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How long does it take to quit smoking?

Maybe you want to quit before a specific event or age milestone. 

Perhaps quitting smoking is urgent and you want to know how long you need to succeed. 

Or maybe you think quitting is hard and painful… and you don’t want it to last for a long time.

So how long does it really take to break free from this addiction?

Before I show you, we need to make an important distinction. Smoking is a mental and a physical addiction. It is 80% mental and 20% physical.

The mental dependence on smoking is your desire for cigarettes. In other words, how smoking makes you feel, how much you believe you enjoy it, need it, and how ingrained it is in your life.

And only 20% of smoking is the physical addiction to nicotine – the substance that first hooked you to this habit.

Since the smoking addiction has two different parts, we’ll first see how long it takes to quit smoking physically and then how long it takes to quit smoking mentally.

How Long Does It Take to Quit Smoking Physically

Nicotine is a substance that has a short half-life, which means that it quickly leaves the body.

Once you smoke your last cigarette, nicotine leaves your body in three to five days.

By the third day of being nicotine-free, almost all of the nicotine has left your system so that’s when you’ll notice your cravings peak. And after day five, the physical cravings start to subside. For many people, the third, fourth, and fifth smoke-free days are the hardest.

So from the moment you smoke your last cigarette, overcoming the physical addiction is a matter of time. It takes three to five days.

Test for Tobacco Use

If you will be tested for tobacco use for your insurance, surgery, or any other reason, you need to know that these tests don’t actually look for nicotine because it leaves your body so quickly. Instead, they look for cotinine.

Nicotine breaks down into metabolites and the most important of those is cotinine. Cotinine leaves your body in about three weeks. You can learn more about the different tests for tobacco use here.

So the physical addiction is gone three to five days after you stop smoking. However, overcoming the mental dependence on smoking doesn’t work the same way.

How Long Does It Take to Quit Smoking Mentally

The mental addiction has to do with how much you believe you enjoy and need smoking. It has to do with how you think about smoking.

That’s why it can take months, even years, to overcome the mental addiction if you don’t take the necessary steps and change how you see smoking.

And you probably already know that if you’ve tried to quit before using your willpower and felt deprived and unhappy for months after you quit – even though there was 0 nicotine in your body at that point.

So overcoming the mental addiction is not a matter of time. It’s a matter of going through the right process so you can change how you think about smoking.

None of the common methods out there teaches you how to be mentally free from smoking and overcome the mental addiction in a systematic, strategic, and reliable way.

For example, if you take nicotine replacement, vaping, or pills without working on your mental dependence, you will still feel you miss smoking.

If you go cold turkey, cut down gradually, or take herbs and natural remedies and don’t work on your mental dependence, you will still feel you need smoking and you will still want to smoke.

If you do hypnosis without consciously working on your mental dependence, you will eventually want to smoke.

But if you change how you think about smoking, you will not want to smoke any more.

How to Overcome the Mental Addiction?

When I was a smoker, I was struggling to succeed. I failed miserably so many times, and eventually, I reached my breaking point.

So I decided to stop using other methods and use my background in psychology and figure out what helps people quit easily.

So I interviewed thousands of smokers, ex-smokers, doctors, and experts. I did months of research, and read every book on neuroscience, addiction, and human behavior that I could find. And after a while, I started noticing some patterns.

I started noticing that happy non-smokers, people who were mentally free from smoking and didn’t miss it… they all had some things in common.

They all went through certain steps and stages, whether they were aware of it or not. So I put these stages in a method that everyone can use to succeed, including myself, and after years of fine-tuning this method with my team, it’s become what is now the CBQ Method.

The CBQ Method consists of four quit smoking stages that I talk about in my TED Talk.

Now I’ll just name these four stages, but if you want to learn more about them, check the CBQ Method Essentials playlist here.

The 4 Quit Smoking Stages of the CBQ Method – that Help you Overcome the Mental Addiction (In the Fastest and Surest Way Possible)

The 4 stages of the CBQ Method help you overcome the mental addiction. In this video, I explain how.

1. The first stage of the CBQ Method is: Choose to quit.

This stage prepares you to quit so you can make a real decision and commit to quitting smoking.

2. The second stage is: Change your mindset.

In this stage, you change how you think about smoking and remove the fears that stop you from becoming a non-smoker – like the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown, the fear of how we’ll be without our cigarettes – so you can believe that quitting smoking is possible and that you can do it.

