Aversion Therapy for Quitting Smoking Reviews

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One of the more drastic methods of quitting smoking is aversion therapy. This is when every time you think of smoking, you do something unpleasant, so this is what the brain associates with smoking.

In our everyday lives, we are constantly bombarded with the idea that smoking is a pleasurable experience. Images of glamorous models and actors smoking are all over movie screens, magazines and television. Tobacco and NRT companies do all they can to convince people it is an enjoyable habit, and the smoker will be lost without it.

The smoker themselves don’t do themselves any favours, they sit back and watch smoke curl languidly upwards. They tell themselves over and over how much it relaxes them, how great this cigarette tastes, how wonderful they feel. These feelings are reinforced when the smoker starts to feel withdrawal from nicotine and cravings kick in, by the time they get outside, the feeling of their cravings being relieved is actually a good feeling.

But it was the cigarette that caused them to feel stressed in the first place!

Addiction to cigarettes is at least 50% psychological, this of course varies between person to person. The unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong, all it knows is that smoking makes the smoker feel good. All it knows is that when that cigarette is inhaled, endorphins are released and the pleasure centres in the brain ignite.

What the subconscious doesn’t know, is the terrible damage smoking is doing to the body. All it recognises and cares about is what feels good.

That’s where aversion therapy comes in. It interrupts the pleasure association by linking the feeling of wanting a cigarette, with something unpleasant.

Aversion therapy is becoming less and less popular, but one common method of aversion therapy, is every time the person thinks about their destructive habit, they are given an electric shock. This is a risky business however, and people have died in clinics from this method. If you do decide to look into aversion therapy, ensure the clinic is registered, and they have had no previous problems.

Other methods are those you can try at home. Some people put a thick rubber band around their wrist. Every time they think about cigarettes, they flick the rubber band hard against their skin. This associates the feelings of pain with cigarettes. Another is to smoke as many cigarettes as you can in one go, until you feel sick, to associate feelings of nausea with smoking.

Our Comments: Personally, we feel there are productive ways to unlearn negative behaviour, and causing yourself pain is not one of them. Even if these methods do work, it will only be in the short term, because you have not changed the thought patterns that cause you to be controlled by cigarettes in the first place.

Systems that use CBT to help you change your smoking habits for the good are the Successfully Stop Smoking System and The Easy Quit System. We feel these systems are the best, easiest and fastest way to deal with both the psychological and physical aspects of quitting smoking.