Hello steemit friends,
Today i want to share one very good news of my life with you all. As some of you might be knowing, @perceptionofmind is my bestest of best friends.
@perceptionofmind WAS quite an avid smoker, but now he is 24 days clean, and i am really really happy about it. It was quite tough for him to quit smoking completely and it was way tougher for me(seriously) to make him to do so, or i must mention : I FORCED HIM, but for his own good.
Here is the last when he smoked with me in a club, when he was trying to quit.
But yeah going to a club and drinking alcohol messed his trials of quitting smoking and he had to do a few drags. But since then, i have stopped him from partying for a while and there are a lot of ways we are both working over to divert his mind. Finally, i can say proudly he has controlled himself past 24 days and i am happier than ever.
So your loved one smokes? Husband? Wife? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Friend? Sibling?
I believe it is equally our responsibility to make them quit smoking, as much as it is theirs to quit.
So the main question,
How did i do it?
First of all, i did a lot of study on internet to find out,
-- How can i reason the fact : QUIT SMOKING with my friend. How would i convince him and what will be the benefits for him?
TO MAKE HIS MENTAL SETUP.
-- Then i researched about, the problems a human body throws up when you quit smoking or consuming nicotene, so that i can help my friend to overcome all those after problems with quitting.
TO COMBAT THE PHYSICAL SETUP.
-- How to actually start your qutting trials? So that i can make a proper plan with my friend and make him stick to it.
TO EXECUTE IT FOR REAL.
Now here is the real deal,
How to persuade them to QUIT smoking?
Find a very POWERFUL REASON
You know them and you will know better what can make them to quit it.
Here is how i manipulated @perceptionofmind :
Ok, so we both have a few friends in common, the friends who lost their fathers to alcoholic or smoke realted diseases. We see the difference in their lives, the love(fatherly) they are deprived of and they can do nothing about it. Only if their father could have quit it at the right time. I just used to make @perceptionofmind think about the future, would he like to die, seeing his children would suffer like that, a mental agony, a loss forever?
This leaves a mark on mind, and i know this was the powerful reason in my fight.
In real, i would explain all this to him, do the sad talk with him over the phonecall, but i used to do it over and over again. And at times i stopped talking to him to make him go serious about the issue.
It took us three months to finally go total smoke free. There were times when he could not control, and i used to feel i should go softer. But the next moment, i was like, he needs to try harder and be with it.
So this is how you can help the someone to quit smoking MENTALLY. By finding a great reason to hurt their soft point( dont feel guilty because you are forcing them because in the long run, its win-win).
How to help body of a smoker, his mind and neuro cravings?
Frankly when someone tries to quit smoking, those cravings that happen are really ugly and might break their determination of quitting.
-- When you quit smoking, nicotine withdrawl gives you headaches, mood swings, low level of energy. The cravings would make you go all crazy. But this does get better with time, @perceptionofmind tells me you just need to be patient and not lose hope. Though this happens on the inital 15 days when you stop it and we used to discuss it on phone while he was experiencing it all.
-- You can help yourself by EXERCISING OR GYMMING. It helps, these days, perception does gymming 2 hours everyday strictly. And i do video call him to check this, haha.
-- Make them do something relaxing, NICOTENE used to make them relax, so now since body is deprived of NICOTENE, give a good replacement. Massage, walking, music, holiday, bitcoin , avoiding anything stressful(even criminal tv shows which he and i, both watch alot, lol).
-- Totally avoid junkfood. I personally cannot give you a scientific reason, but avoiding junk food helps my friend.
-- TOTALLY AVOID ALCOHOL, com'on this can be made possible for a while. AND ALCOHOL TRIGGERS THE URGE OF SMOKING IN ALMOST EVERY BEING.
-- Stay away from the smoke smell, like keep your car clean if that smells like cigarette smoke. Avoid friends who smoke for a while or the smoking lounges etc.
-- There will be times when your loved one will fail. And do a drag or two. But you got to keep hope, encourage them, make them strong mentally. Though i used to get real angry and disappointed but you need not or should not.
Why should you force/help/ask your loved ones to quit smoking?
-- Quitting smoke helps preventing your loved ones from diseases, like lung cancer, heart disease. Imagine when they enter their forties and start having health problems becaue of smoking, would you take the pain of losing them to such diseases just because of smoking?
