How long does it take to quit smoking?
You may want to quit before a certain event or age milestone.
Maybe it is urgent and to stop smoking You want to know how long it will take you to be successful.
Or maybe you think quitting is hard and painful … and you don’t want it to last long.
How long does it really take to break free from this addiction?
Before I show you, we need to make an important distinction. Smoking is a mental and a physical addiction. It’s 80% mental and 20% physical.
Mental addiction to smoking is your desire for cigarettes. In other words, how you feel about smoking, how much you believe you enjoy it, need it, and how deeply ingrained it is in your life.
And only 20% of smoking is physical addiction to nicotine – the substance that first tied you to that habit.
Since smoking addiction has two parts, we’ll see first how long it takes to physically quit smoking, and then how long it takes to quit smoking mentally.
How long does it take to quit smoking?
Nicotine is a substance with a short half-life, which means that it leaves the body quickly.
Once you’ve smoked your last cigarette, nicotine will leave your body in three to five days.
By the third day you are nicotine-free, almost all of the nicotine has left your system, so you will find that your cravings are at their highest. And after the fifth day, the desire subsides. For many people, the third, fourth, and fifth smoke-free days are the hardest.
From the moment you smoke your last cigarette, it is a matter of time to overcome physical addiction. It takes three to five days.
Tobacco test
If you are being tested for tobacco use for your insurance, surgery, or any other reason, you need to know that these tests are not looking for nicotine because it leaves your body so quickly. Instead, You’re looking for cotinine.
Nicotine breaks down into metabolites and the most important of these is cotinine. Cotinine roughly leaves your body three weeks. Find out more about the different tests for tobacco use here.
So physical dependence disappears three to five days after quitting smoking. However, overcoming mental addiction to smoking doesn’t work in the same way.
How long does it take to mentally quit smoking?
Mental addiction has to do with how much you think you need to have fun and smoke. It has to do with how you feel about smoking.
This is why it can take months or even years to overcome psychological addiction if you don’t take the necessary steps and change your attitude towards smoking.
And you probably already know that you tried to quit before using your willpower and felt deprived and unhappy for months after quitting – even though there was 0 nicotine in your body at that point.
So overcoming mental addiction is not a question of time. It’s about going through the right process so that you can change your mind about smoking.
None of the common methods teach you how to be mentally smoke free and how to systematically, strategically and reliably overcome psychological addiction.
For example when you take Nicotine replacement, vaping, or pills Without working on your mental addiction, you will still feel like you are missing out on smoking.
When you go cold turkey, cut off gradually or take herbs and natural remedies and don’t work on your mental addiction. You will still feel like you have to smoke and you will still want to smoke.
If you do hypnosis Without consciously working on your mental addiction, at some point you will want to smoke.
But if you change your mind about smoking, you will no longer want to smoke.
How can one overcome mental addiction?
When I was a smoker, I struggled to be successful. I have failed miserably so many times and finally reached my breaking point.
So I decided to stop using other methods and use my psychological background to find out what helps people quit easily.
So I interviewed thousands of smokers, ex-smokers, doctors and experts. I researched for months and read every book on neuroscience, addiction, and human behavior that I could find. And after a while I noticed some patterns.
I noticed that happy non-smokers, people who were spiritually smoke-free and didn’t miss it, all had some things in common.
They all went through certain steps and stages, whether they were aware of it or not. So I’ve put these stages in a method that anyone can use to succeed, including myself. After years of fine-tuning this method with my team, it becomes today’s CBQ method.
The CBQ method consists of four phases of smoking cessation that I will talk about in my TED talk.
Now I will only name these four phases. However, if you want to learn more about it, check out the CBQ Method Essentials playlist here.
The 4 levels of smoking cessation of the CBQ method – which will help you overcome psychological addiction (in the fastest and safest way possible)
The 4 levels of the CBQ method will help you overcome psychological addiction. In this video I explain how.
