Why_it_works

Most of the behavioral procedures available today try to teach you a "Competing response". Specifically, they attempt to teach you to do something else when the urge to smoke occurs. So you get to practice "not smoking" in a laboratory environment for a couple of hours a week, for a couple of weeks. Then, you are tossed back into your "real world environment", with all the cues and friends and situations in your life that have been associated with smoking for many many years. Want to guess what happens? Those "real world cues" continue to trigger the response that you have practiced and associated with them for years. Not surprising that your old habit wins out almost 90% of the time.

Theoretically, all procedures that attempt to substitute some other response for your behavioral habit are all but doomed to failure simply because of the difference in the amount of practice between them and your smoking habit. A couple of weeks of practice for a "No Smoke" response can't realistically be expected to compete effectively with your smoking habit and the years of practice you have put into it.

PBYS is designed to attack your habit in a different way. PBYS does not teach you a competing response. It "adds" a response to the chain or sequence of responses that form your smoking habit. Think of it this way: When a "cue" triggers your desire to smoke, it triggers off a response chain: you reach out and pick up a cigarette, put the cigarette in your mouth, strike a flame, place the flame in close proximity to end of your cigarette, and puff. The fire is drawn ito your cigarette and it lights. PBYS "inserts" a response between the "pick up a cigarette, put the cigarette in your mouth" segments of your well learned behavioral chain.

What this does is to create the condition that allows several things to occur simultaneously:

1. The time between your "triggered desire" to smoke and lighting up is

systematically increased as the number of pokes increases.

2. The number of behavioral elements (Pokes) between your "triggered

desire" to smoke and lighting up is systematically increased, which

lengthens the total behavioral chain.

3. Each time you light up, you are "practicing" poking in the real world in which you live, and therefore associating the "additional poking

response" with your "real world" cues.

4. As the number of pokes in your smoke increases, you will be inhaling less and less nicotine (and tar and particulate matter) which effectively

weans you from the drug habit.

5. As the number of pokes increases, it becomes more and more of a bother (I call it the PITA Effect-- which means a Pain in the $%), which

leads to you becomingly increasingly likely to "fail" to start the entire

chain because it has become a PITA to you; i.e., not worth the effort.

But you are not there yet.

The Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE)

Once you have reached the level where the PITA effect is stronger than the triggered smoking response, you will automatically "fail to reach for that cigarette". But that doesn't mean you will have conquered your smoking habit yet. The biggest stumbling block to controlling your smoking habit is the "Abstinence Violation Effect", which is called AVE in the research literature on stopping smoking. It works something like this:

After you have stopped smoking for a while (weeks, months, even years), all of a sudden something happens and you find yourself with an uncontrollable desire for a cigarette. It happens-- cause you might be under stress, worried, out having a good time with an old friend you haven't see in a while-- what ever. Under all other smoking control programs, if you pick up that cigarette and smoke it, you will quite likely suffer the AVE problem cause there is no room in them for smoking. What they do is require you to be totally abstinent. Therefore, when you smoke that cigarette, psychologically you see yourself as a loser, and usually with in a couple of days, you are smoking at the same level you were before you "temporally quit".

All other procedures (Patch, Gum, Hypnosis, etc), behavioral consuling) have the same problem-- they do not permit their users to pick up that cigarette and smoke it, and therefore, they have a built-in AVE problem. PBYS is the only one that is different.

And how is PBYS different, you ask. PBYS allows you to pick up that cigarette and smoke it , AS LONG AS YOU POKE BEFORE YOU SMOKE!

As long as you "Poke before you smoke", you will not have broken your covenent with your self, and therefore, psychologically, you will not suffer the Abstinence Violation Effect.

Because you can smoke at any time--no matter when-- as long as you Poke Before You Smoke, PBYS does not have a "QUIT" date. YOU and YOU alone decide if and when YOU smoke. I believe that the very fact that you can pick up a cigarette after you have not smoked for a while and smoke it (as long as you PBYS!!!), allows YOU to make the decision not to smoke, and therefore enhances your ability to resist the desire. In effect, PBYS will teach YOU to control your smoking habit on your own terms. All you have to do is follow the PBYS RULES.