Friday, October 23, 2020

Quitting smoking

In my opinion, one of the worst drugs in the world is nicotine. Once one becomes addicted to it, all bets are off. It is extremely hard for most people to quit, even though it does the most damage of virtually any drug out there. And the sad thing, is that it's legal.

During my younger years, especially when I was in prison, I probably smoked a total of 10 years off and on. I didn't really keep an accurate count of how much I smoked but I know it was bad for me and I would quit for a while.  But then sometimes I would get frustrated about something and go back to the habit. One of the reasons that I was always motivated to quit is because I did a lot of running at one time – at least 5 miles a day – for many years. Running was an addiction for me. Like cigarettes were when I was using them. But when I would get out of jail and take up running again, it was really easy for me to quit because after the first lap my lungs were screaming out to me to quit the habit.

But there was more to it than that for me as far as cigarettes go. I had seven aunts and uncles and all of them smoked, including my mother and stepfather. Back in those days almost 50% of the population smoked or used some form of tobacco. But at that time almost no one really understood the damage that cigarettes did. And it was not uncommon to see doctors in print or television advertisements extolling one brand of cigarette over another. And as a result, a large part of our population is suffering damage from smoking even though they might have quit 20 or 25 years ago.

As an example every one of my seven aunts and uncles, my mother, and a 35-year-old cousin all suffered from the serious effects of their habits. My mother, who died some 25 years ago on Christmas Eve probably would've still been alive had she not smoked. The thing that took all of them was either emphysema or COPD. But by the time they realized how damaging nicotine was the damage had been done. And the damage in the case of emphysema and COPD is virtually irreversible.

I bring this up today because I have a close friend who has made repeated efforts to quit smoking. But without success. So because I give free hypnosis to those who are serious about quitting smoking, she asked if I might hypnotize her so that she could quit. I explained to her that hypnosis is not a magic pill. And I tell that to everyone of my hypnosis clients; the desire to quit must be also accompanied by a strong motivation to quit.

At least 95% of the people that I try to help quit smoking are successful in doing so. But I have a routine that I make them follow before we ever sit down and go into hypnosis I spend a week or two preparing them. One thing I make them do is buy a level one nicotine patch to help them through withdrawals. I sometimes have them make weekly appointments with me a couple of weeks before we actually do the hypnosis just to follow up and see how motivated they really are. If they keep all the appointments I realized that they are serious about changing and in turn I get quite motivated to help them.

To date I have over 30 non-smokers and feel quite good about it because I believe that I have helped them change their lives. But I didn't change their lives, all I did was show them the path and give them the tools and they did all the work. But still, there's nothing like the feeling of helping another human being live a fuller and longer life because you help them stay away from the poison that was shortening their days.

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