around thinking about how great smoking is
- When you want a cigarette, take a deep breath and get busy with something or take a nap
- Avoid situations that frustrate you-you won’t deal with frustration very well and will get easily annoyed
- Avoid any place where people will be smoking, especially people you know as this makes it seem ‘ok’ to smoke in your subconcious.
- Drink a lot of water or at least a lot of non-achoholic drinks, you will feel thirsty and if you drink a lot of water it will help to flush the nicotine out of your system. For me I drank a lot of Ribena, 100 plus and water.
- The symptoms such as irratability, restlesness, hunger, tiredness will be fairly intense for the first few days, be prepared for this mentally.
- If you really feel like a cigarette, call a friend or family, just talk to them, tell them how you feel. Make sure it’s someone you know well enough to impose this on. For me I used the Internet I have a lot of friends on MSN and IRC.
- You might need something for your oral fixation, you can chew a strew or a pencil or something preferably non-toxic.
- I felt hungry all the time too when I first quit, this is quite common and is a dual-pronged fork as nicotine is an appetite supressant and you will have the feeling you need to put something in your mouth all the time, after eating all the snacks in the house I decided that it probably wasn’t healthy. Following that I bought some carrots and sliced them up into little sticks. Whenever I had that craving to eat some crap, I got a handfull of carrot sticks. This did the trick AND it’s healthy.
- Exercise. It’ll help you burn off the frustration, and you’ll associate your lack of smoking with your new healthy lifestyle.
- Avoid alchoholic drinks as most people mentally associate drinking with smoking, it also weakens your resolve and makes you think it’s ‘ok’ just to have one. This is a BAD thing. For the first two weeks, try not to touch a drop of alchohol, you will make it a lot easier for yourself.
- If you are feeling VERY restless go for a short walk, 5-10 minutes is enough to get rid of the feeling.
The Cold Turkey method is free, effective and you can do it any time.
So why not do it today?
