Thinking About Cigarettes When You’re Trying to Stop

A recent study at the St George's, University of London and the University of Hertfordshire shows that when people are trying to quit an addiction and constantly don’t think about what they are stopping themselves from doing, tend to do it more. For example, researchers show that when people are trying to stop smoking, they most likely try to not think about cigarettes, but that doesn’t help. The amount of cigarettes that that person smokes will decrease for a short period of time, but then after a short while it will increase significantly. The article states that the technique happens when people try to stop addictions, such as smoking, overeating, drinking, sex and other excessive behaviors.

To prove their theory, researchers conducted a three week experiment, testing eight-five smokers, who smoked no less than ten cigarettes a day. They were split into three groups and were asked to behave normally for the first week. Then for the next two weeks, one group was the control group of twenty-six people who were told to change nothing, another group was told to express their thoughts about smoking, and the last group was told to not express any thoughts about smoking. The result that researchers gained from this experiment was that on the first week each group of people smoked an average amount of cigarettes. On the second week, the group that was told to not express any thoughts about smoking smoked five less cigarettes than the expression group and four less than the control group. On the third week, the group told not to express any thoughts increased to six cigarettes per person, which is around three more than each person smoked in the first week.

The conclusion of this experiment proves that by not thinking about your addiction when you are trying to quit only helps for a little bit, before your body begins to desire it even more; therefore it makes that person go overboard and return to their addiction. This is important for people to know, because there are many people with addictions that are trying to stop in society, and it would helpful for them if they knew ways that could help them.

Source: University of St George's London. "Smokers Trying to Give Up: Don't Stop Thinking About Cigarettes." Science Daily 18 August 2010. 26 August 2010 .