Settling and induction
2 min[This script is written to be recorded and published — a stop-smoking track someone buys, streams, or gets from you to listen to between sessions — so the induction is built in rather than left to you. Do not cut it. A listener at home has nobody to settle them and no idea how long to keep their eyes closed; the induction is what turns a nice reading into a usable track. Read this segment slower than feels natural on the day, and leave the pauses at full length even though the silence feels long in the booth. Two things to say up front. There is no aversion anywhere in this script — no ash, no tar, no coughing, no smell. It dates from the 1970s, it is unpleasant to record, and more often than not it buys three white-knuckled weeks and then a relapse with shame attached. And patches, gum, vapes, lozenges, varenicline, bupropion, anything a doctor has prescribed: all of that is the listener's own business. This recording neither replaces any of it nor argues with it, and nothing in the script tells anyone to stop taking something. If you add an intro of your own, say plainly that the track is not for listening to while driving or operating anything.]
Find somewhere you can sit or lie down for about ten minutes without being interrupted. Not the car. Somewhere you could fall asleep and it wouldn't matter. When you're settled, let your eyes close. [pause for 15 seconds while they settle]
Take a slow breath in. And let it go in your own time. Again, a little slower. And out. Nothing to get right here. You're just breathing, and I'm just talking. [pause for 20 seconds]
Let your shoulders drop. Let your jaw be a bit heavier than usual. And as you breathe out, you may notice the chair or the bed taking a little more of your weight than it was a minute ago. That's all this is. Comfortable, and reasonably switched off. [pause for 20 seconds]
You don't have to follow every word from here. Some of this you'll hear clearly. Some of it you may drift past, and that's fine too. I'm not going to tell you that smoking is bad for you. You've known that for years, and knowing it hasn't been the thing that helps. So we'll leave that alone today and do something more useful with the time. [pause for 20 seconds]
Your own reasons, out loud
2 min 30[The centrepiece, and the reason this script beats the free ones. Every generic track guesses at why the listener wants to stop — your health, your family, the money — and a guess is something the mind can argue with. So we don't guess. We ask the listener to say their reasons out loud, in their own words, and then we leave a real silence for it. "I'm sick of standing outside my own house" is worth ten of my "you value your health", because it is a sentence they already agree with. Two recording notes. Leave the gap genuinely long — twenty-five seconds feels enormous with headphones on in a quiet room, and it is the single easiest thing to get wrong; trim it in the edit and the segment stops working. And say the invitation warmly rather than as an instruction, because plenty of people listen somewhere they can't speak aloud and will say it in their head instead, which is fine. If you are recording a personalised version for one client, this is where you swap the invitation for their own words taken down verbatim in the pre-talk — their phrasing, their order, their swearing, untidied — and keep a shorter pause after it.]
I don't know why you want to stop. I could guess, but my guesses would be somebody else's reasons, and they wouldn't do much for you. You already know yours. [pause for 10 seconds]
So in a moment I'm going to stop talking, and I'd like you to say them out loud. Just as they come. Not the tidy version you'd give a doctor — the real one, in your own words, however it comes out. If you're somewhere you can't speak, say them in your head instead. Take as long as you like. [pause for 25 seconds while they speak]
And if there's a person in it — someone who's asked you, or someone you'd rather not have this conversation with again — say their name too. [pause for 20 seconds]
Those are yours. I didn't give them to you and I can't take them away. They were true before you pressed play, and they'll still be true on Thursday afternoon when there's nobody talking to you about it. So there's nothing here you need to be talked into. Part of you has already decided. The rest of this is just making it a little easier for the rest of you to catch up. [pause for 20 seconds]
The identity shift
2 min[Behaviour change that stays changed usually rides on an identity change, so this segment works on the sentence someone says about themselves rather than on the cigarettes. Watch the distinction the wording keeps making: not "you are quitting", which is an effort with no end in sight, but "a person who doesn't smoke", which is a settled fact requiring nothing. "Trying to quit" is a role with relapse written into it. Avoid "ex-smoker" too — it keeps the old identity in the sentence. A good share of anyone's audience has stopped before and started again, so this is the segment to take slowest: their evidence that they are "someone who always goes back" is what you are quietly writing over, and it does not respond to being rushed.]
