So how did most successful ex-smokers actually quit?

If you look around the Internet or even request information from professional health organizations on how to quit smoking you are likely to find that the standard advice that will be given is to use a pharmacological approach, i.e., nicotine replacement products and or Zyban. Every time you see this advice you will constantly hear that these approaches double your chances of quitting. Some sites and groups come out and almost say point blank do not go cold turkey--basically leaving the reader with the impression that nobody could possibly quit this way.

In the 2003 American Cancer Society's Facts and figures (2003 Cancer Facts and Figures) there is a chart that shows the percentage of current smokers who have tried different routes at quitting smoking and also showed what percentage of current ex-smokers who quit by different techniques.

The numbers that were very telling were the percentages that broke down how former smokers had actually quit. Keep in mind this chart is limited, it does not tell us how long they have quit or some other key pieces of information--like did the people who are using quitting aids such as NRT ever actually got off the NRT. But I am not concerned about that at this moment.

So how did former smokers actually quit according to the American Cancer Society report? Those using drug therapies and counseling, 6.8%. Those using other methods, 2.1%. That leaves those who either went cold-turkey or cut down. It seems that the study authors didn't feel a need to separate these two unimportant methods, but since even they generally admit cutting down techniques do not really work, I think we can safely assume that they didn't really have any major impact on the overall number. So basically 91.4% of the people who are successfully classified as former smokers quit cold turkey. On that same page is the following recommendation:

"All patients attempting to quit should be encouraged to use effective pharmacotherapies except in the presence of specific contraindications."

You have to ask yourself how many of the successful ex-smokers in the world today would have actually succeeded if the sought out and listened to professional advice.

So for anyone looking in trying to determine what is the best way to quit, you have a choice. You can go with the experts or you can go with what over 90% of successful quitters have done. If you decide to go with the quitters all you need to do is to never take another puff!

© Joel Spitzer 2003
Page last updated by Joel Spitzer on November 25, 2003

So how do most people really quit smoking? Don't take our word for it--go talk to every long-term ex-smoker you personally know. See how many of them fall into one of the following three categories:

1. People who woke up one day and were suddenly sick and tired of smoking. They tossed them that day and never looked back.
2. People who get sick. Not smoking sick, meaning some kind of catastrophic smoking induced illness. Just people who get a cold or a flu and feel miserable. The feel too sick to smoke, they may feel too sick to eat. They are down with the infection for two or three days, start to get better and then realize that they have a few days down without smoking and decide to try to keep it going. Again, they never look back and stuck with their new commitment.
3. People who leave a doctors office given an ultimatum. Quit smoking or drop dead--it's your choice. These are people who some sort of problem has been identified by their doctors who lays out in no uncertain terms that the person's life is at risk now if they do not quit smoking.

All of these stories share one thing in common--the technique that people use to quit. They simply quit smoking one day. The reason they quit had varied but the technique they used was basically the same. For the most part they are clear examples of spur of the moment decisions elicited by some external and sometimes, some unknown circumstance.

I really do encourage all people to take this survey, talking to long-term ex-smokers in their real world. People who you knew when they were smokers, who you knew when they were quitting and who you still know as being successful long-term ex-smokers. The more people you talk to the more obvious it will become how people quit smoking and how people stay off of smoking. Again, people quit smoking by simply quitting smoking and people stay off of smoking by simply knowing that to stay smoke free that they must never take another puff!

You posed your question in a manner that implied that most people who try to quit by going cold turkey will fail, and thus, the recommendation that we are using that people should quit by going cold turkey is going to undercut 9 out of 10 people who try to quit.

I see things very differently. In real world setting I see that 9 out of 10 people who quit smoking have done so by going cold turkey. I also see that most people who use NRT's to quit fail. I also see that since NRT's have become available and since almost all professional organizations are pushing NRT's as their main recommendations for people trying to quit, that the decline in smoking rates that we were experiencing over a number of decades has been hampered.

Again, I believe your question is trying to make the point that by us promoting cold turkey quitting we are undercutting most smokers from being able to quit smoking. I think if you really look at what the real world results for NRT quitting has been you may realize that by making NRT's the cornerstone of treatment is in fact steering people away from using the techinque that has allowed most successful ex-smokers to actually quit.