Here are some of your options: 

• The day after Christmas routine, otherwise known as “cold turkey”, please excuse the pun.
• Nicotine gum or patches
• ZYban (Buproprion)
• And most recently, a drug called Chantix introduced onto the market in 2006.
• Counseling
• MY OWN SUGGESTION – a visit to a lung cancer unit

Some fail miserably with one type of quitting technique where others find it a relative breeze using the same method of giving up.

Let’s discuss how each option works – for they all work quite differently…with different overall levels of success, both short term and long term.

 As this is such an important topic, and is lengthy in its entirety, I will devote a blog to each option.

First off is cold turkey. In my humble opinion this is the option with the least chance of success rate in the short term, but with the best chance of success rate in the long term.

And here is why, going cold turkey entails the following symptoms: you are going to feel grouchy, short tempered, unable to concentrate, you will have sleepless nights, start over eating, feel anxious and depressed and stop communicating with work colleagues and loved ones by isolating.

So many who go cold turkey simply are not prepared for whats coming their way.

Thus, unless you are truly committed to quitting NO MATTER WHAT, the chances are you will relapse within the first few days of trying. The sad fact is that these symptoms do not last that long and if you could knuckle ride it for a week, the symptoms  should have disappeared and now you are left to deal with just the psychological addiction.

So those who made it through the physical withdrawal without any aid of drugs or patches have a very strong incentive to stay stopped. They have been to hell and back, why start all over again having got over the worst??

Well, some forget the mental anguish they went through in their withdrawal. Others lose the psychological battle – they remember how perfect things were when they could smoke with a Bud watching the Superbowl, how it helped them with their self confidence etc etc.

It is those who were determined at the outset that going cold turkey was some sort of catharsis that they needed to go through to say goodbye once and truly to a substance that does one thing and one thing only – it kills you.