Quote:
Record Your Motivations
- Once in the heat of battle it's normal for the mind to quickly forget
many of the reasons that motivated us to commence recovery. Imagine being able to reach for a loving reminder card or letter listing all your core motivations when experiencing a crave episode. Write down your reasons for quitting, carrying it with you, and making it your first line o f defense - a motivational tool that can be pulled out during moments of challenge. As with achievement in almost all human endeavors, the wind beneath our recovery wings will not be Strength or willpower but robust dreams and desires. Keep those dreams vibrant, on center-stage and calming the impulsive mind and no circumstance will deprive you of glory.

Don't Skip Meals
- Is your mind and thinking starting to feel clouded? Nicotine was
our spoon with each puff, chew or dip releasing stored fats and sugars into our bloodstream. It allowed us to skip meals without experiencing wild blood-sugar swing symptoms such as an inability to
concentrate (mind fog), the shakes, irritability or hunger related anxieties. Recovery is a time when we re-learn to properly fuel the body by spreading out our normal daily calorie intake more evenly. Eat small, healthy and often.

Three Days of Natural Juices
- Unless diabetic, drink plenty of natural acidic fruit juice the first
three days. Cranberry is excellent. Acidic juices not only aid in more quickly removing the alkaloid nicotine, they help stabilize blood sugars and avoid needless symptoms. Take care beyond three days as juices can be rather fattening. If diabetic, talk to our doctor about a diet rich in foods low on the
glycemic index, foods converted to glucose more slowly, that will leave you
feeling fuller longer.

Weight Gain
- Be careful, it's normal to want to use food as a crutch to replace missing nicotine dopamine "aaah" sensations. But we'd need to gain at least 75 extra pounds in order to equal the health risks associated with smoking one pack-a-day. If feeling compelled to eat more, consider vegetables and fruits instead of candies, chips and pastries. You can also engage in moderate
daily exercise if at all concerned about weight gain. Ex-smokers can expect a substantial increase in overall lung function within 90 days of quitting. It will aid in engaging in extended periods of brisk physical activity, building cardiovascular endurance, and shedding unwanted weight.

Stress Related Anxieties
- Contrary to popular thinking, using nicotine does not relieve stress
but only nicotine's own absence. Nicotine is an alkaloid and stress is an acid-producing event capable of quickly neutralizing the body's nicotine reserves. It is like pouring a liquid baking soda solution on an acid-covered car battery terminal, or watching someone waste money on yard care
by applying fertilizer (acid) at the exact same time as limestone (an alkaloid). We actually added the onset of early withdrawal to every stressful event. New quitters often discover an amazing sense of calm during crisis. In handling stress during this temporary period of readjustment,
practice slow, deep breathing while focusing your mind on your favorite object, place or person, to the exclusion of other thoughts.

Quitting for Others We cannot quit for others
. It must be our gift to us. Quitting for a child,
spouse, parent, friend, a developing fetus, employer or doctor creates a natural sense of self-deprivation that is likely to ultimately result in relapse. If quitting for another person, how will an addict's junkie-mind respond the first time that person disappoints us?

Attitude
- A positive can-do attitude is important to both the conscious thinking and primitive impulsive minds which controls the body's fight or flight panic responses. Take pride in each
hour of healing and each challenge overcome. Celebrate the full and complete victory each day of freedom and healing reflects. The next few minutes are all that matter and each is entirely do-able. Yes you can!

Patience
- Years of satisfying rapidly falling blood-serum nicotine levels conditioned us to be extremely impatient. A deprived nicotine addict could inhale a puff of nicotine and have it arrive in the brain and release dopamine within 8 to 10 seconds. Realize the importance of patience to
successful recovery. Baby steps, just one hour, challenge and day at a time, and then celebrate.

Keeping or Carrying Cigarettes, Dip or Chew
-
Get rid of all nicotine delivery vehicles,
including replacement nicotine products. Keeping a stash of nicotine makes as much sense as someone on suicide watch keeping a loaded gun handy. Why toy with failure or play mind-games
with your freedom, health and life? A 2009 study suggests that keeping nicotine handy actually fosters crave intensity. Build in some delay for those less than three minute crave episodes. Fully commit to going the distance. Experience what it is like to awaken to new expectations of a
nicotine-free life.

