Ways to Quit Smoking

Stop Smoking - Techniques People Use

It seems like there are as many ways to quit smoking as there are smokers in the world. Yet many smokers have good intentions to stop smoking but just cannot seem to succeed.

Non-smokers who look at smokers as failures when they are unable to quit do not understand the situation. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug found in cigarettes, which the smoker needs and craves constantly.

Quitting an addiction is not even in the same class as, say, quitting biting your nails or popping your gum. It is difficult to quit smoking, and there are several main ways that most people seem to try.

The first way to quit smoking is to quit cold turkey. It is not known what a turkey has to do with it. To quit smoking cold turkey means to abruptly quit smoking cigarettes. Once the smoker quits smoking cold turkey, the goal is to never smoke another cigarette again.

No drugs or medical aids are used when a person quits smoking cigarettes cold turkey. Fierce willpower, and maybe someone the smoker can call when the urge gets too strong, is required to do this.

Some smokers use nicotine gums and patches to help them quit smoking. These nicotine patches replace the nicotine the smoker normally gets from the cigarette. The idea is to wean the smoker off of cigarettes by gradually using patches containing less nicotine.

It is far more difficult to quit smoking than non-smokers think. For reasons only they understand (and sometimes even they don’t), smokers have become addicted to the potent and dangerous drugs found in each cigarette.

Some experts suggest that these chemicals are as addictive, or more addictive, than many illegal drugs. But the effort to quit smoking is a healthy one, whichever method is chosen.

Once the body is free of cigarettes for a while, it begins repairing the damage of years or even decades of smoking. That’s why people who want to quit smoking should keep trying as many times as it takes to succeed.