Why Is It So Hard to Stop Smoking?

What type are you?

Our thoughts are mainly (but not completely) determined by physical processes in the brain. Thoughts are relatively cheap and easy to change. You can think about something else if you don’t like what you’re thinking at that moment, but most of your behavior is habitual and very difficult to change.

When you’re thinking about something else, your unconscious mind is still doing the work of processing information.

You can’t really shut down this process entirely, but you can have a very strong positive association with smoking that makes it difficult to quit.

I’ll give you some examples of how this works: Every time you think about cigarettes, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine makes you feel good and encourages repetition (and therefore smoking).

Smoking is a cue.

Cues are stimuli that cause you to think about something else or do something in particular.

Cues can be negative or positive.

The pleasure of smoking is a positive cue. It’s also an addiction, which is when you have to think about something else as well.

The negative cues are the harmful effects of smoking: The bad smell, poor health, and physical appearance coughing. If you have multiple positive associations with something like smoking, and multiple negative associations against it (e.g., an addiction), then the positive will outweigh the negatives.

The question 'How to stop smoking?' is a general one.

It has many different answers, and those answers depend on the precise nature of the questioner’s problem with smoking. If they are physically addicted to cigarettes, then their addiction can be broken by tapering off gradually until finally giving up entirely or switching completely to another nicotine delivery system such as an e-cigarette (e-cigs) or other short term alternative nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

There is also hypnosis for breaking physical addictions that can work well in conjunction with NRTs.

If the questioner is addicted to the routine of smoking, then they need to find another routine that they can get just as much satisfaction from.

For example,

If they smoke while driving their car or walking down a street alone at night, perhaps there are other activities that provide them with similar pleasures and which do not involve excessive health risks.

If the questioner is addicted to nicotine itself, then they need to work out what it is about smoking that gives them pleasure and find a way of getting just as much satisfaction from something else.

The reason why it can be so hard for someone to quit smoking using willpower alone is that there are many different sources of pleasure in life, and when we eliminate one source of pleasure, the others tend to multiply and become more intense until we have found some new routine or substitute which provides us with just as much gratification.

Under the category of simply wanting to stop smoking for no particular reason, one’s reasons can be broken up into two broad types.

The first type is where it becomes apparent that they have been a bit of a social smoker and they don’t really get much pleasure from actually smoking cigarettes—this isn’t really an addiction but rather more like just being habituated.

The second type is where the person really does enjoy smoking, but they want to stop because of other reasons.

This can be split into two further categories:

'I just want to do what is best for me'

and

'It’s time I stopped doing something so incredibly stupid.'

The former category covers both health-related concerns (which are probably the strongest reason someone would give if there weren’t any others) as well as psychological or social reasons such as wanting to look more professional at work.

The latter category covers both personal reasons (e.g., 'I started smoking too young and I want to be proud of myself’) as well as environmental or altruistic ones, such as wanting to set a good example for their children or believing that the health risks are simply not worth it.