Joel,
I thought you might be interested to know that my husband and I have quit smoking by gradual withdrawal. We are only 9 days completely smoke free. For one week we cut our smoking about in half (12 per day). The next week we cut that in half. By that weekend, we had a stressful event come up and we were back up to our normal smoking habits.
After all of this, I told him that we just had to quit. While doing it the gradual way gave me some hope, all I did was obsess over my next time to smoke. It really was almost as hard as you claim in this article.
I just found your site on day 7, it would have been nice to have read it earlier. Thanks your the support your site gives.
Sincerely,
Christie