Giving Up Smoking Cold Turkey - Is it the Way to Go?

By Nadine Christie

All the people hawking stop smoking products would claim that quitting cold turkey is a painful and futile way to stop smoking. And that your odds of successfully giving up smoking go up if you just use one of their products.

You'll find all sorts of statistics spouted about success rates of various products. But without a little more explanation, those facts are meaningless. Does the rate mean from a controlled study or a real world application? Is it two weeks after completing the program or two years after?

The only important figure is the number of real people in real life situations that have managed to give up smoking for good. Most of the quoted statistics don't tell you those numbers.

According to the American Cancer Society, over 90% of former smokers quit smoking using the "cold turkey" method or by gradually reducing their cigarette usage. This flies in the face of the numbers given by people who have some sort of stop smoking product to sell you.

Does this mean that those products don't work at all? Not really. But what no one really wants to say is that the single most important factor in giving up smoking successfully is the determination of the one who is trying to quit. The higher the determination the higher the chances of successfully giving up smoking. The right product might help ease you through certain situations, but determination will get you through them all.

So if you are thinking about giving up smoking cold turkey or with help, take a step back and really think about why you want to quit. Try to measure your determination. And if you don't think it's strong enough then try to find a way to boost it.

Don't look for logical factors like how much healthier you are going to be once you quit. Because while it might be true, it isn't going to increase your level of determination. But playing with your emotions will. Look for emotional reasons to quit smoking, like how proud your son is going to be and how good that will make you feel. Emotional reasons like this are more capable of exponentially increasing you determination than logical ones ever will.

Nadine Christie of http://10-ways-to-quit-smoking.blogspot.com writes about the ways to quit smoking. Including the 11th way, the easy way. Find out more about the 11th way to quit smoking here

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