Quit Smoking Timeline

Quit Smoking Timeline

Back in school, the news about our group spread like wildfire. We were the kids from the gang that dared to break the rules. We were famous! Unbelievable, we were famous and admired by our colleagues. Some of them joined our club, others were afraid but the majority thought what we did was cool. The feeling of being famous, belonging to the group and doing the forbidden things gave me such a kick that I kept on escaping and smoking with the other guys.

Every Friday afternoon a big school bus brought us back home. It was a one and a half hour drive from school to my parent’s house. Marc was also on my bus, as he lived a few villages further on. The bus had hardly left the grounds of school and we started smoking. Another stimulating factor was that there were girls on our bus. They came from a neighboring boarding school for girls who had an agreement with our school concerning traveling from and to school on Sundays and Fridays.

Smoking and doing other forbidden things was the right thing to do in order to impress the girls. The girls didn’t say so but we just knew, we could read their minds! We were the cowboys of their dreams! I’m not familiar with your story but I would really like to know how nicotine trapped you. You can always send me your story by mail or email. No matter what the details of your story are, chances are that you can find some similarities with my story.

Maybe you started smoking at quite a young age because you wanted to belong to a group, to be with the big boys in your school. Maybe you did it because you wanted to impress the girls. Maybe you started smoking because you had a big brother or sister that smoked and you thought it looked cool to have a cigarette in your mouth. Maybe you started to impress your boyfriend.

On the other hand, you started because you wanted to keep your stress or your weight under control. Others started smoking because their best friends convinced them. Advertisements on television or sports events depictured our heroes with cigarettes in their mouths. Movies showed our favorite actors or actresses relaxing with a delicious cigarette. These are some of the many things that might have pushed you to smoke that very first cigarette.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: Quit Smoking Timeline

Quit Smoking Timeline

How To Quit Smoking Naturally

How To Quit Smoking Naturally

Anyway, at eleven years old, I had another nicotine stick in my mouth and I was about to experience the “great sensation” and taste of it. Well, it was even worse than that cigar I smoked when I was five! After the first puff, I immediately started coughing and it seemed that my whole head started to spin around. From time to time, I felt as if I was going to faint. I was dizzy and I saw my colleagues floating and turning around as I collapsed on the sand under the bushes.

Some of the guys started to laugh at me, “Aha, you can’t stand the smoke, whoa, you pussy.” “You’re not a real guy.” “You’re so soft.” I didn’t want to admit I was failing and tried to show them the real me by taking another large puff. The result wasn’t any better and the taste was absolutely awful. It felt as though the smoke was slowly penetrating my throat, my lungs and stomach. I felt sick. My legs and arms felt heavy, my knees couldn’t keep my body up, and so I stayed lying on the ground, just turning my head. My eyes were wide open so I could see what was happening. This was the only sure thing that I experienced; I could still see what was going on around me. It was small consolation to notice that I wasn’t the only person suffering from this experience.

As we were in a group of “grown-up” kids, nobody wanted to show their weakness, just the contrary. Besides, everybody wanted to belong to the group, be one of those big guys who dared to escape to the woods and smoke without permission.

We all survived our first nicotine experience, as well as our trip back to the schoolyard. Such a trip was not without danger. The school kept us under close surveillance and if the instructors had caught us, it would have cost us our school careers. Not to mention how our parents would have reacted once they found out about it.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: How To Quit Smoking Naturally

How To Quit Smoking Naturally

Preventing Smoking Addiction - Is There Such A Thing?

Preventing Smoking Addiction – Is There Such A Thing?

My first contact with cigarettes was at the age of five. I opened the big antique closet that my parents had in the living room and took out a big cigar. I ran up back to my room, opened the window and “enjoyed” my first cigar. It was an awful experience and I coughed up my lungs.

I spent the next two days walking from my bed to the bathroom and back. It was the most awful, disgusting experience ever! So, after that experience I “quit” for a couple of years. The reasons were obvious. First, I had a very bad first experience, my body suffered for quite a while. Secondly, I didn’t get my parents’ permission to smoke, obvious since I was only five. Thirdly, they started hiding the key to the closet a lot better than before.

By the time I was eleven years old I fell for the temptation of “becoming a real man.” I wanted to be cool and belong to the in gang. It happened when I was at boarding school. It was a school run by Jesuits, who, as you’ll later see, played quite a considerable role in my smoking education. Spending the first night with three other pupils all around 11 years old, and sharing a room was quite a lot of fun. It was a new experience for all of us as we got to know each other and found out who already smoked. Marc was one of those guys who didn’t just talk about having done it, he actually smoked and he showed us his cigarettes, Blue Belga with a filter.