1. The first stage of the CBQ method is: Select to exit.
This phase prepares you to quit smoking so that you can make a real decision and make a commitment to quitting.
2. The second phase is: Cultivate your potential and destroy the fear of quitting.
This is the phase in which you remove the fears that keep you from becoming a non-smoker – like the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown, the fear of how we will do without our cigarettes – So you can believe that it is possible to quit smoking she can do it.
3. The third stage is: Change your smoking pattern.
At this stage, you break your smoking habit, weaken your triggers, overcome your desire to smoke, and smoke your last cigarette. A big part of this phase is knowing how to manage your cravings and stop viewing smoking as something that adds value to your life.
4. The final phase is: Condition your smoke free life.
This stage is about staying a happy non-smoker without feeling deprived or relapse. Because quitting smoking is not enough. You need to stay smoke free and protect your termination.
So these four phases are the necessary steps, phases, and changes that you must go through in order to overcome mental addiction once and for all.
How long should you spend on each smoking cessation phase?
The short answer is, as long as you have to, you can complete the phase.
As a guideline, You can spend two to four days on each stageOur program members do that. This is for you if you are focused on quitting smoking and working towards a specific smoking cessation date.
You can also spend one week on every stage.
There is nothing wrong with spending more than a week on each stage. Remember, however, to increase your time too much as life can get in your way and make you lose momentum.
But what counts is to go through the stages correctly and through Make sure you are done with each phase before moving on to the next.
So, overcoming mental addiction is not about time passing, it is about going through the right changes.
“How do I know I am over the psychological addiction?”
When you are mentally free from smoking, you do not see smoking for what you are but as something you used to do.
You don’t have to hate smoking or other smokers. Instead, you simply choose to quit your cigarettes. They just say, “I don’t do this anymore.”
And if you have a wistful thought like “I need a cigarette now”, or“A cigarette would make me feel better”… You do not resist your desire with willpower. Instead, advise against smoking. And you see your wistful thoughts as separate from you.
And here’s the thing.
When you are mentally smoke free, you don’t need to use your willpower. Instead, use yours Thought power. Think about it.
Do you need willpower not to eat rat poison, ammonia, or acetone?
Of course not! Because they’re disgusting and harmful chemicals, right?
Well, tobacco contains arsenic, ammonia, and acetone – and the only reason you want it is because They believe it offers you something. That’s all of the mental addiction.
But if you see how to smoke for the poison, this is it – no friend, no crutch or whatever gets you through difficult times – But when you see smoking as the sum of chemicals, you no longer want it.
So you don’t need to use willpower to resist, as there is nothing you can resist.
When you cease to be mentally dependent on smoking, you will no longer be afraid, irritable or disadvantaged because you do not smoke.
And if cigarettes are out of the question for you, the nicotine withdrawal symptoms won’t even bother you as the mind is free and the mind affects the body.
Now I know the idea of easily overcoming nicotine withdrawal without nicotine replacement is controversial. But the truth is, it’s easier to blow through withdrawal without taking nicotine substitutes. In this section you will find everything you need about withdrawal and cravings and how to easily overcome them with the power of your mind.
To conclude:
- Smoking is a mental and a physical addiction.
- The physical addiction disappears three to five days after your last cigarette.
- Mental addiction will go away after you go through the four stages of smoking cessation. You can spend two to four days and up to a week on each stage. But remember, it’s not about going through the four stages and overcoming mental addiction. It’s about going through the right process.
As I mentioned earlier, we’ve incorporated what happy non-smokers had in common into a method that anyone can be successful with. And we have further developed this method over the years to today’s CBQ method. The CBQ method will help you find the quitting easy as you take control of your mind.
If you’re ready to get started with the CBQ Method, get the free CBQ Method Basic Video + CBQ Starter Guide with tips for each phase of smoking cessation, an overview of your journey, and everything you need to know to overcome psychological addiction.
The basic video of the CBQ method can be found here.
