Title of Smoking Cessation Book:
Quit EasyMy Review
Quit Easy is a booklet that is available for free online. The author was an "Easyway to Stop Smoking" practitioner, so it reminded me somewhat of Allen Carr's book, but it had a lot of other great points that I hadn't seen or thought of before.
One of the ideas that made a huge impact on me was that, "...lighting a cigarette isn't playing Russian Roulette with the possibility of lung cancer or a heart attack, it is self-harming behavior, repeated several times a day, thousands of times a year."
Seeing smoking described as "repeated, self-harming behavior," was a rude awakening. I had never thought about smoking as "self-harm." In my mind, that was reserved for things like self-mutilation or bulimia. I was not happy with that association, but I had to admit there were similarities.
Although most of the damage I was doing to myself was internal (and seen as more socially acceptable), I was, in fact poisoning myself 40 times a day in order to "feel better." That distinction repulsed me, so it was one of the mental tools I used when I had the desire to smoke. I would think of smoking, then I would associate it with binging and purging or cutting on my lungs with a razor. Those thoughts were so graphic and disturbing, they would snap me back into reality - I didn't want to be a slave to repeated self-harming behavior anymore, no matter how difficult it felt to break free.
Currently, Quit Easy is available at:
http://www.jazzbooks.com/mm5/download/FREE-quit-easy.pdf
The url has changed a couple of times, so if that link doesn't work, try looking up the name on a search engine.
What Did You Learn?
This booklet helped me to break through a lot of denial and contributed greatly to changing my ideas about smoking and quitting. It's a quick read (less than 50 pages), and it has a lot of great insights - definitely worth checking out.