The next morning, after introductions to the class and teacher, a few of us escaped into the woods. There we would meet and smoke. The trip was an experience in itself; we felt like we were in a movie, it was a little bit scary. There was always a potential risk of being caught, but what a challenge! I guess we were in a group of six or seven kids, hiding behind some big bushes while Marc and Rob were distributing the cigarettes and then lighting them. It didn’t take much to convince me to go along with them because I wanted to be a part of it; I wanted to belong to the group. Just that sensation was a big adventure that I didn’t want to miss.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: Preventing Smoking Addiction – Is There Such A Thing?

Preventing Smoking Addiction - Is There Such A Thing?

A Way To Quit Smoking Fast

A Way To Quit Smoking Fast

So when the balloon is inflated we believe that we feel better than a non-smoker does. Well, my parents were also admiring the view and the nature of Monument Valley and they felt at least as great as I did. They weren’t smoking! I could see my sister was enjoying the view and she wasn’t smoking. At that time I didn’t think about this, it took a lot of reflection, and thinking before I finally realized how I, as the smoker, was fooling myself.

I started to realize that I was actually smoking to gain back the feelings and condition I had before I started smoking. Once you become a nicotine addict and you start smoking a pack a day, the balloon soon gets worn out. This means that no matter how much you smoke, you are never able to regain exactly the same level of comfort as when you were a non-smoker.

So no matter what you smoke, when you smoke, you’ll always be left with a slightly uncomfortable feeling, those butterflies never go away completely. This is one of the reasons that eats at the self-esteem of a smoker.

You’ll get the feeling that you’re constantly missing something, no matter how much you smoke. The moment you stop smoking, this feeling becomes bigger and therefore you’ll light a cigarette even more quickly than before.

As we have seen earlier, this is what we imagine! The reality is that there was nothing missing before we started to smoke. The missing feeling, the hungry feeling, the butterflies, the balloon effect is created by smoking that first cigarette! Before you smoked that first cigarette, you were missing nothing. We didn’t have this hungry feeling or anything like it. So this balloon effect describes how the nicotine is working in our body. In addition, it does this very, very slowly so that we are not aware of the fact that we have become addicted to it.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: A Way To Quit Smoking Fast

A Way To Quit Smoking Fast

Best Way to Stop Smoking

Best Way to Stop Smoking

When you smoke a cigarette, you take yourself back to the same condition you were in before you started smoking! What are the effects of this? How do we understand this? What are the causes? First, do you agree with what I’ve said above? Maybe you don’t and I politely ask you to reread what is written.

Most smokers believe they gain something when they smoke. They believe that by smoking they get something extra that non-smokers don’t have. As a smoker, you have the feeling of certainty when you smoke, a feeling of power in a difficult situation, a friend in a difficult moment, a relief when stressed. All feelings we believe that we have and non-smokers don’t have.

I can still vividly remember making a trip through the USA with my parents. I was 21 that summer and in those days it was a big deal for a family from Belgium to go on vacation to the USA. The whole family was looking forward to it; I would finally visit my dream country! We were going to the areas I wanted to see the most. We were going to go to the West Coast. California, Arizona, Nevada, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and Marlboro Country–Monument Valley.

My room at home was already filled with every possible poster about Marlboro Country, so I could imagine how the countryside looked. When I looked at the pictures of the cowboys and the horses, I could feel the breeze and the sound of the birds in the sky.

Then I was actually standing in Monument Valley! So I lit a cigarette with my Zippo and took a deep pull. What a feeling. I felt I was in control of the whole world. I was calm, relaxed and enjoying the wonderful view over Monument Valley. And I was thankful that I could share this moment with a cigarette in my mouth. Without this cigarette, the experience wouldn’t have been as nice, at least that’s what I thought then and there.

It’s the balloon feeling that gives us this impression. When the balloon is inflated, we feel great, when the balloon is empty, we feel like we are missing something, we feel hungry and we feel the same as when we are in love. We have butterflies in our stomach. Remember this feeling for later on because we will come back to this when we speak about withdrawal pains.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: Best Way to Stop Smoking – Quit Smoking Now

Best Way to Stop Smoking

Start of Smoking Addiction - Quit Smoking Now

Start of Smoking Addiction – Quit Smoking Now

Imagine that your body has a small balloon inside it. Let’s say that we have a balloon for each addiction that exists. The balloon is just lying there. It doesn’t cause any harm since it’s not inflated. For the same reason, we don’t feel anything because it’s not inflated.

