Mistyhorizon2003 Stuff

I have been smoking since I was 18 and found myself in a very bad relationship with a man who beat me up on a daily basis, as well as arranging to marry his ex-girlfriend behind my back whilst still engaged to me. Looking for a way to relieve my stress, I tried smoking in much the same way as I had seen other people smoke when they were stressed. At first this made me feel sick. but I unfortunately persevered until I found myself smoking over 20 per day, at this point I realised I was hooked and that I was a complete fool for having gone down this crazy route in the vague hope it would make me feel better.

I am now 39 years old and have been smoking for 21 years and bitterly regret ever having started this dreadful habit. Over the years I have quit smoking a few times, but always went back to it no matter what methods I tried. Just to illustrate the various ways I tried, (and failed), I can list the following examples.

1)  Patches (I lasted about 12 weeks).

2) Willpower, (failed numerous times after a week or two).

3) Hypnosis (found I was not able to be hypnotised, and this was after trying two different hypnotists).

4) Acupuncture, (lasted about a week, but not impressed at all by the results).

5) Zyban Tablets, (I actually lasted six months on these as they made the cigarettes taste horrible and stopped me wanting any, but I did weaken after I went through a personal period of great stress in my life, and made the mistake of having one cigarette. You can probably guess the rest). The problem with Zyban is they only seem to work the first time you try them, but the second time you find smoking not so unbearable.

6) Alan Carr’s book. Interesting reading, but didn’t stop at all afterwards, not even for a day. Too little substance in it to convince me to stop.

7) The book ‘How to Quit Smoking in One Hour’. Nope, no luck there either, as the CD included was essentially a hypnosis CD, and although the book made a lot of sense, it was simply not enough to make me quit.

8 )  Champix tablets. These weren’t too bad, but I still only lasted a month or so before slipping back into my old routine. I certainly didn’t find them as effective as the Zyban had been.

9). My latest effort is the online Nicotine Solutions Course with Lela Bryan. This is an 8 week course done live on the telephone each week in small groups of smokers. For the first 6 weeks we all continue to smoke, although each week we are set various assignments to enable us to take in less nicotine and wean ourselves off the habit. From weeks 7 onwards we all stop smoking, but stay in touch with each other to support the others and also to compare notes. Each day we receive at least one supportive email from Lela (the founder of the course). I have already done the first six weeks along with my Husband, and we are both now in the “Quit” stage, and keeping a daily record on a calendar of our success. So far so good, and everyone is supporting each other brilliantly via email etc. This time we are both really optimistic it will work, but mainly because the course has been so productive and inspiring, plus it has taught us different ways to look at smokers, and ways to change our patterns of living to avoid smoking.

I highly recommend this course from my own experience, and am actually keeping an online diary of my day to day progress since the course began. You can find my stop smoking diary here.

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