Ack

My quit date is in two weeks. I am SO not looking forward to this.

To try and psych myself up, I started rereading the ten day "e-course" at quitsmokingonline, something I first read a few months ago. The (anonymous?) author believes, contrary to conventional wisdom, that you shouldn't rely on willpower to quit, that forcing yourself to quit through sheer willpower alone will only make you miserable, and thus more likely to start smoking again. Instead, she says that you should accept your cravings, and that it's the fighting the cravings, not the cravings themselves, that causes the experience of quitting to be so difficult. This is an approach similar to that taken by Allen Carr, except the tone of the q.s.o. site isn't quite as eccentric as Carr's. Well, the site does tend towards overstatement -- surely, the q.s.o. author's contention that "giving up smoking CAN be EASY and ENJOYABLE" can't literally be true, and the caps and boldface are a bit much -- but one thing I like very much at q.s.o. is the idea of dispassionately observing the cravings. Although the author doesn't say so, there's something very Zen-like about that approach, and I know from experience that observing one's own thoughts and feelings, calmly and with curiosity, can go a long way toward dissipating negative emotional states like anxiety. But are cigarette cravings really as responsive to that approach as transient emotions are? Cravings seem stronger to me, more solid and tenacious than emotions. Still, this approach intrigues me.