The “lets take it easy”  approach is the next contestant in how to approach giving up cigarettes. And it can be chewed, patched on to your skin, inhaled up your nose, dissolved in your mouth, my god, the list of ways to get your fix when you are trying to give up is mind boggling.

OK, so lets be clear about all these medications, be they gum, lozenge or nasal spray – their primary ingredient is nicotine and thus anyone using these products should not be smoking at the same time. 

For one it can be dangerous, for two, it makes the whole exercise pointless and expensive.

The “trick” is to allow the brain to get its fix and thus reduce the nicotine withdrawal to manageable levels, as slowly but surely the level of nicotine is reduced over a period of weeks and hey presto, no longer physically addicted to nicotine and none of those dreaded withdrawal symptoms that go along with it.

So does nicotine replacement therapy work?

Well evidence from tests carried out show that you are twice as likely to stay stopped after one year than without the NRT. The only problem with these findings are that  most of the people who stayed stopped at a year were combining other quitting techniques including medication such as Bupropion and counselling for the psychological addiction.

So if you want to use Nicotine Replacement Therapy, by all means go for it; but my suggestion is get yourself a support network because it does NOT replace the mental triggers that will go off on a daily basis in which your brain will attempt to remind you why relapse is so important for just one more cigarette.