Raincoast Quit Smoking Cures

Introduction

These techniques for quitting smoking are admittedly whacky. However, they are free, so you have little to lose by trying them. You can at least have a laugh. Every time you quit smoking and fail, it improves your odds of quitting permanently the next time. Don’t beat yourself up when you have a relapse. It is like training for a high jump. It takes a while before you get good enough to reach escape velocity.

Bent Elbow

The intent of this cure is to break the habitual pattern of bending the elbow to smoke. Light a cigarette and hold it in your hand and hold your arm perfectly straight. Let the cigarette burn completely down. No matter what, don’t bend your arm. If you have to, get someone to put a separate cigarette in and out of your mouth for you.

Players Coin

Ask your friend to switch to Players brand cigarettes preparatory to giving up smoking. Buy a pack of Players cigarettes for your friend. There is a little round picture of a sailor on the pack. Slip a nickel under the cellophane so that it sits over the sailor picture. Do this as carefully as possible so that it looks as if you got it in there without opening the pack.

Tell your friend about the old days when cigarettes used to cost $0.30 in vending machines, and some brands came with a nickel change attached to them.

The idea of this is to make your friend associate the Players circle with the escalating price of cigarettes, the astronomical prices to come, and all the money going up in smoke.

Toilet Grossout

One by one, thow a pack of cigarettes into the toilet. Throw in a pack of matches too. Imagine this is some sicko sacrifice to God, born of total desperation with trying to kick the habit. Urinate or defecate onto the cigarettes, or ask someone else to do this for you. Stare for a goodly while at that disgusting mess so that you strongly associate those cigarettes with the toilet. Then flush. Every time you light up, think of the toilet.

Dysfunctional Ashtray

I once made a deliberately dysfunctional ashtray. It is hideous. It has almost no room to hold the ashes. You have to keep emptying it. I designed it to remind one vaguely of bowels, disease and other bodily organs.

Banana Replacement Therapy

I have never smoked myself, but I interviewed smokers trying to figure out just what the appeal was. Some told me they liked the harsh raspy pressure feeling in the throat. You might get a similar effect by swallowing a small piece of banana whole. Gradually work up to larger sizes. Female smokers and gay male smokers may try a variant.

Pyrex Test Tube

Seal a cigarette in a Pyrex test tube with some silicone sealant. Promise yourself that if you ever smoke again, you will first use the cigarette in the test tube. Pyrex is difficult to break.

Last Lighter

Buy a friend who is trying to quit a lighter. Give him a certificate that looks something like this:

I Lou Doe do solemly swear that I will light every cigarette I will smoke in the rest of my life with the green Bic lighter given me by John Doe.
signed ____________________
witness ___________________
witness ___________________
date 1998-06-16

This lets your friend quit smoking several times. He can light one cigarette from another to try to save the lighter. This provides a more realistic goal than quitting smoking all in one try.

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