Who first coined the H.A.L.T. acronym? In the past three days, I've gained a whole new respect for using it to rescue sanity from the clutch of addictive thinking.

If I have it right, when a person feels s/he is in the grips of longing for nicotine, it may not be nicotine, but something else. Wires get crossed.

It could be Hunger, Anger/Annoyance, Loneliness, or Tired. 

 

I don't know how many times in the past few days I've "HALTed." Each time, well most of the time, I reached a satisfactory conclusion that I needed something else, not a nicotine fix. Although the nicotine fix would have been nice, too, were it not destructive, expensive, and pointless.

 

I used to reach for a cigarette when I was hungry. When I've HALTed, the solution I come up with most often is to eat a piece of fruit because I sense my blood sugar is low.

Once, identifying lonely,  I reached out to my son (a young man with a family of his own). He and I are close. He doesn't know I smoke, so I didn't talk about smoking, just used a brief interaction to supplant nicotine craving.

 

HALT is so simple, yet so powerful. Stressor --> few deep breaths to gain calm --> ask the H.A.L.T. questions and be open to the answers --> focus on the best response and take action

 

Anyone else have success using this method? Do you use it often?

I use this often - maybe that is why I gained so much weight when I quit...always went for a piece of dark chocolate! Been trying to just drink water lately!! It does work well when you are doing battle with a crave because you need to think and it gets your mind off the crave..... 

Great post Kate and yes I've used it too

The nicotine addiction is in the part of your brain that would normally give you rewards for taking care of yourself.  Eat some food - reward for taking care of hungry.  In from the rain - reward for not being wet.  Get some sleep - reward for not being tired.  Nicotine hijacks this part of your brain so it mostly functions like:  Smoke cigarette - reward no panic inducing adrenaline dump.  You are retraining your brain to work properly.  It's a healing process, so it takes time and effort.  You'll see plenty of posts that discuss rewarding yourself often early in a quit to correct what nicotine has messed up.