When you smoke your first cigarette, what happens? Nicotine is a very fast drug. It goes through your veins and blood and in no time, the nicotine has found its way to the nicotine balloon and starts to inflate the balloon for the first time. By inflating the balloon, the balloon is pushing aside some of your intestines and fighting to claim his spot in your body. Because the balloon is inflating gradually, you are not aware of this change in your body.

From the moment you extinguish your cigarette the balloon starts to deflate again leaving behind an open space. Every time you light another cigarette, the balloon inflates again, and becomes a support for your intestines. When your cigarette is finished, the balloon starts to deflate again and starts creating an empty feeling in your stomach.

This empty feeling is caused by the deflated balloon now is no longer supporting your intestines. The balloon has created a vacuum in your body and your body wants to fill up this vacuum again. This is a way to describe the empty feeling you feel when you haven’t smoked for a while.

Your body starts creating a need for a cigarette and nicotine. Without nicotine, without the inflated balloon inside, you start feeling uncomfortable because of this vacuum, this hungry feeling you have inside. From the moment you light a cigarette, the balloon inflates and you feel comfortable again. You feel sure and supported because of the inflated balloon.

Actually, when you smoke, you feel the same as the moment before you started smoking. This is important to understand. When you smoke a cigarette, you take yourself and your body back to the condition it was in before you ever started smoking! If it’s not clear or if you are still confused about this sentence, read it again and think about it for a while. Let it really sink into your mind and make sure you fully understand what we mean here.

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: Start of Smoking Addiction – Quit Smoking Now

Start of Smoking Addiction - Quit Smoking Now

How to Quit Smoking - Tips to Kick the Habit for Good

How to Quit Smoking – Tips to Kick the Habit for Good

Let’s now have a look at who has provided you with suggestions about cigarettes and how you are brainwashed by the smoker’s society. Most of us started smoking under some kind of social pressure. This social pressure came from a group of people, friends or family who were smoking at the moment when you reached for your first cigarette. When you are a young smoker you probably started smoking in order to belong to a group, feel cool, feel like one of your heroes, feel more charming or lose weight.

If you were older, you probably started due to a stressful situation, a relationship that ended, a difficult exam or a new job, even a baby in the family. Perhaps you wanted to do something exciting, you wanted to feel more alive, or you needed to concentrate on something and then you were offered a cigarette.

Just in this variety of reasons, you can find contradictions. Smoking to concentrate and smoking to alleviate boredom, smoking in stress situations and smoking when relaxed. You hear them tell you how tasty a cigarette is after dinner. How they light a cigarette first thing in the morning and how they enjoy it. How they have a puff when they have to think and concentrate, how a cigarette helps them to get fantastic ideas, how they have seduced a partner by blowing smoke in their face!

Unbelievable isn’t it?

You hear all the good things about smoking from those people who know it, smokers.

Moreover, and this makes the cigarette trap complete, you also hear many warnings from smokers, which are meant to discourage you from starting smoking. They tell you about the downside of smoking. It will destroy your health, cost a lot of money, limit your social freedom, and make you hooked for life, and so on.

When it comes to quitting smoking, the stories you hear are clear. Quitting is very difficult and you suffer doing it. It’s impossible to quit. It’s the hardest thing to do if you smoke more than a pack a day. Without medical help, you can never quit. Even if you quit, you’ll restart one day. Your body will shake because it needs nicotine. You’ll become angry with friends and family. You’ll have problems concentrating and you’ll finally start smoking again. You’ll hear from people who have tried a number of times and failed every time. Others have used all the pills and patches available and still smoke a pack a day.

These are the kind of hetero-suggestions we get from the smoking world.

All these suggestions are stored somewhere in your mind. These suggestions then become the pillars for certain beliefs in your mind. Beliefs are very powerful and they work in our subconscious mind. This means that we don’t notice that they have an influence on our daily behavior. They do, however, and in a very convincing way.

Just as an example:

It was accepted for thousands of years that no human being could run a mile under four minutes. So, for ages and ages, nobody did. Until there was an athlete called Roger Bannister who ran the mile in 3:59! Amazing!

See you soon,

Eric Eraly

Author of the Painless Stop Smoking Cure

Everybody can stop smoking – including you! Stop today with the free web clinic on this site.

 This article is about: How to Quit Smoking – Tips to Kick the Habit for Good

How to Quit Smoking - Tips to Kick the Habit for Good