stopping smoking-as painless as it gets.

[embracethevoid]

Just a couple of tips, I'm 4 months clear but I'm confident that I will probably never smoke again as I don't even want "one puff" let alone crave cigs.

Imagine you are a rat going through a maze. Certain paths of this maze contain tasty treats along the way. Tasty deadly neurotoxins, that is. This maze is your life (literally) and this maze is also your brain, namely your neural firing patterns/habits. Everytime you take the same path through this maze, you WILL eat those tasty treats and your rat brain is powerless to resist.

So do something very simple: take another path through it. Stop hanging around with smokers for at least 2-4 weeks. Every single trigger, reroute it. If you take this way home from work, take a different route. If you drive, walk. If you take the bus, take the train. If you do the 'coffee and a cig' thing, drink tea. For example Nexaliser states that s/he quit very matter of factly - almost as if saying "Yeah so I decided to quit and that was that". Not many smokers will catch the paramount importance of "adjust habits a bit (I quit hanging out with smokers for a few months and quit coffee for awhile too, for example)"! And this is where they will go wrong!

What you want to do is send your reptile brain somewhat haywire (actually you will feel MUCH calmer quitting if you follow this advice). Your brain operates on a [cue => response mechanism => reward] basis. No cue, no mechanism. No mechanism, no reward (or in this case, tasty poison)! You CANNOT take the same damn path through the same damn maze and expect not to eat that same damn tasty lethal neurotoxin. What you are doing is writing yourself a cheque that your willpower simply cannot cash, why? Because unlike non-addictive behaviours, smoking physically changes the nature of your willpower itself. Trying to use willpower to stop smoking is like trying to use one half of a magnet to push the other half away.

Good luck!

 

[AluminumFoilRobots]

Well it's been almost 48 hours with no tobacco, however I had a slip-up as far as the nicotine-detox goes: I got an E-cig... The reason was essentially that my wife and I drove halfway across Texas tonight and she had 2 "emergency" cigarettes for the ride... Anyway, I sat through the first one fine, got over my craving in like 3 minutes, but then after some hours she lit the second and I could feel the habitual gears turning in my head moving me towards hitting the Nasty thing... So in that state I made the last-ditch effort against actually lighting up and did the next worse thing: e-cig.

I believe this may set me back a bit on my therapy, largely due to the inhalation ROA being so direct (and therefore the most habit-forming), and of course how similar it is to smoking! Tomorrow I will follow corpus' advice and get some nicotine lozenges for emergencies. I'm sure the buccal ROA, while being more direct than transdermal it isn't close to inhalation, it's not instant gratification. The only good bit is AT LEAST I didn't use tobacco... And the lack of harmalas in the mix keeps it from having that really "satisfying" effect... Nicotine ain't sh*t without harman/norharman!

Which leads me to another question: does anyone here feel as though using tobacco wih harmala/caapi entrenches the nicotine dependency by potentiating it? In other words, does any feel as though smoking/whatever while on harmala alkaloids increased their addiction to tobacco? I kinda feel as though it did for me, although by NO means is that the main culprit (money to buy the bastards is what did it) but it played a role... I mean, it certainly potentiates it.

That is all really good advice EmbracetheVoid, I am trying to rewire myself.. I'll get some cinnamon sticks to chew on to occupy my hands and mouth, that's something I haven't done yet, and if I had I wouldn't have gotten this e-cig. It's just a one-off one as I actually am quitting not only because of what he smoke is doing to me, but for the fact that I need proper bloodflow to my spine to heal from the upcoming surgery. So I have to be NICOTINE free.

Thanks for letting this he my venting about quitting thread! Love all nexus!!!!!

 

[embracethevoid]

A lot of people say "I'm not addicted to the nicotine, really I'm addicted to the act of smoking". It's correct but not precisely accurate as you've just observed. Tobacco contains a whole range of psychoactives including beta-carbolines like harman and also other nicotine-like substances (anabasine?) too IIRC. The beta-carbolines work synergistically to 'open up the channel' for nicotine to fire through and give you that hyper-addictive surge of brain-juice.

You're not merely addicted to nicotine but actually to the entire synergy & rhythm of inhalation/administration of all the various psychoactives in their fine tuned little dosages, and the intricate interactions with your own neuro-juice! Nicotine is not like heroin or meth where one hit lasts for hours so your initial state doesn't matter much, the short term hit is totally fine-tuned to your own chemistry. Nobody is addicted to the act of smoking cigarettes and to prove this to yourself buy a pack of herbal cigs and see if you even get past the first!

This is why some people have major difficulty with e-cigs as their addiction is more MAOI-based than nicotine based; I was one of them. Even then however nicotine is still the culprit and the MAOIs are still the synergisers thus abstaining from nicotine alone will put a stop to the addiction though it will be a bit harder perhaps.

By way of comparison, it's as if you're addicted to a very specific mix of Changa, not freebase DMT. The most important thing I have learnt and applied to ALL my cravings/compulsions is to realise there is an addictive self within one's own psyche, each addiction has its own self. It's a thoughtform with its own life and it sustains itself by being fed your thought energy. Some people quit smoking altogether and hate the smell of smokes. While others might abstain for a decade and then some, and all the while they will crave a cigarette. The difference is, the latter guy didn't kill the thoughtform. It lies in wait and bides its time. It is imperative that you kill the thoughtform and the way to do that is to starve it of ALL energy - don't think of smoking, don't think of not-smoking, don't think of not thinking of not-smoking. Just like meditation: be still, don't wave around trying to still the other waves in your mind. Just be still. Don't fantasize about it. Be asexual to it.

 

[AluminumFoilRobots]

Wow dude you have just laid out a gold-mine! I very much like the idea of thinking about the thought-pattern as a personality. I think this is probably poetically close to the real situation: we are an amalgam of semi-sentient algorithms with an executive unit that is somewhat more aware of these sub-processes than they are of each other; although clearly it isn't necessarily aware of all or even most of them. It makes the final executive decisions but its choices are almost always based on the inertia of the semi- or pre-sentient algorithms and their desire to continue existing in the framework of the "individual" (now of course individual must be written with ironical quotation marks). These patterns or "thoughtforms" as you called them work best or get what they "want" when they let the executive portion believe that IT came up with the idea, this is how they go without being discovered - they make you think you made the choice. Which ultimately you did I suppose, or gave it the rubberstamp of approval, but the impetus came from the thoughtform.
This is my conception of the "self", or perhaps that is descriptive of the "ego" - and where ego is conflated with egotism is the point that this executive really thinks that it's "In Charge", for then it cannot question the impetus for its action.

today is day three with no tobacco, although I did hit that e-cig twice. Oh well I'm doing better. besides the usual triggers like coffee, kratom, cars, and writing on the computer (gah I used to smoke tons of cigarettes and get on the nexus!), I have noticed something that probably many people in relationships that use tobacco have: the irritable tendency which leads to bickering which leads to WANTING TO SMOKE LIEK SO BAD! So if you smoke and are in a relationship, don't let that even start which is really hard to do especially if you are both quitting simultaneously . But I almost feel like it is a trick from my addiction- it gets me irritable and that makes me be kindof a dick, which leads to a fight, which makes me want to smoke; but it was an elaborate plan! It's causing the issue and then right at the opportune moment is like "Hey, remember me? Your old pal? This wouldn't have happened if you just had a cigarette... c'mon, smoke you'll feel loads better!"

Anyway, thanks again and I'll let you know how it goes...

PS, has anyone tried microdosing or just dosing harmala/caapi to quit? Like instead of nicotine-replacement therapy, harmala replacement therapy?