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Did you know that No Smoking Day will soon be with us?  Wednesday March 13^th marks the annual one-day campaign for stopping smoking and each year it has a different, catchy theme. This year, it’s  “Swap Fags for Swag” and it will focus on all the other things you could be spending your hard earned money on were you to give up smoking.

You may be surprised to learn that I’m not a complete fan of National No Smoking Day, in fact to be perfectly honest, as a solution-focused therapist, it irks me somewhat.  Organisers of the first campaign in 1984 (launched on Ash Wednesday, naturally) claimed that 1.3 million smokers refrained on the day, 20,000 of whom stopped smoking permanently.  I have two concerns about this: firstly, where did they get these figures from and how do they know? Equally importantly, how much difference is a one-day awareness initiative going to make to a heavy smoker who thinks they are addicted to nicotine? It’s also extremely unlikely that there is anyone out there that doesn’t know that smoking is unhealthy!

Human nature is a funny thing, you know.  Our subconscious minds respond much better to a positive request than an instruction NOT to do something.  If I tell you that you can’t have a chocolate biscuit, I won’t be too surprised when I find you heading straight for your secret Hob Nob stash (other biscuit brands are available). If you’re under strict instructions not to think of a pink elephant, you’re straight there, aren’t you? In my view, it’s the “No” in “National No Smoking Day” that gets under my skin and I’d rather we focused on encouraging and educating people to lead healthier lives and providing more effective services to help those people who are serious about wanting to stop smoking on an ongoing basis.

It made me smile when I read that journalist Rod Liddle (he of Radio 4 fame) simply said that his one aim on No Smoking Day was to “double my usual intake of nicotine”.

Stopping smoking is easy – it really is – it’s staying stopped that’s the hard part.  I work with clients to address the emotional and psychological issues surrounding cigarettes and how simple modifications in behaviour can lead to major lifestyle changes, including freedom from cigarettes. For ever!

I’ve got over 15 years’ experience of supporting thousands of smokers to quit smoking and I know that there are three significant elements to kicking the habit:

1. The Decision.  Make up your mind that you WILL do it.  You need to want to stop smoking and I mean really really want to do it, not think that you’ll simply give it a go.

2. The Choice.  Give yourself the best chance of success by deciding how you’re going to do it: pills, patches, hypnosis -  what’s the right option for you?  A word of advice, though: willpower doesn’t work.  I’ll talk again in another blog about why willpower often leads to “won’t power”.

3. The Commitment.  Learn how to stay stopped and be a non-smoker for the rest of your life.

The  benefits of kicking a smoking habit into touch are immense, not least in the increased feelings of being in control and a strong sense of well being but we don’t need to be told not to do it. Maybe we should change  National No Smoking Day to ‘Do something healthy day’ or perhaps ‘Smoke as much as you can day’. I wonder whether reverse psychology might work for Rod Liddle?

If you’d like some help in stopping smoking permanently, give me a call on 01273 509 793

Andrew Spence

March 12^th, 2013

If you happen to be a smoker, giving up smoking is one of the most common New Year resolutions. How many times have you tried to stop smoking in January? It could be the worst time to stop smoking successfully! You may have been drinking and smoking heavily before and during Christmas and decided that the new year would be a good time to break free from your habit; yet January is meant to be the most depressing month of the year and there are lots of viruses doing the rounds, the days are short and the weather is often at its worse.

You may find that smoking is one of your coping strategies for dealing with life’s stresses and strains and despite the fact that nicotine is a stimulant you might experience a calming effect when you inhale cigarette smoke. If you do decide to quit now or in the future and stress is one of your triggers for smoking I recommend that you plan ahead to ensure that you develop a new strategy for dealing with your emotions and stress before you quit.

This will help to prevent a relapse because however successful you are in initially stopping smoking; a stressful day at work, an argument with your partner or getting stuck in traffic may cause you to reach for the ‘dummy’. It is as if the emotional part of the brain has over-ridden the rational part and before you know it the habit is back with a vengeance.

This is one of the many factors we help you to deal with in our smoking cessation programme so that you can stop for good. You need to plan and prepare properly as you would for any journey in your life. If you need a plan, support, detailed preparation and powerful ‘tools’ to get you to your destination as a relaxed, confident and positive non-smoker listen to what clients of The Spence Practice have to say about our stop smoking programme.

Look out for our next ‘stop smoking successfully tip’ on this blog site!

Are you still trying to ‘give up’ smoking?