There's a difference between someone who's trying to quit and someone who doesn't smoke. It sounds small. It isn't. [pause for 10 seconds]
Someone who's trying to quit is having an argument all day long. Someone who doesn't smoke isn't in the argument at all. They're not being good. They're not resisting anything. They're just a person who doesn't do that — the same way you're a person who doesn't take sugar in coffee. No willpower in it. It simply isn't one of the things you do. [pause for 20 seconds]
You may notice yourself answering differently. Someone offers you one, and instead of explaining that you're giving up, you may find you just say no thanks, and the conversation moves on, and you're a little surprised afterwards at how little it cost you. [pause for 15 seconds]
And if you've stopped before and started again, that doesn't count against you here. It means you already know how to stop. That part you've done. [pause for 20 seconds]
The gap where it used to go
2 min[Smoking is largely punctuation — the break after a meal, the reason to step outside, something to do with the hands while the kettle boils. Take the cigarette away and the punctuation goes with it, and that hole is where most people go back from, not from nicotine. So this segment gives the day its full stops back rather than telling anyone to distract themselves. I've used three of the most common moments; if you know your audience — night shift workers, new parents, a corporate stop-smoking programme — swap in the two or three that actually run their day and cut mine. One craft note on the breathing lines: many people say the appeal is the deep breath, so this hands the breath back on its own with nothing attached. Slow right down through those lines and leave the pause; rushed, the whole segment turns into a list.]
There are certain moments in the day that have had a cigarette in them for a long time. The one after you eat. The one when you get in the car. The one when a phone call finishes and you need a minute to yourself. [pause for 15 seconds]
Those moments aren't going anywhere, and you wouldn't want them to. You still get the pause. You still get to step outside if you like it out there. You still get the minute between one thing and the next. All that changes is what you're holding. [pause for 20 seconds]
Take a slow breath in now. And let it go in your own time. [pause for 15 seconds]
That was the part you actually wanted. The long breath, and the small stop in the middle of the day. You've always been able to do that on your own. You may find, over the next week or two, that you start reaching for the breath in the moments you used to reach for the packet — and that more often than not it does more of the job than you expected. [pause for 20 seconds]
The first difficult moment
2 min[Everybody meets a hard moment, usually inside the first fortnight, and a track that pretends otherwise gets deleted the day it arrives. So this segment goes there first and takes the drama out of it — but read the wording carefully, because there is a line not to cross. We say a difficult moment may come and describe it passing; we never say they might smoke, and we never rehearse them smoking. Predicting a relapse in trance is close to installing one. What we are doing is pre-framing: a craving is information about a habit unwinding, it has a shape and an end, and if a cigarette does happen at some point it is a data point about a situation rather than a verdict on the person. That frame matters more on a recording than in a room, because there is nobody there to catch someone who has decided they've blown it and is too embarrassed to press play again. Note there is no "you will never want a cigarette again" anywhere in this script — say that and the listener's first honest craving disproves you, and once one line is false the rest of the track goes with it.]
Somewhere in the next couple of weeks there'll probably be a harder moment. A bad day, or a good one. Someone lights up next to you, or something goes wrong, and the old thought turns up. [pause for 15 seconds]
That thought isn't a problem, and it isn't a sign that this hasn't worked. It's an old habit checking whether the light's still on. It rises, it sits there a few minutes, and then it goes again, whether you do anything about it or not. You don't have to fight it. You can notice it the way you'd notice the weather, and carry on with what you were doing. [pause for 20 seconds]
And if a difficult moment ever does get the better of you, that's information, not failure. It tells you which situations need a plan. People who stop for good are hardly ever people who found it easy. They're people who paid attention, and carried on the same afternoon, without making it mean anything about who they are. [pause for 20 seconds]
So there's nothing to brace for. You're not on trial. You're just a person who doesn't smoke, getting on with an ordinary week. And you can play this again whenever you want to. [pause for 20 seconds]
Count-up and emergence
1 min 30[A recording needs a proper emergence more than a live session does, not less — nobody is there to notice that the listener is still glassy-eyed, and you have no idea what they are about to go and do. So count one to five, brisker and a little louder with each number, and let your voice do the work: lift it deliberately rather than reading the numbers in the same tone as the body. Never fade the track out under a bed of music before five. The alertness line at the end is not a formality — say plainly that nobody drives or handles anything that matters until they are properly awake, and mean it. Some listeners fall asleep with this on, which is fine and common; the last block is written so that waking up an hour later in a normal way is a fine outcome too. Leave the final line as it is: a small practical thing for today, not a promise about the rest of their life. "The rest of your life" is the kind of weight that stops people pressing play tomorrow.]
In a moment I'm going to count from one up to five. At five you'll be wide awake, clear-headed and comfortable. If you'd rather sleep from here, that's fine — just let the count go past you and drift off. [pause for 10 seconds]
One. Coming up slowly, in your own time. [pause for 5 seconds] Two. Feeling coming back into your hands and your feet. [pause for 5 seconds] Three. Aware of the room around you, and the sounds in it. [pause for 5 seconds]
Four. Nearly there now, eyes ready to open. [pause for 5 seconds] And five — eyes open, wide awake. [pause for 15 seconds while they open their eyes and sit up]
Take your time getting up, and have some water. Don't drive anywhere, and don't do anything that needs your full attention, until you're properly awake and know you are. And when you get going again, the only thing to do today is the ordinary next thing. Not the whole of the rest of your life. Just today. [pause for 10 seconds]