With all due respect to the estimable Mr. Robbins, imho that completely dodges the issue! For example, let's say that at this moment I want to have a smoke more than I want to quit. What's his mechanism to reverse that? Sounds to me like he's just saying "reverse it".
I smoked for twenty years and quit 3. 5 years ago. I think about smoking all the time. I know what you mean, Ricter, but I like Robbins' statement. At least it cuts out all the b.s. about acupuncture, the Patch, hypnotism, nicotine gum, and that joke of PC rhetoric, 'harm reduction', which apparently means keep smoking but feel better about yourself because you've acknowledged that you have a problem. Rearden might weigh in here re: addictions. The absolute bottom line is that you have to find a way to go from the minute you get up until the moment you fall asleep, without smoking. In the end, your 'want' to have a smoke, which is greater than your 'want' to quit, is, at it's base, psychological. I don't think tobacco fulfills any of the needs the opiates do in Rearden's conception of substance use. The bottom line is that it takes discipline, and that is something that some people don't have and will never have. It's the same with weight loss. There is no reason that any individual can't lose weight, barring a specific medical condition which, when it exists, usually causes morbid obesity, not just overweight and flabby. Most people just aren't interested in doing the hard work necessary to lose the weight. I guess there's an argument to be made that if it's simply a matter of competing 'desires', as you seem to suggest, that there is a behavioural solution. If it's a neurochemically-determined compulsion, then simply wanting to quit won't work. I guess I just don't believe that it's the latter for the majority of smokers. If anyone is interested in knowing how I quit, you can PM me and I'd be glad to spell it out.
I find it amazing that anyone would find a way to disagree with this truism. "just stop doing it" people, nowadays, just seem to have a "pathological" desire to find a solution outside themselves, (probably as a result of decades of false promises from socialist-commuinst leftists), as if they believe someone else can stop smoking for them. As if "society" owes it to them to see to it that they stop smoking. how hard is it to refrain from hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Unfortunately, the world is filled with windbag-know-it-alls, like traderNik, who sound very educated and knowledgeable, but they rely on everything but common-sense. god, i despise these people.
I don't understand why you're attacking Nik, since his message is basically the same as yours - "just stop doing it."
Wow, this is a first!! I've never been called a windbag know-it-all by someone who then goes on to make exactly the same argument I am making! 'Just stop doing it' basically sums up the post I made. pattersb, what part of 'excuses like the patch, nicorette, hypnotism, buttermilk enemas, harm reduction, acupuncture or channeling your inner child' don't you understand? What part of 'the bottom line is that it takes discipline' don't you understand? What part of 'I basically agree with Robbins' idea that smokers should just stop doing it' don't you understand? Possibly you're having a problem with your meds...at any rate, you may despise me, but I don't despise you. Anyone who sticks his foot in his mouth as deeply as you just did is to be pitied, not censured. You're either a complete idiot or you're reading comprehension is so bad that you're semi-literate. As I said, either way, I'm sorry about your problems, and I hope you can find a way through them.
This "just do it" argument is no good. Since Man has been leaving a written account he has lamented the difference between what he would do, and what he does do. It's not a "nowadays" only problem. Anyway, so it's discipline that gives us willpower?
will - The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action. willpower - The strength of will to carry out one's decisions, wishes, or plans. discipline - Controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary training; self-control. I'm not sure what this definition of 'will' means, because by it, I guess I had the 'will' to quit every time I tried to quit. Every one of the 20 times I tried to quit. I can tell you that in my case, even though I tried to quit smoking many times, I feel I did not truly have the will to quit until I had a health scare connected to it. I finally got to the point where I had had enough; enough of thinking about it, enough of quitting then starting again. I got to the end of my rope and then I quit. It actually didn't take much discipline, to tell the truth. I had simply had enough. (Maybe the disciplined part was the constant effort to try again after failing). One thing I will say about the 'just do it' argument is this. If you are constantly trying to do it, you are progressing down the road to finally quitting. I believe it was the 20 tries that set me up for success on the 21st, lame as that might be. Once you try to do something 20 times and fail, and your failure is simply because you can't get your shit together, you tend to say to yourself 'this is fucking ridiculous, I need to clean this up'.
Sounds like you got sick of being controlled, and that's exactly what happened to me. I went out and about one AM and forgot my fresh pack on the coffee table. So I stopped at the newsstand around the corner and re-upped. Was back home in an hour but had to go out again a little later and again forgot my smokes. So I stopped at the same newsstand ... blah, blah. When I again settled in at home, I stacked the new pack on top of the other two and noticed that none of them had more than two cigs missing. And then it started to piss me off that I couldn't leave the house for a half-hour or hour without stopping to scratch that itch. And then it pissed me off even more to think that something had that much control over me. I neatly stacked those 3 damned packs as a monument of reminder and quit.
Just out of curiousity, I'm wondering how effective hypnosis is. I quit without a hypnotist, but I notice more and more people utilizing one, and I'm hearing positive things about it.