Stop Smoking with Help




Why do teens smoke? They can give a lot of different answers: they like the taste or smell of it; they feel more independent when they do this, it helps them to carve the appetite and stay slim, it relieves the stress, it makes them look cool… The answers are endless, but it is better not to smoke and be healthy than to find excuses for smoking.

The first and main step in quitting is admitting that you are addicted to smoking and you want a way out. Many teens say that it is their choice and their right to smoke. This is a false belief advertised by tobacco companies. It is easy to get hooked on smoking, but a low percent of all people kick the habit successfully. Studies show that it is as hard to quit smoking as to break heroin or cocaine addiction. There are a lot of folks out there who try to put down cigarettes for a couple of days, they say, “This is easy. I can do it any time if I want to…” and then they start smoking again. This is like Mark Twain’s statement: “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”

We do not know if there was the last and successful time for the author of the Adventures of Tom Sawer, but if you are a teen and you have tried several times and failed, consider these tries as lessons at the normal process of quitting. Admitting that you have failed, but you will try again and succeed, is an important step. It is better than being tricked by the illusion that you can quit any time and keep smoking.

When you agree that you are powerless over tobacco, go for help. It is all right to use help. Do not consider it as a weak person’s action. Strong, powerful and smart people ask for help and use it all the time. A producer of a movie cannot make one by himself. He needs a whole crew of specialists: directors, actors, writers, camera people, sound engineers, etc. A doctor relies on the help of nurses, technicians and other hospital personnel in order to provide proper care to a patient. Businessmen need help of advertising agencies to promote the product, they need help of salespeople to be able to sell it, help of accountants to keep a track of finances…

If you think that these examples are too far from the topic of smoking, learn this: 80% of all quitting smokers prefer to do so without any help and 95% of them fail within the first year. The picture is much brighter on the other side: the smokers who used nicotine replacement therapies (patch, inhaler, gum) increase their chances of quitting by 50-70%. Cognitive behavioral therapy, the concept of changing the smoker’s beliefs and thoughts about smoking, has proven to increase the chances to quit up to 30%. Zyban, an antidepressant that is thought to have effect on nicotine addiction, has a success rate up to 49%. Shock treatment gives a mild electric shock from a 9-volt battery if a person smokes a cigarette; according to some studies it gives a 95 percent positive results in the beginning and keeps it as high as 50% after one year.

There are a lot of different means that can really help and if one does not work well, try a different one. There are also such organizations as the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association. They have a number of inexpensive and effective programs and they have specialists that will help choosing the treatment that will work better for you.

Having partners who are going through the same trials at the same time is also a great idea. For example, a person could use Nicotine Anonymous. This is a non-profit organization where men and women share their experience, strength and hope for smokefree life. More information can be found on the official side: http://www.nicotine-anonymous.org/.

You are free to go any way you want to go trying to quit. You might go all alone, or you may use help. The choice is yours, but which method works better?

Mary Thomson

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Posted on July 25, 2010 
Filed Under How to Quit Smoking, Smoking and Health, Smoking and Youth, Stop Smoking

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