How are you getting on with your new-year resolution to ‘give-up’ smoking? Have you given up ‘giving up’ already, are you still struggling along or have you achieved your goal easily and effortlessly? If it’s the latter, congratulations!

Whilst some people manage to stop smoking easily others find it a real struggle. The reason for this difference in outcome can’t be due to the nicotine or the cigarette itself as they don’t change. I would assume that the physiological effect on a smoker’s body will be similar for everybody, therefore, the only other factor left is the psychology and behaviour of smoking and the ability of human beings to adapt to change.

The message that stopping smoking is an extremely difficult thing to achieve has been programmed into the consciousness of society by the medical profession, tobacco companies and the drugs companies who have a vested interest in perpetuating this myth. Nicotine replacement products (NRT), such as patches, gum, pills and potions create vast profits but do they really help a smoker to quit?

The drugs companies state that you are twice as likely to succeed with NRT as you would with ‘willpower’ alone. Recent research suggests that using ‘willpower’ alone is more successful than NRT. Whichever you believe to be true ‘willpower’ has a very low success rate. If NRT was so effective, you would have thought that smoking would have been ‘wiped out’ by now.

My experience of helping smokers to quit over the last 17 years has convinced me that this is principally a psychological, behavioural, emotional and environmental issue and that this applies to both the habit of smoking and how to stop successfully. Over the next couple of weeks I will be sharing with you some tips on how to make the transition from smoker to ex-smoker easier!

If you can’t wait to implement these tips or feel that you need some professional help to change your attitude and ‘mindset’ have a look at what some of our clients have to say about our stop smoking programme.

The chancellor has increased duty on tobacco yet again, no surprise there then! There has been a lot of pressure on the government to tax bankers bonuses and the oil companies. How about increasing the tax on the profits of the tobacco industry for producing their sticks of poison!

In these times of austerity and low interest rates, if you are a smoker, then stopping smoking could be one of the best investments you ever make. One of my clients Sandy Eldridge stopped smoking  5 years ago and has since saved over £20,000 !

To help you increase your wealth and improve your health here are my top 10 tips to help you to stop smoking:

1. Stop because you want to not because you feel you should.
2. Stopping is the easy part, the more difficult part is ‘staying stopped’ so plan and prepare for the future. For example; if stress is a trigger for your smoking habit you might want to learn some healthy coping strategies for dealing with stress before you stop.
3. If you have stopped successfully in the past remember how you did it and do it again. Just because you started smoking again doesn’t mean that the method you utilised to stop didn’t work.
4. Focus on achieving ‘freedom from nicotine’ instead of ‘giving up’.
5. Ask yourself ‘The Miracle question’; “If a miracle were to happen tonight whilst I am asleep and I woke up an ex-smoker with no desire to smoke what is the first thing I will notice that’s different and how different will my daily life be”
6. List the benefits in not smoking, what’s in it for you, short term and long term?
7. You may have convinced yourself that there are positives to be gained from continuing to smoke but are these reasons/excuses real or imagined? For example, many smokers claim that smoking helps them to relax, yet nicotine is a stimulant! List your illusions about smoking and then set light to them!
8. Are you physically dependant on nicotine and psychologically attached to smoking, and if so and you need professional help, you need a programme that can help you deal with both aspects. if not, its like chopping off the tops of the weeds and leaving the roots intact.
9. If you are seeking professional help don’t be afraid to ask questions about what they do, how they do it and what experience they have. Don’t base your decision on the cheapest option because if you are successful you will be recouping your initial outlay anyway. Beware of therapists and practitioners quoting success rates, if they do ask them to prove it.
10. Consider what motivates you generally in life, have there been times and situations in the past when you have been so determined to achieve something or change something that nothing was going to stop you. Consider how and what you can do to develop the same mindset regarding your goal of stopping smoking.

Do you have any tips you would like to share?

The government announced today, No Smoking Day, their latest plans to reduce the number of people smoking in the UK. In addition to helping smokers to stop smoking they also want to prevent children and teenagers from taking up the habit in the first place.

It is estimated that 10 million people smoke in the UK and that approximately 300 die each day from smoking related diseases. The tobacco industry needs to recruit 300 new smokers each day to replace those that die from their product and one of their ways to recruit is through the powerful medium of advertising.

The message that ‘Smoking kills’ and images of diseased lungs etc doesn’t seem to have made much difference so will the Governments latest idea of forcing displays of cigarettes behind the counter in shops and packaging cigarettes in plain packaging have any effect? I don’t think it will make any difference to people who already smoke but I do think it might have an impact on impressionable and suggestible children/teenagers who might be tempted to take up the habit.

