It's probably not news to you: smoking addiction is often accompanied by ambivalent feelings because you simply can't stop smoking. The goal of my smoking cessation program is to create clarity out of ambivalence. It focuses on the disappearance of addiction and not on lifelong control of behavior. As a behavioral researcher and NLP trainer, I have specialized on the one hand in the evolutionary biological, neurobiological and linguistic connections and on the other hand in the concrete implementation possibilities of this knowledge.

I am going to make a bold statement: “Smokers are not addicts.” At least not in the sense of being neurophysiologically powerless. Rather, they have entered into a misleading contract with the cigarette. A lazy trick* - that sees through - opens your eyes and frees you from being unable to act. (*I describe the trick here) Smoking also serves a psychological mechanism that involves being mentally occupied. The changes in receptors in the brain are only secondary effects. Our synaptic connections are plastic and can be influenced by ourselves. (Unless we're mice.) But how? The most important question is how great the desire is to be free of the smoking habit (and not the much-praised will. That plays a subordinate role). If your desire is great, the path is already paved. But the question of whether it is possible to climb a mountain also depends on where you start and what equipment you have with you. The same applies to the endeavor to become smoke- free. That's why we can observe that some people seem to become non-smokers without any effort, and others struggle for years without success. If you know where and how which shortcuts can be taken and which tools to use in certain places, then even if you have had x past failures, you can quickly achieve your goal. Find out what your personal missing links are.

The contract goes like this: The promise of the cigarette is: "I'll make you feel better" . Well, of course, who doesn't need that? So we sign the contract by smoking the first cigarette. What the contract doesn't mention is that after the glowing rush is over - something ADDITIONALLY will be taken away from you. A deficiency is created that was NOT there before without a cigarette. Now you have to reach for the next cigarette to compensate for this additional deficiency. The consumer then interprets this to mean that the cigarette has fulfilled its part of the contract (and does not see what is actually going on). To use a simple analogy again: you secretly take something from someone, then give it back to them and collect the thank you. At the brain level, the ingredients in the cigarette cause a change in the receptors and, when the concentration drops, a reduction in neurological messengers in the synaptic cleft. So a minus that was NOT there before enjoying the very first cigarette (i.e. before signing the contract). This is how the process keeps itself alive. Fortunately, all of these changes are reversible.