3. The third stage is: Change your smoking pattern.

In this stage, you break your smoking habit, weaken your triggers, overcome the desire for smoking, and smoke your last cigarette. A big part of this stage is knowing how to cope with your cravings and stop seeing smoking as something that adds value to your life.

4. The last stage is: Condition your smoke-free life.

This stage is about remaining a happy non-smoker without feeling deprived or relapsing. Because it’s not enough to stop smoking. You have to remain smoke-free and protect your quit.

So these four stages are the necessary steps, phases, and changes you need to go through so you can overcome the mental addiction once and for all.

How Long Should You Spend on Every Quit Smoking Stage?

The short answer is: as long as you need to so you can complete the stage.

As a guideline, you can spend two to four days on every stage, which is what our program members do. This is for you if you’re focused on quitting smoking and you’re working towards a specific quit date.

You can also spend a week on every stage.

It’s not wrong to spend more than a week on every stage. However, be mindful of stretching your time too much because life can get in the way and cause you to lose momentum.

But what matters is going through the stages properly and making sure you’re done with every stage before moving on to the next one.

So overcoming the mental addiction is not about time passing, it’s about going through the right changes.

“How Will I Know I’m Over the Mental Addiction?”

When you’re mentally free from smoking, you don’t see smoking as who you are, but as something that you used to do.

You don’t have to hate smoking or other smokers. Instead, you just choose to break up with your cigarettes. You simply say, “I don’t do this anymore”.

And when you have a craving thought like ” I need a cigarette right now”, or, “a cigarette would make me feel better”… you don’t resist your cravings with willpower. Instead, you talk yourself out of smoking. And you see your craving thoughts as separate from yourself.

And here’s the thing.

When you’re mentally free from smoking, you don’t need to use your willpower. Instead, you use your mind power. Think about it.

Do you need any willpower to resist eating rat poison, ammonia or acetone?

Of course, not! Because they’re disgusting and harmful chemicals, right?

Well, tobacco has inside arsenic, ammonia, and acetone – and the only reason why you want it is because you believe that it offers you something. That’s all the mental addiction.

But when you see smoking for the poison it is – not a friend, a crutch, or the thing that gets you through hard times – but when you see smoking as a sum of chemicals, you don’t want it anymore.

So you don’t need to use willpower to resist it, because there’s nothing to resist.

Also, when you’re no longer mentally dependent on smoking, you have no anxiety, irritation, and you don’t feel deprived because you don’t smoke.

And when cigarettes are out of the question for you, the nicotine withdrawal symptoms won’t even bother you, because the mind is free, and the mind affects the body.

Now, I know that the idea of overcoming the nicotine withdrawal easily, without nicotine substitutes, is controversial. But the truth is, it’s easier to breeze through the withdrawal without taking any nicotine substitutes. In this section, you can find everything you need about withdrawal and cravings and how to overcome them easily with the power of your mind.

To sum up:

• Smoking is a mental and a physical addiction.

• The physical addiction goes away three to five days after your last cigarette.

• The mental addiction goes away after you go through the four quit smoking stages. You can spend two to four days and up to a week on every stage. But remember, going through the four stages and overcoming the mental addiction, is not about time passing. It’s about going through the right process.

So like I mentioned earlier, we took what happy non-smokers had in common and we put it in a method that everyone can use to succeed. And we kept refining this method over the years to what is now the CBQ Method. The CBQ Method helps you find quitting easy because you take control of your mind.

If you want to get started with the CBQ Method, get the free foundational video of the CBQ Method + the CBQ starter guide with tips for every quit smoking stage, an overview of your journey, and everything you need to start overcoming the mental addiction.

Get the foundational video of the CBQ Method here. 

If you’re like me, and most other smokers, you’re probably worried that quitting smoking will make you anxious, irritable, depressed, or lower the quality of your life.

Perhaps you’ve been smoking for a long time and don’t know any other way to cope.  

So how can you manage your emotions without smoking?

Read on to learn:

• A new way to think about emotions
• 3 ways to better manage your emotions 
• How quitting smoking affects your emotions
• A simple way to avoid lashing out after quitting smoking
• How long it takes for your brain to feel normal after you quit

Emotions and Quitting Smoking

Almost all smokers use smoking to cope with their emotions. But does smoking really help you manage and navigate your emotions?

Lighting up a cigarette when you’re angry or stressed only helps you ignore the root cause of that emotion and distract yourself for a moment.

So smoking is not a coping mechanism, it’s a distraction mechanism.

Think about it.

If smoking really relieved stress and depression then smokers would be the most relaxed and the happiest people ever. And of course, that’s not the case.

