STOP SMOKING…….More than 90% of people who go cold turkey fail. Professional group therapy or counseling achieves an initial cessation rate of 60-100% and a 1-year cessation rate of approximately 20%.
The reasons are many and the failure rate has to be significant of something. Not very insightful, I hear you say, of course it’s due to something. It’s the ‘what’ part which matters.
In order to find out why we still smoke, and what compels us to continue smoking requires a period of self examination. We can either do this ourselves or enlist the services of professional help. Either way we hope to arrive at a eureka moment.
There is much talk of arriving at the place where we are seriously and sincerely motivated to stop. In order for this to happen we have to first locate the other force, apart from addiction, which drives our desire to continue indulging tobacco .
A period of self examination is never a bad thing but ignore the findings at your peril.
Diet on Monday, stop smoking, cut out alcohol? Every Monday millions say something of the sort. They we counter optimism by reasoning it’s not a good time to ‘quit’ because we are stressed, going on holiday, working too hard. Many a ‘quit’ date comes and goes?
Continual failure brings self loathing.
So enough procrastination, I have indulged a period of self examination and accept the fact I have an addiction to nicotine and also a deeper motive to self destruct which I recognise is linked to a coping mechanism in my teens.
From here I speak for me not the masses.
I was adopted. I then adapted to a world full of expectation. I failed probably due to the cognitive dissonance which raged inside. Nicotine was the new escape route which replaced self-harm . No more burns, scratches, cuts only inhaling toxins to cope with life as I knew it.
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