What Happens After You Stop Smoking?
Most of the discussion surrounding cigarettes these days tends to be on the health risks, or on the relative effectiveness of different quit smoking aids and methods.
But what happens after your stop smoking? What can you expect to happen to you, both physically and mentally?
As with all significant life changes, there are good things and bad things. Let’s start with the good stuff…
The Good Things That Will Happen
The sheer volume of good things that happen after you stop smoking can be surprising. Most people are aware of the reduction in cancer risk, but there are many other hidden benefits you may not be aware of:
- Much reduced risk of cancers and disease
- Huge increase in life expectancy
- Increased energy levels and physical fitness
- Lower daily stress levels and an increased ability to deal with stressful situations
- Increased ability to concentrate for long periods of time
- More money to spend on other things
- Healthier looking skin
- Increased sex drive and improved sexual performance
- Fresh breath and whiter teeth
- Unstained, non-smelly fingers
- Increased confidence in social situations
- More time each day to do other things
- Freedom from the constant nagging need to go and smoke
- Genuine free will in social and lifestyle choices
- Self-respect for beating a serious drug addiction
- Respect from friends and family for the achievement of quitting
- Respect from those who (secretly) thought you were weak / stupid for smoking.
The Bad Things That Will Happen:
And what happens after you quit smoking that isn’t so great?
There’s no getting around it: every smoker will have a brief period of nicotine withdrawal no matter how they quit. But how long and how difficult will that withdrawal period be?
Well, it turns out that the answer very much depends on what method you use to quit.
And this is where it gets interesting….
Most smokers think of ‘withdrawal’ as a single concept – the physical feeling of wanting a cigarette. But in fact, there are two very distinct components to nicotine withdrawal. There is the physical withdrawal, and there is the mental withdrawal.
The physical withdrawal symptoms are the ones that get all the press – the shakes, the ‘hungry’ feeling inside. Most quit smoking methods – nicotine patches, nicotine gum, Chantix pills – are aimed at helping smokers by reducing the physical symptoms.
But get this – it isn’t the physical symptoms that are the real problem. The physical withdrawal a smoker feels after quitting is actually very mild, doesn’t last very long, and it totally manageable.
It is the mental withdrawal that is the real problem – and is the reason smokers keep failing in their attempts to quit.
The psychological need for a cigarette is what really makes smokers suffer after they try to stop, and it is this psychological dependency that MUST be removed before a smoker can quit successfully. The physical withdrawal then easily falls away by itself after a couple of weeks.
Most Methods Actually Make The Psychological Dependency WORSE
The problem with most methods (such as nicotine patches, gum, pills and injections) is that whilst some of them may slightly ease the physical side of withdrawal, they actually make the mental side worse.
The psychological dependency is all about your subconscious mind.
By using nicotine patches, gum, or pills or injections, you are subconsciously ‘reinforcing’ in your mind that nicotine is a precious, valuable thing that you cannot do without.
Nicotine is not valuable or precious. It is not needed by the body at all. You’re not ‘missing out’ on anything after you quit.
But you MUST first remove the deep-rooted psychological side of the addiction.
What You Can Do To Finally Quit For Good:
Hypnotherapy can be extremely effective for removing the psychological addiction – because it acts directly on your subconscious, where the problem lies. But finding a hypnotherapist who knows what they are doing can be difficult, and the sessions can prove to be extremely expensive.
As an alternative, we recommend the highly-rated ‘PermaQuit Method’. Developed by ex-30-a-day smoker Paul Peyton, the system has already been used successfully to cure thousands of smokers.
It actively removes the psychological addiction permanently, without the expense of hypnotherapy or the risk associated with drugs – and from the privacy of your own home.
Visit the official PermaQuit website here.
Further details of the method and pricing are included on the site.
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