On the contrary, smoking is a source of mental distress all by itself: having cravings, not feeling in control of your life and your health, feeling self-conscious all the time, missing out on precious moments to smoke, feeling guilty, worrying about the cost.

And quitting smoking decreases anxiety and depression. There is a lot of research that shows quitting smoking decreases anxiety and depression even for people with psychiatric disorders. This is huge!

Your mental health will improve dramatically after you quit smoking. Yes, there will be an adjustment period after you quit as it takes about 3 months for your brain to recover and start regulating dopamine naturally.

So give your brain time to heal.

In the meantime, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy your life and learn new ways to cope and manage your emotions without smoking

How to Manage Your Emotions without Smoking

Managing your emotions doesn’t mean always feeling good. That’s not real or realistic.

Instead, managing your emotions means navigating the different emotions you experience.

Let’s see 3 ways you can start doing that today.

1. Befriend your Emotions

We tend to think that negative emotions are bad experiences that happen to us, and we need to avoid, drown, or suppress them at any cost.

But what if you were to see your emotions as your ally? Something that happens for you, to serve you.

Emotions are neither good nor bad.

Emotions are just signals.

They show you what to pay attention to. When you have a negative emotion it’s a signal that something needs to change.

For example, if you feel guilt, it means that you did or said something that’s not in alignment with your values.

If you’re overwhelmed this is a signal that you need to prioritize. Feeling anxiety is a signal you need to slow down.

If you feel down, this is a signal you need to make some changes in how you see a situation, how you act, or how you talk to yourself.

And of course fear, that’s so prominent in quitting smoking, is just a signal that you need to protect yourself and prepare for something.

For example, if you see a car coming your way you feel fear so you can be alert and prepare to run.

And when you feel fear of failure or fear of the unknown this is a signal you need to prepare for what you’re afraid of.

If you are afraid you won’t be able to cope with stress without smoking this is a signal that you need to learn more about how nicotine affects anxiety and prepare for stressful occasions.

All emotions are just signals, and negative emotions can be useful too.

2. Report Your Emotions, Don’t Act On Them

Many of us fear that quitting smoking will make us irritable, get us in trouble, and even ruin our relationships.

Of course, quitting smoking can’t change your personality or turn you into someone you’re not.

And what gets us in trouble with other people is not the experience of any emotion but our behavior. Being angry doesn’t get us in trouble, the way we express it does.

You may not be able to – and you don’t have to – change the emotion you’re experiencing. But you can change how you show it.

When you catch yourself feeling irritated, acknowledge it and don’t bottle it up.

Keeping anger and irritation inside may cause you to snap at your friends and your loved ones at a later time and then blame quitting smoking for it.

Remember, it’s okay to feel angry whether you’re a smoker or a non-smoker. When you do, take a few deep breaths and report your feelings, don’t act on them.

In other words, don’t show anger with your behavior. Instead, say: I feel that way… This irritates me….

Lashing Out

We usually lash out because we’re not responding to the event that happened, we’re responding to the meaning we give to that event.

We’re responding to the meaning we give to what happened. 

We had a member in our CBQ program who was struggling with how he showed his anger, and he was worried that after quitting smoking, his anger would get worse.

And after talking to him, he realized that the reason he got angry was because of how he interpreted things. He took things very personally.

And I think that’s true for most of us when we feel angry. We take things personally.

“He did that… this means I am not valued,” “She did that, it means she didn’t listen to me,” or “She doesn’t care about me and what I want.”

We make it about us and this makes us feel angry.

And even if at times we’re right to take things personally, lashing out never helps.

When you notice you’re feeling irritated, ask yourself:

“Is this about me?”

“What else could this mean?”

…and report your emotions. don’t act on them.

Say, “I feel that way.. this makes me think that …you don’t value me/ you don’t care about me.” This will help you express how you feel and also allow the other person to explain. It’s a win-win!

3. Start Developing Healthy Coping Skills

As we mentioned a few moments ago, smoking is not a coping mechanism it’s a distraction mechanism.

However, if it is the only coping tool you ever used or knew, it’s natural that you’re going to experience a void when it’s gone. So you need to fill that void with healthy coping strategies.

Some examples of healthy coping strategies are a daily 10- minute self-care routine, journaling, or meditation. You need to experiment with different things and see what works best for you.

And if you’re struggling to implement or learn healthy coping skills, asking for help, even professional help, is going to benefit you a lot.

