I remember as a smoker I found the thought of quitting so incredibly impossible that I couldn't believe anyone could ever rid themselves of this horrible addiction.
I wrote this article to show you that yes indeed people actually do quit smoking. Not just people who smoke a cigarette here and there, or people who have only smoked for a few years, but people just like you who have smoked for 10, 20, 30 years and more. People who wake up in the morning and run to their pack of cigarettes as fast as they can, barely extinguishing one before they light another. Real people, who really quit smoking, just like you!!!
I decided to complete a market research study. This study is made up of 100 people who have successfully quit smoking for 1 year or longer.
The survey group included:
- 62 men and 38 women
- Average age when quitting smoking = 40.2 years old
- Average number of years smoking = 21.4 years
- Average number of times attempting to quit smoking = 6.2
- Average number of cigarettes smoked per day = 18.8
What method was used by these 100 people to quit smoking?
91 quit using the cold turkey method
5 quit using Chantix
4 quit using hypnosis
The study reinforced the fact that cold turkey is the most common method used for those successfully quitting smoking. 91% of the quitters used this method.
The reason cold turkey is so successful is that you experience all the pain early on in the quit, and if you can make it through that period, you are home free. Other methods such as nicotine replacement just drag on the pain, albeit in smaller doses, but you never really cure your addiction to nicotine. Remember, it only takes 72 hours to rid your body of nicotine, as long as you don't put more nicotine back in your system.
I was intrigued by the 4 people using hypnosis to quit smoking. All 4 of the people were heavy smokers who had smoked for more than 15 years. Having tried hypnosis myself, twice, I couldn't believe that this method could work for anyone. But all 4 people told me when they left their session they did not have the urge to light up and never felt the urge again.
Chantix was used by 5 of the people surveyed, and I have no doubt that this drug can be a successful aid in quitting. But it is worth mentioning, 4 of the individuals who quit by using Chantix were all diagnosed with smoking related illnesses, so their motivation to stop smoking was probably pretty high. In any case, 5% of the people in this survey did quit using this method.
Take note, not one person credited nicotine replacement therapy as a method used to quit smoking. More than 40% of the people had tried using some form of nicotine replacement therapy during one of their quitting attempts but none were successful quitting long term with this method. I am a strong opponent of this method and believe that it only inhibits ones ability to quit smoking by placing the drug you are trying to quit back in your body. This may be one of the greatest scams of the last 20 years.
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