Are you about to quit smoking — again?

Did you give up smoking some time ago and manage to stay quit for a while, but then, for some odd reason, start smoking again?

Have you promised your family you’re going to give up smoking again but you’re scared to try because you don’t really want to?

And are you planning to use some form of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) like you did the last time, because you found it to be such a big help back then (maybe even too much of a help, as you found yourself using it for a lot longer than the recommended 6 to 8 week "treatment" period)?
Continue reading Get Real

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve been quit for some time — maybe even a fairly long time, like a year — and you think you’ve pretty much got it all under control; you rarely even think about smoking any more. Then, one day, you walk by the smoking area at work, or you see a group of friends standing together smoking, and, instead of feeling sorry for them, you want to join them.

Continue reading Beware

I am a nicotine addict.

I started choosing not to feed that addiction any more on November 19th, 2001. Since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who started making that same choice, and then, a day, a week, or a month or more later, started choosing to feed their addiction again.

It always used to make me wonder how I was able to maintain my quit when people that had quit before I had, or around the same time as I had, or even after I had, had started choosing to feed their addiction again?
Continue reading Admit That You Are an Addict

When you think about quitting smoking, what are you afraid of? What scares you the most?

Here are some of the most common fears people I’ve worked with over the years have told me they’ve had going into a quit, and my answers to them:

Continue reading The Sum of Our Fears

Well, that’s what the people who sell Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products would like you to believe, but according to the American Cancer Society, 91.4% of all successful long-term quitters quit “cold turkey”, while only 6.8% used NRT (with or without other drugs or quitting aids)¹.

I will freely admit that math was never my strong suit, but I’m pretty sure that 91.4 times 2 does not equal 6.8. The truth is, you’re 13 times more likely to go back to smoking if you use NRT than you are if you don’t.

Continue reading Will Nicotine Replacement Really Help Me Stop Smoking?