The Best Coping Strategy

My favorite coping strategy is something that helps you take a step back and relax. You can do it anywhere and it’s very simple because it has to do with your breathing.

Our emotions affect our breathing.

For example, how do you breathe when you’re stressed, angry or tense?

Your breathing is shallow, fast, and interrupted.

And how do you breathe when you feel relaxed, relieved, or calm?

Your breathing is deep and slow.

Our emotional state affects our breathing. Same way, we can affect our emotions by changing our breathing.

When you’re stressed your breathing is tense. So as you inhale the first few puffs of a cigarette, your breathing has to change and become deep and slow. Otherwise, you can’t smoke!

So what really happens when you smoke, is that you inhale deeply and slowly. So you feel relaxed thinking the cigarette helped.

But in reality it was the deep and slow breathing that relaxed you. Not the cigarette.

And you can relax without smoking, just by breathing deeply as if you were smoking a cigarette.

Our emotions are a huge smoking trigger and learning how to weaken your triggers and your response to them is part of the third stage of the CBQ Method.

The CBQ Method has 4 stages in total and these 4 stages help you overcome the mental addiction and change how you think and feel about smoking so you can quit easily.

So if you want to start with the CBQ method, make sure you get the foundational video of the CBQ.

In that free video, I show you the 4 stages of the CBQ method, how they work together, and tips to get started with every stage. You’ll get an overview of your quit smoking journey and a PDF starter guide for the CBQ method with tips and notes you can use along your journey.

Get the foundational video of the CBQ Method here. 

How can you say no to smoking without using any willpower?

Below I show you 3 little known ways to say no to smoking when someone offers you a cigarette or even when you’re alone and you think about having “just one.”

And NONE of them includes: hiding your cigarettes, avoiding smokers, or covering yourself with nicotine patches from head to toe.

Instead, they ALL show you how to use the power of your mind. 

Power you already possess but perhaps don’t know how to use to overcome this addiction. 

In other words, you’ll use mindpower instead of willpower!

The 3 strategies below will help you:

• Prepare for and handle tempting situations
• Feel more confident and in control
• Find it easier to beat this addiction

Tip # 1: Visualize Yourself Saying “No” to Smoking.

This is going to help you prepare for high-risk situations before ever facing them so that when you do, you will remain smoke-free.

But what is visualization?

Visualization is when you see something in your mind’s eye. It’s a mental representation of yourself, other people, an object, an idea, or a goal. It’s like imagination or daydreaming but you’re focused on a goal. And your goal is to see yourself saying no to smoking.

For example, if feeling anxious and stressed is a very strong trigger for you, imagine yourself being in stressful situations, and instead of lighting up, you relax without smoking a cigarette.

Why does it help to imagine yourself overcoming temping situations?

Because your mind can’t really tell the difference between reality and imagination.

For example, when athletes visualize themselves training and when they actually train, what happens is that the same areas in their brain light up! The brain doesn’t know the difference, Because when you visualize something, your mind thinks you’re experiencing it.

That’s why when you visualize yourself facing and overcoming triggers, your mind thinks it’s actually happening. So when it does happen, you feel like you’ve been in the same situation before and conquered it. This gives you incredible confidence to say “no” to smoking.

What if you can’t visualize?

Let’s do something together now.

Think now of your front door.

What color is it?

Where is the handle? On the left or on the right?

What’s the material of the door?

Is it a big door?

Does it have a mat or not?

Now see your hands opening the door slowly…

If you did this with me now, you created a mental representation of your door, so you visualized!

So starting today, visualize yourself saying “no” to smoking in every situation you can possibly imagine.

After an argument, when you’re with friends, where stressed, at work, when feeling overwhelmed or even feeling happy and celebrating something.

For example, imagine:

Being offered a cigarette by a friend and saying no. And notice exactly how you say it and what your friend says back.

Driving to the store, going to the counter feeling tempted to buy a pack, and not buying it. And you buy something else instead, what do you buy?

Seeing your partner’s or your friends’ cigarettes lying around and you are not taking one. What do you do instead?

Being at work and you see your colleagues smoking, how do you say no without feeling you’re missing out?

And include in your visualization, what you tell yourself for being able to say no to smoking and how saying “no” makes you feel.

I promise you, if your practice this, it’s can change everything for you. Because when you actually find yourself in these situations, it’s going to be easy to say no without using your willpower because you’re going to have experience.

Tip #2: Think of What Will Happen after You Smoke.

What do I mean?

What makes a cigarette seem tempting is thinking only about the next moment. The moment where you picture yourself just lighting up, the instant gratification.