Caffeine/Nicotine Interaction
- Amazingly, nicotine somehow doubles the rate by which the
body depletes caffeine. The caffeine user's blood-caffeine level will double to
203% of normal baseline if no intake reduction is made when quitting. This interaction isn't a problem for any caffeine user who can handle a doubling of their of normal caffeine intake without experiencing
symptoms. But consider a modest caffeine intake reduction of up to one-half if troubled by additional anxieties, difficulty relaxing or trouble sleeping.

Subconscious Trigger Extinguishment
- As mentioned, we conditioned our subconscious mind
to expect nicotine replenishment when encountering certain locations, times, events, people or emotions. Be prepared for each such cue to trigger a brief crave episode, as the subconscious mind sounds the body's fight or flight anxiety alarm. Remember, it is impossible for any use cue
to cause relapse so long as nicotine does not enter the bloodstream. Take heart, most triggers are reconditioned and extinguished by a single encounter during which the subconscious mind fails
to receive the expected result - nicotine. See each crave episode as an opportunity to receive a reward, the return of another aspect of life.

Crave Episodes Less than Three Minutes
- In contrast to conscious thought fixation (the "nice
juicy steak" type thinking that can last as long as you have the ability to maintain focus), no subconsciously triggered crave episode will last longer than three minutes.

Time Distortion Symptom
- Nicotine cessation causes significant time distortion
. Although no crave episode will last longer than three minutes, to a quitter the minutes can feel like hours. Keep a clock or wrist-watch handy to maintain honest perspective on time. It should be
mentioned that it is possible to multiple use cues at nearly the same time. But the experience is relatively rare and is good not bad. You are fully capable of navigating up to 6 minutes of challenge, and at the end you stand to be double rewarded, with the return of two aspects of life, not one!

Crave Episode Frequency
- The "average" number of crave episodes experienced by the
"average" quitter on their most challenging day of recovery is six episodes on day three. That's a total of 18 minutes of challenge on your most challenging day. But what if you're not "average?"
What if you established and must encounter twice as many nicotine-feeding cues as the "average" quitter? Can you handle up to 36 minutes of significant challenge during which the subconscious mind rings an emotional anxiety alarm, in order to reclaim your mind, health and life?
Absolutely! We all can. Be prepared for a small spike in crave episodes on day seven, as you celebrate your first full week of freedom from nicotine. Yes, for most of us, nicotine use was part
of every celebration. Also stay alert for subtle differences between crave-triggers. For example, the Sunday newspaper is much thicker and may have required three cigarettes to read instead of
just one.

Understanding the Big Crave
- The "average" quitter is experiencing just 1.4 crave episodes per
day within ten days. After that you may soon begin to experience entire days without encountering a single un-reconditioned subconscious nicotine feeding trigger. If a later crave episode ever feels more intense, it is likely that it has been some time since your last significant
challenge and you've dropped your guard and defenses a bit. It can feel as though you have been sucker-punched. If one does occur, see the distance between challenges as the wonderful sign of healing it reflects.

Crave Coping Techniques
- One crave coping method is to practice slow deep breathing while
briefly clearing your mind of all needless chatter by focusing on your favorite person, place or thing. Another popular three minute coping exercise is to say your ABCs while associating each letter with your favorite food, person or place. For example, the letter "A" is for grandmother's
hot apple pie. "B" is for warm buttered biscuits. You may never reach the challenging letter "Q" before the challenge peaks.

Embracing Craves
- Another coping technique is to mentally reach out and embrace your
craves. A crave cannot cut you, burn you, kill you, or make you bleed. Try to be brave just once. In your mind, wrap your arms around the crave's anxiety energy and then feel as it slowly fizzles
while within your embrace. Yes, another trigger bites the dust and victory is once again yours, as you reclaim yet another aspect of life!

Confront Your Crave Triggers
- Within two weeks, you should begin to realize that everything
you once did while nicotine's slave can again be comfortably done without it, and often better.Meet, greet and defeat your triggers. Don't hide from them. You need not give up anything during recovery except nicotine.

