How Marian Quit Smoking

HOW MARIAN QUIT SMOKING

I smoked heavily for 15 years and never thought I could quit - tried a lot of different things and nothing worked until I tried not inhaling every cigarette I smoked. I allowed myself to smoke whenever I wanted to as long as I didn't inhale and I still have that permission. The first three days were horrible, but after that, without even trying, I was smoking half the number of cigarettes I had smoked previously. I also did some psychological things to retrain my brain. After three months, I was down to just a few cigarettes every day (less than seven, sometimes only one or two). Then I really made a sincere effort not to smoke at all, still with permission to smoke as long as I didn't inhale. That was in 1983. I have been pretty much smoke free since then (maybe I've had a total of about 15 cigarettes since then - I still enjoy an occasional cigarette without inhaling). I know I will never be addicted again and it is such a relief to be free. When I smoked, I always thought cigarettes helped me to concentrate, but I find that I can still think as clearly as I could before. Food tastes a lot better. I have more friends. I enjoy breathing clean air. There are so many advantages to not smoking! Here is a paper I wrote about what I did to overcome my addiction to cigarettes:

Permission to Smoke: A Low-Stress Way to Freedom From Tobacco Addiction (PDF format) To read a PDF file, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download here.
In March 2002, I received an email from Erik Graversen from Denmark who had been trying to quit smoking for many years using various different methods, but nothing had worked for him. He very excitedly told me that it only took him about one and a half months to quit using the ideas from my article. He kindly offered to translate my article into Danish. You can go to Erik's website to download his Danish translation.