A while back, we did an experiment.  We interviewed a group of ex-smokers who were happy about their quit and a group of ex-smokers who struggled.

So, one by one they came into the room, sat on a big wooden table and I put a cigarette in front of each of them and asked them, “do you want that cigarette?”

Those who were happy non-smokers said they didn’t want it and they didn’t have to use their willpower to say no.

But those who were struggling said, yes, they wanted the cigarette and they had to use their willpower to say no.

And then I asked, “what do you think when you look at that cigarette? What comes to your mind?”

Those who didn’t have to use their willpower, they thought how terrible they would feel after they smoke and they break their quit. They thought how guilty and regretful they’d feel afterward and how one cigarette can turn into many.

One is too many and a thousand is never enough

But those who wanted to smoke and had to use their willpower to resist it, they thought how they would feel right after taking the first puff.  And they rationalized that they could have just one cigarette.

As you can see, this is a very different way of thinking.

Those who use their willpower, they only think about the next moment and they rationalize why they can smoke. But those who don’t want to smoke and they don’t have to use their willpower,  they think what will happen after smoking. And they’re more realistic about it.

So I want you to use that lesson, and do what the people who don’t use willpower do:

To remove the temptation, don’t just think of yourself smoking, instead, create a bigger, a longer movie in your mind: think how you will feel 10 minutes after smoking, how 1 cigarette will make you crave it the next day, and how that could lead to you struggling to quit for years.

Think of the conflict and regret that comes after smoking a cigarette and how one cigarette can easily turn into a thousand.

Because the temptation goes when you think it through. The temptation goes when instead of thinking what you want right now, you think what you want for the rest of your life.

Tip # 3: Use Your Self-Talk

Your self-talk is probably the most powerful tool you have in your possession.

When you are addicted to something whether that’s nicotine, food, or alcohol – you have 2 minds:

• your mind
• and the craving mind.

Think of the craving mind as Gollum, that creature from Lord of the Rings. All it wants is its precious fix.

And the craving mind communicates to you in the form of a thought.

Because cravings are thoughts.

Cravings are just positive thoughts about smoking that create positive feelings about smoking.

CBQ Method Principles

Thoughts like: “I need a cigarette” or “a cigarette would make me feel better now” or “I can’t cope without it” whatever it is, they’re just thoughts.

And thoughts can’t hurt you, break you or make you do anything. But they can be very convincing if you let them.

So how can you manage those thoughts, so that they will not overpower you?

What you shouldn’t do

You shouldn’t resist those thoughts because what you resist, persists. And when you resist your craving thoughts, they become stronger.

Also, it doesn’t help to scare yourself or make yourself feel guilty. Because when we feel scared or guilty, we tend to go back to the illusion of comfort that smoking gives us.

What to do

Acknowledge the craving thought.

When your craving mind tells you “you need a cigarette right now” reply back to it and say, “thank you for sharing but you’re wrong, I don’t need a cigarette.” Or you can say “I heard you, sssh now.”

Just have a small conversation. And then let the thought go. Because if you have that small conversation and acknowledge that the thought is there, it is going to be easier to let it go.

Thoughts come and go all the time in your mind, so don’t hold on to the craving thought, just say to yourself, “next thought, please” and your brain will listen, your brain will provide you with a new thought.

You have a stream of thoughts at any moment, so why focus on the one thought that makes you feel bad? Just because your craving mind proposes a thought and seeks your attention, it doesn’t mean you have to listen and entertain that thought.

And the great thing is that the craving thoughts will eventually fade away.

What happens when your friends, your partner, or colleagues tell you to smoke?

When that happens, you have two people to reply to: 1) that friend, and 2) the craving mind. And many times, when a friend tells you to smoke, you can become defensive or feel pushed, or even worse, give yourself permission to smoke.

So just remember that those who smoke, would like to be non-smokers and tell yourself and others “I don’t smoke anymore” or “I am not smoking today”. And if someone insists, just be a broken record. Say “I don’t smoke anymore”, a thousand times, as many times as you need to.

So, to sum up:

Visualize yourself saying no to smoking in different situations.

Think what will happen long after you smoke that one cigarette.

And use your self-talk and reply back to the craving mind.

All the strategies I shared come from the CBQ Method so I hope you apply them to say no to smoking without using willpower whether you’re alone or with other people.

If you want advice and support to quit smoking and remain smoke-free, make sure you join our Facebook support group for more tips and advice about the CBQ method.

Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cbqmethod/