“Smoking to smoke” is a huge pitfall many smokers experience with how they approach quitting.
It’s the “I’m quitting soon, so I’m going to enjoy them while I can” attitude.
That mentality feeds the addictions’ narrative that smoking is a genuinely pleasurable activity and adds real value to your life.
“Smoking to quit,” on the other hand, is a series of strategies around smoking used to loosen the emotional and physical grips that cigarettes have on smokers.
We use the term Mini-quits in GET FIT TO QUIT to refer to the various strategies used to accomplish that.
Mini-quits doesn’t necessarily even mean a reduction in smoking.
It just means smoking differently, aka Smoking To Quit.
The frequency of smoking and the highly ritualistic nature of smoking make quitting harder than quitting many other drugs.
For example: cocaine users don’t regularly shoot up with coffee, on the phone, after a meal, while walking the dog, in the car , with a cocktail or before bed.
To make it less hard, smokers should shake things up in preparation for quitting.
Think of it like throwing your addiction off your scent allowing you to make a smoother break.
Mini-quits also naturally separate the need-to-have cigarettes from the used-to-having cigarettes, which reduces both the physical AND emotional effort that success with quitting will require, come quit day.
A wonderful by-product of mini-quits and mindful smoking is the realization that you are not nearly as dependent on nicotine as your addiction has you believing, which builds confidence as you approach a life of complete freedom.
Quitting is a process. Not an event. Becoming a nonsmoker starts well ahead of quit dates and total abstinence.
Smoking To Quit is just different smoking. It’s learning to like smoking less.
And when you learn to like smoking less, it becomes a lot less scary to leave it behind.
Don’t let junkie thinking about “enjoying smoking” interfere with the task at hand.
I promise to help smokers “like smoking less” ahead of quitting and Smoking To Quit is just one of my strategies.
