The best quitting smoking story I ever heard was from a colleague at work at the Miami news.
He lived about 45 minutes from work. He started out one morning and quickly discovered that he had only one cigarette with him. He began debating what he should do -- smoke it right away? Wait until he was halfway there? Make a detour and buy a new pack?
As he approached the office, he suddenly realized that the last half-hour of his life had been devoted to only one thought -- when was he going to smoke that cigarette. He got so disgusted with himself, he broke the cigarette in half, and tossed it out the window.
He never smoked again.
My first wife, Z, was a smoker. At her request, I used hypnosis on her to try to get her to stop smoking. Once when I put her under, I told her that she would light the next cigarette at the filter end and take a deep puff -- and from then on every cigarette would taste like burnt filter. Then I told her she wouldn't remember what I had instructed her when she woke up. It worked a charm.
A few minutes after she woke up, she lit a cigarette -- on the filter end -- and began coughing and choking and cursing me out. It didn't stop her, but it took her a week to learn to like the taste of burnt filter.
She never quit and lung cancer killed her in the end. She was only 54.
Posted by Deck at July 10, 2006 10:32 AM