If you’re wondering how to quit smoking, I can help. To my mind, two things that can dramatically increase your chances of successfully quitting are knowledge and preparation. You need to learn all you can about your enemy, and then prepare and plan for the challenge of getting free.
Knowledge
One of the great advantages of the internet is the sheer amount of information it makes available to us at the click of a mouse. Of course, that’s one its greatest disadvantages, too: the sheer amount of information in itself can be a distraction, and it’s hard to tell which information is reliable and useful.
This is where it helps to get the advice of someone who’s done what you’re doing and can point you at some of the better resources. For reliable and, more importantly, useful information about smoking, it’s hard to beat whyquit.com.
They’ve put together a vast amount of information, and a lot of it is stuff you’ll never see anywhere else. The site is also the repository of one of the best quit smoking resources on the web: Joel’s Library (a collection of letters and videos written and produced by Joel Spitzer, who’s been teaching people how to quit smoking and stay quit for over 30 years).
I’ll be highlighting other reliable and useful information sources here as times goes on.
Preparation
As important as it is to know your enemy, it’s equally important to have a plan to overcome that enemy. This is where preparation comes in, and one of the best courses on quitting that I know about is the American Lung Association’s Freedom From Smoking Online program.
This is the program I used to quit back in 2001, and it’s still available, and still as valid as ever. There’s still a free version of the program, but the premium version only costs $40 a year, and is well worth it. I mean, how much is your freedom worth to you?
With sufficient knowledge and careful preparation, you will almost certainly succeed at quitting smoking. Then the challenge becomes staying quit in the long run.
And that’s what this site is all about.