Smoking addiction counselling can help smokers quit by developing a plan of action. This plan should include setting a quit date, replacing smoking with healthier habits like exercise or drinking juice, avoiding smoking triggers, staying busy with other activities, and getting family support. While quitting is difficult due to nicotine cravings, abstaining provides significant long-term psychological and physical health benefits like reduced anxiety and risk of cancer. With therapeutic intervention and lifestyle changes, it is possible for smokers to successfully overcome their addiction over time.

1. Smoking Addiction Counselling
Abstinence from smoking or tobacco abuse is not easy since those who try to quit it completely
can only control themselves for a short time. However, it is possible to quit smoking with the
help of therapeutic intervention. Smokers often suffer from chronic stress, anxiety, complicated
relationships and other distressing events. Excessive smoking puts the person at risk of mouth
and lung cancer and/or respiratory diseases. Smokers with emotional or psychological health
issues report high smoking rates. A study showed that 43 percent of smokers suffer from mental
health issues. Since nicotine has a calming effect, people turn to it repeatedly to experience and
reinforce the calming sensation.
The relaxing effects of smoking are short-lived. In fact, smoking can aggravate anxiety, stress
and depression. The psychological health benefits of smoking are merely superficial. Research
shows that smoking could be a contributing factor to relationship trouble, ill health and chronic
stress. Smokers may refrain from quitting considering the overwhelming urge to smoke and
misery from not smoking, not realizing that the implications are far worse.
Nevertheless, the challenge to quit smoking lasts a short time, instead of having to deal with a
lifetime of internal and external complications. A study showed that participants who gave up
smoking reported better psychological wellbeing after six months. Therefore, abstinence from
smoking can potentially work as an antidepressant, drastically enhancing happiness, wellbeing
and quality of life. Former smokers have reported enhanced positivity, life satisfaction and
decreased anxiety after giving up the addiction.
Smokers usually succumb to the addiction to gain approval, to escape, and feel normal. There are
several factors that influence the success of giving up smoking. The counsellor should assist by
developing a plan of action to quit smoking. This could include specifying a date to quit smoking
and keeping track of it. Smoking could be replaced with a more productive and/or healthy habit,
such as mindfulness practices or drinking fresh juice. The sweet content in juices can help ease
the cravings. The person should be made to avoid environments that trigger smoking. They could
make flash cards of environmental cues that induce them to smoke, refer to them and avoid
going near them.
The person should be motivated to stay busy with more productive habits and occupations for a
better lifestyle and life satisfaction. They could draft all the consequences of smoking that have
affected them and others. Family support plays a crucial role when the person is trying to quit. A
person cannot quit on willpower alone. The person should not be demotivated either. Quitting
smoking is hard and people who try to quit are usually unsuccessful because they get cravings or
that cravings last for a lifetime and could make him miserable. Family members should be able
to stop the smoker by perhaps cutting the pocket money that goes into cigarettes, removing
ashtrays and not talking about smoking. The smoker should be reminded consistently about the
health implications. They should be made to realize that a few days of abstinence and the
resulting misery are worth more than a lifetime of sickness and complications.
Articles Source: http://naturalfamilyhealth.net/smoking-addiction-counselling/