“Smokers are never told that up to 75% of successful ex-smokers quit unaided,” said a public health expert, who reviewed hundreds of studies into quitting smoking and is now calling for more effective campaigns and policies worldwide.
Drug companies, tobacco control advocates and public health professionals are over-promoting nicotine replacement therapy and other smoking cessation drugs, according to Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie from the University of Sydney, Australia.
The pharmaceutical industry is influencing public health practice away from methods that are proven to help the majority of smokers to quit, they said in their review in the journal PLoS Medicine.
“For obvious reasons (a $1.7 billion market in 2006) the pharmaceutical industry is intent on pathologising a process that for decades saw millions of people quit unaided,” Chapman said.
But smoking is addictive, and those evil tobacco companies were sued for it.
Ya gotta wanna!
And if you don’t really want to, it ain’t gonna happen.
RSweeney, you said it exactly right! After several halfhearted attempts that inevitably failed, one day the true desire to quit hit me like a ton of bricks, and even quitting cold turkey was easy.
Nearly 20 years smoke-free and damn thankful.
I quit the easy way, congestive heart failure.
I quit unaided. I realized I was addicted and it was a stupid habit to begin with, so I decided to kick it.
I went out at 5 am (because I had run out and was freaking out, that’s how I realized I was addicted) and bought two packs. I always bought in twos. I let myself smoke the last two packs of my life. I savored them slowly and guilt-free for a couple of days. And I never smoked again.
It was a bit hard for about a month. Then it got easier every week until the point at which somebody else’s smoke would bother me. I’ve been tobacco-free for 8 years. I don’t miss it at all.
I think it works better if you just go cold turkey. People who try to quit gradually are just kidding themselves.
I’ll never smoke again. Of all the stupid things I’ve ever done, that’s the only one I really regret. I don’t know what I was thinking when I began to smoke.
I smoked for 30 years, quit a couple of times. Probably the reason that 75% have quit unaided is because there really hasn’t been a good quitting aid until recently.
I hate big pharma, but I do endorse Chantix. It blocks the nicotine receptors in the brain so that even if you do smoke, it will do absolutely NOTHING for you-so then why smoke?
Again, if you dont want to quit, even Chantix wont help, but it helped me. It also helped my father who smoked for 60 years, and one I thought would NEVER quit.
Patches, gum are just a replacement, not an aid.
Had a doctor tell me to NOT try to quit once….
Don’t ask….
However, I did quit cold turkey about 15 years ago. I almost never smoked around my daughter, and since she was one of those “gotta hold me” babies, I was almost there when she got old enough to leave in a playpen for a couple minutes and go into another room.
One night a few years later, down with the flu or something, I lit one up in the throne room, and it tasted awful. I decided to put it out, and wait until I felt better. About 10 hours later, I felt better, but decided not to light up. Another ten hours and I was done….
I was ready, and wanted to…. The first few weeks weren’t easy, but…. My doc had some sample patches, but wouldn’t give them to me – very early on the curve, and he didn’t feel that they were safe enough….
Couple years later, my daughter, who’d been pestering me to quit before I did, started smoking…. I think she’s quit again….
At current prices I couldn’t afford ‘em anyway, so I guess I win.
I quit after 25 yrs at age 38. The withdrawal symptoms lasted about a week, then any craving was gone for good. I thought I was pretty strong for toughing it out coldturkey.
About 4 months later I got real depressed.
I’m 54 now and wondering how to quit being depressed.
I quit cold turkey back in ’95. My job at the time was crap in the payroll dept. and even then the thought of of what a years worth of a pack or more a day would get me was a powerful incentive. But it wasn’t just the money, it was who the money was going to, people who very obviously would not cross the street to piss on me if I were on fire. And people who I would not cross that same street to piss on if they were burning. They say that after a week all the nicotine is out of your system, and I’m sure that’s true. But that’s when the monkey on your back stops prodding you with it’s big grimy finger and saying “Hey man, get us a smoke!” and climbs up in your brain pan, starts pedaling your spinal cord like a unicycle and begins (Non-stop!) shrieking ” OK! You’ve had your little joke, GET ME A F@&#*%?KING CIGARETTE RIGHT G@%$&%*#@^%$?&*%$#@ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!”
This starts going away after about two months.
The people I worked with characterized it as “The longest two months of their lives.” But, I’m no longer Philip Morris’s bitch.
I quit 5 years ago just before my daughter was born. Used the patch, but not that whole BS step down thing. Used them for 2 weeks and that was that. Didn’t think I could do it since I smoked since I was 14. Tried cold turkey once when I was 25, but nothing really motivated me at that time to make me want to quit.
here are 25 of those proven methods!
I did a cold turkey quit. It is really the only way. You just have to look at the damn thing and think to yourself “Is this little thing really stronger than me? No f**king way.”.
The best way to quit smoking is death.
I went from almost two packs a day to zero in about a month. Toothpicks helped a lot. Seriously.
Those e-cigs are a pretty good replacement, though. Real enough.
About as easy as ten pushups, on one hand, holding your breath, with a wild baboon on your back.
Twenty-five years ago I switched to skoal. I was teaching at the time and got away with it during classes. Fifteen years later I decided to quit that. To me it was harder than cigarettes to stop. Even with the gum my neck turned into a rock from tension. It was a damn hard two months. I swore I would never invite another demon like that in.
#5 – Actually, I quit gradually. I was a pack-a-day smoker for about 8 years before I decided to call it quits. I brought myself down to 5-7 cigs/day over a period of 6 months, then went on the patch for a week, then that was it.
Quitting is 10% physical and 90% mental. You have to WANT to quit. If drugs get you over that mental hump by making you believe that you’re reaching your goal, so be it. But without making an honest mental commitment, you’re just fooling yourself.
God created the stuff and people have free will. More lawsuits or why not accept mistreatment and leave it at that? Philip Morris wasn’t politically correct, which is no reason to blot out a family name. The department of crazy drug names is taking over. Take 2 fukitols and call me in the morning.
As part of the settlement, the industry also agrees to a range of advertising and marketing restrictions. The industry had previously settled with the attorneys general of the four other states.
The bureaucrats get to wreck both the pubs and the publishers while splitting up lawsuit dollars to protect the public from itself. Suicidal side effects are acceptable with pills. Smoking in a pub is too dangerous.
Pick a day to quit, a month or so away to give you time to prepare.
Keep count of how many cigarettes a day you smoke. Buy a timer and divide waking hours by the average number. Evenly space those cigarettes throughout the day, excusing yourself to go smoke (go somewhere else and pull over to smoke outside the car no matter what the weather is doing) away from whatever you happen to be doing -it helps to have a supportive boss. After a week, reduce the number of cigarettes by one or two per day (while keeping them evenly spaced) until you reach your quit day. This will help break up the “habit smoke” triggers as well as get you used to withdraw symptoms.
After your quit day, remember that it takes most people about 3 months to truly get past the withdraw. Use this time to scrub down your house. At some point you’ll sit down to a meal and it will be taste better than anything you’ve ever eaten before. You’ll remain hypersensitive to the smell of smoke for a year or so, and it still makes me sick sometimes after 11 years.
BTW: on No Agenda Adam and John made a big deal about all the side effects of Chantix… Guess what? These are normal nicotine withdraw symptoms. I had terrible nightmares and suicidal thoughts all through the 3 month period. But I knew this was because of the nicotine and just dealt with it. If more smokers knew what was going on inside the quitter’s mind and not just the outside shakes and whatnot, I think we’d all have an easier time quitting.