Alcohol Use
- Alcohol use is associated with 50% of all relapses. Be extremely careful with early alcohol use during the first couple of weeks. Using an inhibition diminishing substance and then surrounding ourselves with people using nicotine, while still engaged in early withdrawal, is a
recipe for defeat. Get your recovery legs under you first. If you do use alcohol, once ready to challenge your drinking/smoking cues, consider breaking the challenge down into manageable trigger segments. Try drinking at home first without nicotine users around, go out with them but
refrain from drinking, or consider spacing your drinks further apart, or drinking water or juice between drinks. Have an escape plan and a backup, and be fully prepared to use both. Also, should you be chemically dependent upon alcohol too, recent research suggest that the most
effective recovery path is to engage in both nicotine and alcohol recovery at the same time.

No Legitimate Excuse for Relapse
- Fully recognize that nicotine use cannot solve any crisis.
Accept the fact that there is absolutely no legitimate excuse for relapse, including friction with others, a horrible day, boredom, significant stress, holidays, alcohol use, an auto accident, financial crisis, the end of a relationship, job loss, a terrorist attack, a hurricane, an earthquake,
storm, flood, the birth of a baby or the eventual inevitable death of those we love most. Try and visualize yourself not smoking or using oral nicotine products through each and every step
needed to overcome the most difficult challenge your mind can possibly imagine. Yes you can!

Conscious Thought Fixation
- Unlike a less than three-minute subconscious crave episode, we
can consciously fixate on any thought of wanting to smoke, chew or suck nicotine for as long as we are able to maintain focus and concentration. Do no try to run or hide from rationalizations
of "wanting" but instead place each thought under honest light. Flavor? There are zero taste buds inside human lungs. Just one puff, dip or chew? For us nicotine addicts, one is too many and a thousand never enough. Treat nicotine dependency recovery as if it were no different than
alcoholism. Do not debate with yourself about wanting "just one." Instead, ask yourself how you would feel about going back to "all of them," back to your old level of consumption or greater. Failure is not a reward. Just one puff or hit of nicotine and you'll cause your brain to beg for
more. Like, love? Isn't that what true drug addiction is all about, fooled dopamine reward pathways elevating chemical use above life itself? Tear down your
wall of denial
.
Give Yourself Real Rewards
- Consider putting aside the money that you would have spent
buying nicotine, and treat yourself to something you really want after a week, month or year. If a smoker, reward yourself by quickly climbing from that deep smoker's rut and spending more timein places where you couldn't smoke, engaging in activities lasting longer than an hour, and by
ever so slightly pushing your normal limits of physical endurance in order to sample the amazing healing happening within. If an oral tobacco user, consider getting your teeth cleaned and no
longer being afraid to laugh hard or smile.

Fully Commit To Coming Home
- Why be afraid to tell others how wonderful it feels to have
taken back control of our mind, priorities and life? Fully commit to recovery by taking pride in each and every hour of healing, each challenge overcome, in each nicotine feeding cueextinguished and in each aspect of life reclaimed. Shed needless fears of success. Although your
dependency long ago buried all memory of what being "home" was like, there is nothing bad about eventually going entire days without once wanting for nicotine.

Avoid All Crutches
- A crutch
is any form of recovery reliance that is leaned upon so heavily
that if quickly removed would likely result in loss of support and relapse. Leaning heavily upon someone commencing recovery at the same time as you can be dangerous. Although great to have them along, if looking to others for support, it is far wiser to pick an already recovered ex-
smoker, ex-oral nicotine user, or never-user.

The Smoking, Chewing or Dipping Dream
- Be prepared for the possibility of extremely vivid
dreams, as tobacco odors released by healing mouth tissues, or being swept up bronchial tubes by rapidly healing cilia, come in contact with healing and enhanced senses of smell and taste. See it as the wonderful sign of healing it reflects and nothing more. It has no profound meaning beyond
healing./P>

