The Coffee Trigger

The routine of having a cup of coffee can be a smoking trigger. Here’s how to re-learn how to have coffee without a cigarette. It will help you when quit day rolls around and you actually quit smoking.

1. Take Your Mind Off It
Instead of smoking along with your coffee, wait until AFTER you’ve finished. Do something to take your mind off smoking. Read the paper. Or the cereal box. Just keep your brain busy for a few minutes.

2.  Wait Five Minutes
The next day, try waiting FIVE minutes after you’ve finished to light up your cigarette. For fun and to kill some time, try building a “house of artificial sweetener.”

3.  Increase the Delay
Then increase the delay even more. Get up. Put the cup in the sink. Go somewhere else, and in 10 minutes, you can have that cigarette. Do this a couple of times when you would normally drink coffee and smoke a cigarette, and soon you’ll start to realize that you can, in fact, actually drink a cup of coffee without smoking. You can.

4. Does it HAVE to be Coffee?
  One last idea. Does it HAVE to be coffee? Some smokers have tried switching to some other caffeine drink in the morning, then switch back to coffee later. You may find that this solves this smoking trigger problem for good.