Some Natural Ways to Quit Smoking

It’s not always the method of quitting smoking that’s effective or not, but often the motivation and determination of the smoker in their desire to quit. For some people a combination of prescription drugs and counseling works really well. For others they may find the best way to quit smoking is to use nicotine replacement therapy to slowly ease off the cigarettes and minimize the effects of the withdrawal symptoms. Some people prefer natural methods. If you are one of those, here are some techniques that you could try.

Cold Turkey

Quitting smoking cold turkey is one of the most popular natural ways to quit smoking but it isn’t something that just anybody can do. It requires a great deal of tenacity and mental toughness. It involves making the decision to quit and doing so without using any physical or psychological aids. A lot of people who attempt to quit smoking cold turkey will find that it helps to keep themselves busy to distract them from smoking. For example, chewing a tooth pick instead of putting a cigarette in your mouth, or distracting yourself with something to read or playing a video game. If you decide that cold turkey is the best of the natural ways to quit smoking then you may also wish to consider a detox cleanse to eliminate residual toxins from smoking and increase your water intake. This often helps cold turkey quitters to get through the first few days.

Hypnosis

Often people who are looking for natural ways to quit smoking try to quit smoking with hypnosis. Instead of addressing the physical symptoms of addiction, the hypnosis techniques approach the problem via the psychological cause of the cravings. With hypnosis the hypnotherapist implants a message into the subconscious mind. This message tells the smoker that cigarettes are bad and they must keep away from them. Hypnosis has a very high success rate for helping people quit smoking, but it doesn’t work for everybody. Some individuals cannot be influenced by hypnosis because they are not suggestible enough.

Herbs

The antidepressant herb St. John’s Wort has been clinically shown to be a naturally effective treatment for quitting smoking.  This is because depression and anxiety are often side effects of giving up smoking. These feelings are due to a decrease in the feel good dopamine’s being created by the brain.  St. John’s Wort helps increase the dopamine levels in the brain and this helps to stop the anxiety or depression.  This results in a greatly reduced desire to smoke.

There are other natural ways to quit smoking such as self hypnosis and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).