See Marketing as Bait
- Your recovery means thousands upon thousands in lost profits to the
nicotine addiction industry They do not want to lose you. See all nicotine product advertising and the hundreds of neatly aligned packs and cartons in stores for what they truly reflect - bait!
Hidden within the pretty colored boxes, tins and pouches, and coated by more than 600 flavor additives is the chemical most dependency experts consider earth's
most captivating
.
It Is Never Too Late
- Regardless of how long we have been hooked, how old we are, or how
badly we've damaged our body, it is never too late to arrest our dependency, become its master,and commence the most intense period of healing our body has likely ever known. Delivering at least 1/3 more cancer causing chemicals than oral tobacco (43 vs. 28), and hundreds of toxic
gases, there is no debate but that the cigarette is by far the dirtiest and most deadly nicotine delivery device of all. But the harms inflicted by even the cleanest nicotine delivery deviceshould not be taken lightly. Not only does nicotine break down into one of the most potent cancer
causing agents of all,
NNK, it is a super toxin that, drop for drop, is more deadly than
diamondback rattlesnake venom, arsenic, strychnine or cyanide. Just 2-3 drops of pure nicotine on the skin (40 to 60mg) is sufficient to kill a 160-pound human. The average smoker introduces
1mg of nicotine into the bloodstream with each cigarette smoked, an amount sufficient to kill a one-pound rat. Is it any wonder that each nicotine fix eats away more of the brain's gray matter or that nicotine is capable of damaging or destroying a
developing fetus?

Study Nicotine Users Closely
- They are not smoking, chewing or sucking nicotine to tease you.
They do so because they must, in order to replenish a constantly falling blood-serum nicotine level that declines by half every two hours. Most nicotine is delivered into the bloodstream while
on auto-pilot. What cue triggered the public feeding you are now witnessing? Watch acid-producing events such as stress or alcohol quickly neutralize their body's nicotine reserves. As you watch the smoker in the car beside you, you are witness to their endless mandatory cycle of
replenishment.

Thinking vs. Wanting
- There is a major distinction between thinking about using nicotine, and
wanting to smoke, chew, dip. It is easy to confuse the two. After years of smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco or dipping snuff or snus, you should fully expect to notice nicotine addicts(especially in movies), and keenly sense the smell of smoke. But it does not necessarily mean that
you want to smoke, dip or chew yourself. At this very moment, you are reading and "thinking" about the topic, yet probably not "wanting" or craving nicotine. Thinking about recovery is good,
not bad, as it helps avoid complacency. As for thoughts of wanting, with each passing day they will gradually grow shorter in duration, generally less intense and a bit further apart. Eventually they will grow so infrequent that when one does arrive it may bring a smile to your face, as it will
be your only reminder of the amazing journey you've made.
Non-Smoker or Ex-Smoker, Non-user or Ex-User?
-
What should you call yourself
? Although
it is normal to want to be a non-smoker or non-user there is a major distinction between a never- smoker and an ex-smoker, or never-user and ex-user. Think about it. Only the ex-smoker or ex- user can grow complacent, use nicotine and relapse.

Complacency
- Complacency can destroy healing and glory. The ingredients for relapse
are a failing memory of why we quit and of the early challenges, rewriting the Law of Addiction toexempt or exclude ourselves, and an excuse such as stress, celebration, illness, finances, war,death, or birth of a baby. Use birthdays, your quitting date, and encounters with those still in
bondage as opportunities to celebrate your freedom and renew your commitment.

Relapse
- There are only two good reasons to take a puff, chew or dip once free. You decide youwant to go back to your old level of consumption until it either cripples or kills you, or you decide you really enjoy withdrawal and want to make it last forever. So long as neither of these
options appeals to you, consider living an amazingly simple (notice I didn't say easy) alternative - no nicotine just one day at a time. Never Take Another Puff, Dip or Chew!

Breathe deep, hug hard, live long!
This tips list was complied by
John R. Polito , Nicotine Cessation Educator and
Editor of WhyQuit.com, a free online nicotine dependency recovery forum,
primarily using articles written by Joel Spitzer
, WhyQuit's Director of Education (
Joel's Quit Smoking Library)
and research available online through the
National Institutes of Health (
Home - PubMed - NCBI
). These recovery tips may be freely printed and shared by physicians, their patients and all attempting to break nicotine's grip upon their mind health and life. The below copyright seeks only to prevent any attempt to charge for copies of these quitting tips or profit from them, directly or indirectly, by donation or otherwise.
[email protected]
.
Joel's Quit Smoking Library