5 Tips to Cope with Tobacco Cravings

5 Tips to Cope with Tobacco Cravings

If you’re a tobacco smoker, quitting is possibly one of the most important health decisions you’ll ever make in your entire life. Unfortunately, quitting tobacco is rarely easy thanks to the nature of addiction, and the cravings you get when you try to cut down on how much you’re smoking. The good news is that there are ways to deal with these cravings, and vastly increase your chances of kicking the habit. Here are five tips suggested by 13Vape on how to cope with cravings and quit tobacco for good.

1. Use Other Forms of Nicotine

One of the most successful methods of coping with tobacco cravings and quitting the habit is nicotine replacement therapy. This is because even though nicotine is the chemically addictive substance in tobacco, there are still psychologically addictive factors as well. This allows you to get a nicotine fix in other ways so that your psychological addiction to smoking is completely broken. At that point, you can gradually cut down on the nicotine until you’re free of that as well.

2. Join a Support Group

Humans are conditioned to try and fit with their groups on a very deep instinctual level. These social instincts can be used to help you quit smoking by joining a support group. This will make it so that you feel socially pressured into sticking to your commitment to quitting and will give you people that you must be accountable. Every time you think about smoke, you’ll be reminded of how disappointed your group will be with you. This will be a strong psychological motivator in helping you to quit smoking.

3. Avoid Triggers

Addictions are very complex in nature, and one facet of addictions that often gets overlooked is the various triggers that lead a person to participate in addictive behaviour. For example, some people only smoke when they drink alcohol. This means that if they can avoid alcohol, they can also eliminate that trigger for their smoking habit. Take a moment to think about how, when, and why you smoke. Are there any specific triggers that influence your smoking habit? If so, work on eliminating them and you’ll have taken a big step towards quitting for good.

4. Ease Off Slowly With a Plan

Just waking up one morning and deciding that you’ll never smoke again may work for some people, but for others it’s impractical. If this is the case for you, it would be best to come up with a plan to help you stop smoking gradually. Your plan should be very precise, and include exactly what days you’re allowed to smoke on, and how many smokes you’re allowed to have. If you can stick with your plan, you can beat your addiction.

5. Distract Yourself

The less you think about smoking the easier it will be to avoid it. Make sure that you keep your mind occupied so that you don’t get tempted when your guard is down. Options to distract yourself from smoking include:

• Spend time with your family
• Sports
• Exercise
• Videogames
• Hobbies
• Taking care of pets
• Cooking
• Cleaning

Really, anything works as long as you enjoy it. The less you think about smoking, the less tempted you’ll be to actually do it. Simple as that.

Never Give Up 

One of the great things about beginning your journey towards quitting smoking for good is that time is on your side. As long as you never give up and continually work towards your goal, you will succeed eventually. Even if the first few methods you try don’t work out, don’t lose hope. Just keep moving forward and you’ll eventually find a method that works for you.