QUIT FOR LIFE
As smokers, it wasn’t that we couldn’t hear the entire world screaming the insanity of us smoking pack after pack. It was that our chemically enslaved brain was screaming even louder that smoking was as important as eating, that quitting would be like starvation.
The beauty of this temporary journey of re-adjustment called quitting is that within 2 to 3 weeks we awaken to the fact that nicotine addiction was about living a massive lie, that everything we did while smoking nicotine can be done as well as or better without it.
Imagine your brain’s constant cycle of wanting, needing, and begging for more at last coming to an end. Imagine your journey of re-adjustment leading to entire days where you never once think about wanting to smoke, to a calm and quiet mind, to the comforts of home. Would that be a good thing or bad? Then why listen to your addiction’s lies? Why fear freedom?
The brain needs up to 72 hours to rid itself of all nicotine, to re sensitize once saturated receptors, and to move beyond peak withdrawal. It also needs time to down-regulate and rid itself of the millions of extra nicotinic receptors nicotine caused it to grow (up-regulation).
The subconscious mind needs time to encounter, break and extinguish all the nicotinefeeding cues it established. The conscious thinking mind (the prefrontal cortex) needs time to sort through and discard the long list of liesit invented to explain why that next cigarette was so important, to try and make sense of the deep inner “wanting” it didn’t understand.
Flavor, stress, pleasure, boredom, friendship, taste, there was really only one reason we smoked, because we had to, because a rising tide of anxieties would begin building when we didn’t. Flavor, taste? There are no taste buds inside our lungs, the place we sucked and briefly held all smoke. Like, love? By now you hopefully realize that love and “want” are two different things. It wasn’t that I liked smoking but that I didn’t like what happened when I didn’t.
Nicotine addiction is a brain “wanting” disease that can be fully arrested but not cured. As permanent as alcoholism, it enslaves the same brain dopamine pathways as illegal drugs, including heroin and meth. Our brain’s “pay attention” dopamine circuitry (the mind’s priorities teacher) was hacked, taken hostage and forced to falsely teach us that smoking nicotine was as important as pre-programmed survival activities such as eating food and drinking liquids. Contrary to store tobacco marketing signs, we didn’t continue smoking for pleasure but for relief from want and need.
There is a new revolutionary smoking alternative in the world-The Electronic Cigarette. Tobacco companies are threatened by these new miraculous smoking cessation devises.
Electronic Cigarettes serve the purpose of helping people quit smoking by standing as an alternative to regular tobacco cigarettes. Smokefree E-cigarettes have batteries instead of tobacco, cartridges instead of nicotine, water vapour instead of smoke! A Smokefree cigarette is made up 3 components. 1) The Cartridge. This contains the flavoured e-liquid inhaled during smoking. 2) The Atomizer. This changes the liquid from the cartridge into a vapour(smoke look alike) 3) The Battery, which is rechargeable and has a micro processor which controls the atomizer. The tip is an LED light which blinks when the battery is low. Smokefree e- cigarettes come with tobacco flavoured cartridges and infused flavoured cartridges, all of which can be customised with differing amounts of nicotine. One Cartridge for Rs 20 would last you the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes. Our electronic cigarettes can be smoked legally in public places as they are Smokefree.
The Government is encouraging the use of electronic cigarettes this World No Tobacco Day.
Source: smokefree.in
Other Links:
Timeline of World No Tobacco Day
Discussion over World No Tobacco Day