I know how much difference the packaging of food makes on my buying decisions when I’m in the supermarket. The plain packaging on supermarket economy ranges is a good example. I wonder what impact plain packaging would have on the sale of chocolate?

If you are a smoker or have been a smoker do you remember being influenced by the packaging when you were younger even if it was just the specific brand of cigarettes you decided to smoke?

For advice and tips on stopping smoking visit helptostopsmokinglondon.co uk

I have been helping people to stop smoking in Brighton and central London for over 15 years now and one of the questions I often get asked is ‘What are your success rates’?

Factually, it is almost impossible to be able to provide an accurate figure. Firstly, what determines success? At what point do you measure the success of an individual in quitting smoking? Is it when they have been free from cigarettes for 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months perhaps? If someone hasn’t been smoking for 4 weeks but is still using nicotine patches should this be described as success? What about someone who was smoking 60 cigarettes per day but now only smokes on social occasions?

According to the NHS stop smoking service , 49% of people who set a quit date through their services had successfully quit at the 4 week follow-up for the year 2009/10; source http://www.lho.org.uk/LHO_Topics/National_Lead_Areas/NationalSmoking.aspx#Stoppingsmoking

 Apart from the fact that 51% didn’t succeed in stopping smoking for 4 weeks what happened to the 49% after 4 weeks and how many subsequently re-lapsed. The fact that the NHS don’t publish figures beyond 4 weeks suggests this figure could be high!

I have also seen advertisements placed by Hypnotherapists and other stop smoking services quoting success rates as high as 95%. I would be amazed if anyone can prove these figures.

One of the problems in determining success is maintaining contact with people for a long period of time after they have stopped smoking (people move on and some don’t want to be constantly reminded of something they used to do). Secondly you are reliant on your clients being truthfull with their feedback. They might not want to admit they have failed.

So what do you do and how do you decide on whats the best stop smoking service for you?

Firstly, do your research and find out whats available, ask your friends,family, and colleagues for a recommendation and ask questions of the potential service provider such as:-

• How long have you been specialising in smoking cessation?
• What methods and approach do you use?
• Do you provide any post therapy support?
• Would I be suitable for your approach and why?

Expect the stop smoking consultant/practitioner to ask you questions about your smoking habit; such as how long have you been smoking , how many do you smoke, do you smoke habitually every day or are you just a social smoker and how motivated are you to stop smoking etc?

It is estimated that 21% of adults in the UK still smoke which equates to 10 million smokers of which 6.5 million(65%) wanted to stop in 2008. source  http://www.lho.org.uk/LHO_Topics/National_Lead_Areas/NationalSmoking.aspx#Stoppingsmoking

We can’t compete with the advertising budgets of the NHS and drugs companies so we rely on word of mouth recommendations, therefore, if we weren’t being successful we wouldn’t still be in business!

One of the motivators for parents to quit smoking is that they don’t want to influence their children to smoke, Firstly on the basis that it is hypocritical to tell your children to stop smoking whilst you are doing it. Secondly because young children copy adult behaviour. This is how Charlie the chimp learnt to smoke in South Africa, by mimicking the actions of the smoking visitors to the zoo  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gteEe1d-rQo

Unfortunately, Charlie died yesterday, but not from a smoking related disease and in fact he lived 10 years beyond the normal life expectancy of the average chimpanzee!

It has been just over 3 years since the ban on smoking in public places was introduced in England. So what have the benefits been;

* Has the nations health improved?

* Has it resulted in fewer people smoking?

* Have pubs and clubs become more pleasant places to visit?

* Have pubs really been closing as a result?

It certainly seems to have created a culture whereby people are spending more time outside the pub, than inside and groups of people stand outside public buildings smoking.

Whether you think the smoking ban has been a positive step forward or you think that the ‘nanny state’ is taking over, and whether you are a smoker, non-smoker or ex-smoker, we would like to hear your views on how things have changed since 2007.

Whatever your views, there can be no disguising the fact that smoking is likely to be detrimental to your health and there are very few who would disagree with this.

Smoking is a lifestyle choice and we don’t intend to preach to you about the possible consequences of your actions. However, at some point in your life you may well wish to make some lifestyle changes and decide to stop smoking. If, and when you do, we would like you to turn to us for help if willpower alone, doesn’t work for you.

Check out James Lamberts success story to see how Nicotine Replacement Therapy made things worse for James and listen to our video success stories to hear how effective thespencepractice stop smoking programme is, especially for heavy smokers.