Dear Jessie,

I had started a quit in October 2004 (I think it was on the 27th but I am not so sure anymore): it was Cold Turkey as I had tried both the patches (I say "try" because it must have been half hearted as I kept smoking one or two ... I think after two weeks I was back to my full pack a day again) and Zyban (yes, I even went to one of those NHS no-smoking clinics in 2003).

 

It still makes me furious and sad when I think about this experience even now - about 2 years later. We met once a week with a so-called counsellor, when she was distributing some info sheets. Smoking was very much treated like a habit. One young woman in the group went Cold Turkey because she was pregnant and therefore had to - only to be pitied by everybody else (most of all by the so-called counsellor) that she had to do it "the hard way". To me it felt as if the whole thing was a big promotion for NRT-products.

While I was very uncomfortable with all of that and felt something wasn't quite right I still trusted the "experts" and thought all they told us was true. Yes, the additives in nicotine etc. and the dangers of nicotine were mentioned but then again: back to the NRT. As I even then didn't see the sense in using patches or another NRT-product (been there, done it!) again, I was convinced by the counsellor that I just had to use Zyban.

The only thing that was done every week without fail was a breath into a carbon monoxide-metre, which was duly noted down. People were asked if they had smoked at all and unsurprisingly a lot of the group on NRT-products did. This did not seem to bother the counsellor too much ... she only got a bit nervous when somebody using the patches admitted in more than one meeting that he DID use the patch but also smoked nearly as many cigarettes as he did before. (This young man coincidentally was the boyfriend of the young pregnant woman ... why did he want to stop smoking? Did HE want to stop at all?) Nobody was encouraged to really share what was going on or what was experienced ...

The Zyban didn't really agree with my system (loads of side effects but I didn't smoke while I was taking it. The infamous one puff happened a few weeks after I came off it -- just wanted to see that it couldn't do any harm to me as I had been off for a while now. Before long ... back to the usual one pack per day.)

 

I kept smoking but could no longer tell myself that I did because I really, really loved it - why else would I have even gone to the trouble of stopping before?

I won't wish you any luck because, when you think about it, luck really hasn't got anything to do with it at all. What I do wish you is the courage and the realisation that you really can do this!!