So protect them before they are gone.
-- After you quit smoking, in a span of 15 years, you internal organs are as good and healthy as of a non smoker. So yeah you have an opportunity/hope to say "i deafeated smoking and at the end i am at no loss now." So yes, you should help them when you have a chance to be at no loss.
-- Quitting smoke makes you good looking, we read it and yes it is true. @perceptionofmind strongly feels his skin has become much softer(more than mine, Though i am already fond of his cheeks ;) ) and he feels his skin alive. Also studies say, smoking promotes hair to go grey, though we have not felt this hair quality change till now. But ofcourse a very good reason to quit.
-- Smoking improves brain function. As per studies, NICOTENE does slower the brain functioning, JUST like heroine or cocaine does. Quitting does help you think better.
And Yeah you save money on cigarettes, i always say to @perceptionofmind that he needs to treat me or gift me, with all the money he will be saving lifetime on cigarettes. He argues back that i should reward him for the tough fight. 😂 haha. Who do you think should be rewarded here?
You must have came across a lot of articles on 'How to quit smoking', but i have tried writing one that can actually help you, linking it with a real life success of my dear friend @perceptionofmind.
There is a lot more information you can find on internet, as i have kept things to the points and real life based here. And Yeah we kept it the plan slow but did not TAKE SUPPORT OF NICOTENE TABLETS ETC., though these tablets help(as per studies) but i discouraged the fact that we are trying to quit a drug and take support of a lighter drug while quitting when the ultimate purpose is to quit.
As a start i would suggest you to share it to anyone you know who smokes, specially the ones you care about. And resteem it may be, to make it reach more people.
Though @perceptionofmind is not way too active on steemit(because of his busy worklife), but he signed up on my request. So you can reach out to him in case you need anymore answers or help OR may be to know how cruel and harsh I was on him in the whole process, haha.
Here is my crazy @perceptionofmind , 24 days clean :
Till next blog, happy steeming ;)
Cute couple. Best of luck.
Hehe he is my best friend, no couple, but yes thankyou :)
Thats why i call you Vampire .
Hahaha
100% for you
Thanks much owner99 😊
@thatindianlady
very nice hair color. Good looking couple!! keep partying up :)
upped the post
Thanks @qagiri , we are friends though :p
I smoked for 30+ years. Was extremely addicted and for the most part, wasn't interested in quitting. Decades later I grew tired of spending so much money on it, and eventually I decided to spend the fee for hypnotherapy to quit, but to this I also applied for a quitting smoking study being done by a university who accepted me into their program and contributed 2 months worth of nicotine patches. I started them the day I returned from the hypnotherapy and have not smoked since that day!
Now the hypnotherapy method I will share free of charge, because it actually works very well IF a person can do it properly without forgetting a day. You simply make a sentence that equates with you already having quit smoking, such as " I am so happy that I have left the life of a smoker in the past! " This phrase must be repeated as you are in bed to go to sleep, and continually repeated over and over until you fall asleep. The sub-conscious mind never sleeps, so it will continue repeating it throughout the entire night.
Now for the tricky part. This MUST be done a minimum of 30 simultaneous days. If you forget to do it one night then you must start over from the beginning. The reason is that science has demonstrated that by thinking a thing to ourselves for thirty days continually, that thing becomes a new habit.
Thus one is simply self-hypnotizing at night and repeating that they enjoy being a non-smoker, for thirty continual days, until it becomes a habit, at which point trying is no longer necessary because the sub-conscious has already adopted it as the reality, and it by that means becomes the reality the person lives! This seriously works. I have not smoked for almost 8 years now. I have never had a relapse or even the desire to smoke again. Mission accomplished! I spent $150 dollars to learn this, but now I pass it on free as a gift to anyone that is interested in quitting. If you can maintain the process for at least 30 days, you will be golden and can replace that bad habit with a newer good habit!
I am so glad that you quit,
The whole process you went through looks quite tough and must have been really challenging,
But you sailed through.
Thankyou for sharing :) God bless you with a healthy life. :)
Thank you, and likewise to you!
Congrats! I'm sure your body thanx you for the better care you are giving it! You might enjoy this,
https://steemit.com/life/@splendorhub/i-defeated-procrastination-and-so-can-you-with-the-5-second-rule
Best wishes.