About Me

I am a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I earned my Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Psychology from Michigan State University in 1972, and subsequently completed a two-year Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am also an ex-smoker. I started smoking at the age of 14, and I quit (for the last time) in 1974 at the age of 34.

I have been a Licensed Clinical Psychologist for 25 years, but my Doctoral training was in the Experimental Psychology of Learning and Learning Theory. After teaching and conducting research in learning and developmental psychology at several colleges, I spent two years in clinical training at the University of North Carolina Memorial Medical Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow. My work there involved studying the application of learning principles to the solution of clinical problems in children and adults. The Stop That! Program is an outgrowth of this amalgam of 35 years of experimental and clinical training, research, and experience, and would not have been possible without this background.

Had my training been exclusively in the Experimental Psychology of Learning, I probably would have followed one of many failed paths to helping smokers quit that are based on reward and punishment. Years ago, for example, psychologists were telling smokers to put large rubber bands on their wrists, with instructions to give themselves a series of painful "snaps" whenever they thought about smoking. Another learning based approach is what is called "aversive" or "rapid" smoking. In this case, smokers are instructed to smoke one cigarette after another, in rapid succession, until they get physically sick and smoking becomes "aversive". Getting sick was to punish the act of smoking, and it was assumed that punishing any behavior would eventually eliminate it. None of these learning or behavior modification techniques proved to be effective, although some are still being used.

Had my training been exclusively in Clinical Psychology, I would probably be using psychotherapy or hypnosis in my attempts to help smokers quit, but there is no evidence that therapy or hypnosis are effective in achieving smoking cessation either.

Contrary to popular belief, smoking is not maintained by an addiction to nicotine. It is a habit that has gotten out of hand. It is no different than drinking coffee, tea, or soda. It is in the same category of bad habits as biting one's fingernails, chewing gum, sucking on breath mints, and nibbling on toothpicks or matchsticks. And, you can break your habit by applying the principles and instructions found in the Stop That! Program. Remember,

You may be addicted to nicotine because you smoke, but you do not smoke because you are addicted to nicotine!

You can break your tobacco habit with the Stop That! Program, and become a non-smoker or non-user in as little as 30 days, guaranteed!

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