askjoel

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I'm sorry, I know it looked like post number 6 in this string would be the last comment I was going to make. I was wrong. I found a few other comments that I thought would be of value in this string. From the post So how did most successful ex-smokers actually quit?

From: Joel

Sent: 9/12/2005 9:36 AM

I see where a member who just made her one year anniversary commented on how she originally felt that she had a slim chance of success considering that she read that only ten percent of people who quit smoking cold turkey succeed till six months and only five percent make it for a year.

She is right, that statement is written and quoted all over the Internet and in lots of professional publications. Kind of gives the impression that quitting cold turkey is quite improbable and makes the recipient of the message almost think it is a total waste of time to even attempt to quit since the odds of success are so small. It pretty much sounds like quitting smoking is a futile effort and that there must not be many successful ex-smokers out in the world today.

Well, any person who bothers to go out in the world and actually talks to people are in for a surprise. There are plenty of successful ex-smokers in the world and the vast majority quit by going cold turkey.

In America today we have more former smokers than current smokers. Over 46 million Americans have quit smoking. (For anyone who thinks it is impossible to quit smoking) It has to be obvious to all that people are able to quit smoking. As this article discusses the vast majority of the long-term ex-smokers did in fact quit by going cold turkey.

People who succeed by following the advice given at this board are not indicative of a few isolated success stories. They are just another small group among the tens of millions of other people in the world who have quit smoking and then discovered that they were able to stay free as long as they stuck to a personal commitment to never take another puff.

Joel

I am starting to see where cold turkey quitting is starting to get bashed pretty heavily in the media. One of the techniques that is being used is having smoking experts come out and say that while everyone seems to know one person who has quit cold turkey, that most people just cannot quit this way. They are trying now to undercut the real world examples that people are inevitably exposed to since since this is the way that most people have successfully quit smoking.

I would agree that if a person just seemed to know only one person who had successfully quit smoking by a certain technique, it would be a clear sign that maybe the technique was not very successful. The issue is that if people go through the trouble of finding out what technique was used by ALL of the people they know who had quit smoking, they would most likely find that most if not all of them were in fact cold turkey quitters.

Here is the standard commentary I use when addressing the issue of talking to ex-smokers:

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!

Again, go talk to as many long-term successful ex-smokers (people off all forms of nicotine for at least a year or longer) in your real world that you can find and find out how they quit. I don't believe that there is a single professional smoking cessation NRT advocate who will suggest to their patients that they take a similar survey. For if they did their credibility would be called into question almost immediately when the patient starting seeing the results of their real life survey.

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