About Quitting

I believe that no one really wants you to quit smoking. That is right...no one wants you to quit! Certainly, the tobacco companies do not want you to stop buying and using their products. And, I have come to the conclusion that the drug companies that produce aids to quitting do not want you to quit either...they are making too much money providing products that give you a very low probability of success in quitting. Your doctor is probably concerned that you smoke, but most physicians do not talk to their patients about quitting, and only a small percentage make information about quitting available in their waiting rooms. When such information is available, it usually consists of advertisements about the quitting aids mentioned above that were left by drug company representatives on their last sales call. Physicians may be reluctant to recommend these products because, despite the hype, they realize that they do not work. So, rather than suggesting something that is expensive and ineffective to their patients, they say nothing at all.

The medical and psychological literature in the area of smoking cessation is full of junk science. Many studies do not report quit rates as a percentage of smokers who quit. They report that a particular nicotine replacement system or medication will double or triple quit rates. What they do not tell you is that the "treatments" increase quit rates from 5% (the natural quit rate, or the percentage of smokers who quit each year without professional help) to 10% or 15%. With the treatments, costing hundreds of dollars, there are 9 chances in 10 that you will fail! So, improvement with treatment may be statistically significant, but it is not clinically significant because your chances of quitting increase only slightly above your chances when going it alone, or quitting "Cold Turkey". If you follow the Stop That! Program, your chances of quitting approach 100%!

You may also have noticed a disclaimer in ads for the smoking cessation products, suggesting that "Probability of success is greater if combined with counseling or a behavioral program". Perhaps the disclaimer should read, "The probability of success is near zero without counseling or a behavioral program"! Some studies have indicated that improvement with counseling only is as good as improvement with medication or nicotine replacement (i.e., 20%). At least one study has demonstrated that a placebo group, getting no treatment, had a better quit rate than a nicotine replacement group!

Your smoking friends do not want you to quit either. If you have tried to quit in the past, they may have offered you cigarettes, blown smoke in your face, or bet that you would not succeed. Finally (are you ready for this?), you do not want to quit! Not really. You may say that you do, but you do not. There may be times you think about quitting, but those times probably come after you have smoked too much, your throat is raw, or you cannot walk up a flight of stairs without experiencing shortness of breath. Or, you may decide to quit after the heart attack.

Surveys show that 70% of smokers say that they want to quit. I do not believe that 70% of smokers want to quit. I believe that 30% of smokers are honest when someone asks them if they are interested in quitting and say "no". Seventy percent of smokers probably say "yes" when a research scientist or pollster asks if they are interested in stopping a habit that involves inhaling smoke adulterated with more than 4000 chemicals into their lungs, knowing there is a 50% chance doing so will kill them! We all like to think we are intelligent and rational, so smokers say "Sure, I have been thinking about quitting".

I can help you quit because I can assure you of several things.

First, your "addiction to nicotine" has nothing to do with your habit of smoking. It is an unsubstantiated assumption that is made by the medical profession and promoted by the pharmaceutical industry because it pays handsomely. It also gives you a ready excuse for not quitting. If the assumption that smoking was based on nicotine addiction was correct, we would have much more effective treatments for smoking than we do. Millions of dollars have been spent researching the relationship between smoking and addiction, and the result is only a 10% to 20% improvement rate...often less. Additionally, nicotine is gone from your system only days after you smoke your last cigarette. Why then do smokers still crave cigarettes for weeks or months after quitting if smoking is, in fact, based on addiction? They crave cigarettes because their cravings are based on habit, and unless habits are changed or controlled, smokers are almost certain to suffer a relapse. In fact, many scientific studies have demonstrated that success rates in quitting drop dramatically after a year or so, and 80% of smokers take up the habit once again.

Second, I assure you that you can quit smoking on your own. You do not need artificial aids or medications. Once again, much of what you read about quitting suggests that it is the most difficult thing you will ever do. This simply is not true. Going to work every day is hard. Raising a family is hard. Giving birth is hard. Quitting smoking is relatively easy if you go about it the right way.

Finally, you do not have to pick a quit date, and you do not have to stop smoking "Cold Turkey"! These approaches are doomed to failure, because all the smoker who has gone Cold Turkey thinks about is smoking, and once that smoker has a cigarette, he or she has failed. With Stop That!, you can have a cigarette any time you think you want or need one (under the conditions specified by the program), and having a cigarette is not a failure...it is part of the cure! What better way to wean yourself from "nicotine addiction"?

[ Back to top ]

Behavior problems or other concerns about children? Visit another of Dr. Dmitruk's websites: