Smoking Cessation Programs

Smoking Cessation Programs

Free Smoking Cessation Programs

Quitting smoking is decision that a smoker should undertake. Smoking has various bad effects on the smoker as well as people around him. Women for example, can pass several problems onto their unborn children. The smoker should begin trials to quit smoking as soon as possible. There are several smoking cessation programs for smokers: Quitting smoking is a complicated and long drawn out process, and the success rates of quitting smoking are quite slim.

Veteran smokers may find it difficult to quit smoking and they may or may not be able to handle the various withdrawal symptoms that come out during the process.

1. Nicotine Patches

Nicotine patches are by far the oldest types of smoking cessation aids and are also the most popular types of smoking cessation aids. These patches provide a steady and controlled dosage of nicotine into the body.

The nicotine patch helps the smoker to decrease their nicotine intake over time. These patches are available in different strengths. Over time, the smoker has to use the nicotine patches which have lower strengths, so that their nicotine intake decreases over time.

2. Nicotine gum

Another type of nicotine cessation product is the nicotine gum. Nicotine gum is aimed at giving the smoker their daily nicotine quota in a controlled manner. Whenever the smoker gets an urge to smoke, he or she will have to use the nicotine gum.

In nicotine gum, there is a certain medicine that replaces nicotine. This medicine is also instrumental in helping the smoker get over their addiction to nicotine. This gum is quite easily available and is known to be quite beneficial to smokers who wish to quit smoking.

3. Nicotine inhaler

Another type of nicotine cessation product is the nicotine inhaler. With the help of this inhaler, the smoker can directly inhale the nicotine through the nasal passage. Nicotine inhaler is one of the most used and freely available products. These are the products that are nicotine based.

There are also some medical related products.

4. Medications

One can use medicines that are non nicotine based – Zyban and Chantix are the famous products in the market today. Some also use medical instances to try to quit smoking.

5. Other Smoking Cessation Aids


Some try to use hypnosis as a way to quit smoking. However, there is little proof that this type of hypnosis works for the person who is trying to quit smoking.


Other studies hint that acupuncture and acupressure can also help a smoker to stop smoking.

6. Smoking Cessation Support Programs

1. Online cessation programs: The internet is full with online programs, websites and forum to support quitters.

2. Cessation Support groups: Many governments and private or public institutions around the globe established smoking succession supporting groups. Thus, in order to decrease the number of smokers and to control the smoking health dangers.

These are just some of the aids and smoking cessation items/objects that are used by smokers all over the world.

The Effectiveness of Programs and Aids to Quitting Smoking

Frankly, over and above to the smoking cessation means listed, the biggest cessation aid for smokers is the MIND: The mind and the mental readiness. Once the smoker has decided to quit smoking, only then can s/he be able to actually quit smoking.

Of course, the smoking cessations products may help a lot, but unless and until a person is not mentally ready to quit smoking, none of the smoking cessation products make any sense of usage.

Cold turkey

It takes a long time for the smoker to achieve what is known as ‘cold turkey’. When the person becomes a cold turkey, they would not feel like having a cigarette even if everyone around them is smoking. Being a cold turkey requires a lot of patience, tolerance and of course, the stiff decision and willing to quit smoking.

Hypnosis For Smoking Cessation

In essence, there is nothing spooky about hypnosis, for smoking cessation or for anything else. It simply places a person in a semi-aware, semi-trance like state. Some people are more affected or ‘susceptible’ than others, but most people are able to be hypnotised to a certain extent.

A hypnotic state is similar to when one has awoken from a dream, although reality can sometimes be slightly confused with the fading dream. You are put into this state by the hypnotherapist using simple forms of persuasion, relaxation and focusing techniques.

The hypnotherapist is then able to have your full focus, nearly 100%, which is never the case in a fully awakened state, so they can talk to your subconscious where most issues tend to reside.

Furthermore, the greater a person wants the outcome of the hypnosis, then the more effective it is likely to be. Will I be ‘out for the count’ during a hypnotherapy session?

Make no mistake, the subject of hypnosis may be in a fully relaxed and in a semi-trance, but is still generally aware of what is happening. No person can be hypnotised into doing something that they definitely do NOT want to do.

Sadly, some foolish people want to learn hypnosis as a means of hypnotising others so they can make them do things they wouldn’t otherwise want to do. This is does not work, and will usually have the opposite effect since the subject knows exactly what is happening.

This syndrome and fantasies around professional ‘stage’ hypnotism has given rise to the idea that a hypnotist has all sorts of fantastic dark abilities. Generally, it is a gentle art, and can be very effective in certain situations where therapy is required.

Why Hypnosis Only Works Very Occasionally To Quit Smoking?

The secret to whether using hypnosis for smoking cessation will succeed is easily explained by showing how the addiction works:

The truth is most people do not realise that smokers suffer from both a physical nicotine addiction, AND a mental addiction. Furthermore, these must be conquered in parallel.

If hypnosis is used alone, or by a hypnotherapist who does not understand the double-sided nature of the addiction, then the hypnotherapy will fail. Here is why: If a hypnotherapist, for example, decides to give you a nicotine replacement (such as nicotine patches) to help deal with the physical addiction while they attempt to use hypnosis to fix the mental addiction, it may confuse and upset the subject being treated.

This is because your subconscious is told on one hand that nicotine is not needed, and that it could kill you etc, but also is told on the other that nicotine is so valuable and prized that it cannot be taken away, but instead only replaced with something equal. What is the subconscious to believe?

The subconscious mind may then fight attempts make to stop, with extreme withdrawal symptoms accompanied by upset and confusion. Hypnotherapy can be expensive and may still be ineffective.

Even if you did strike the right hypnotherapist, who knows the entire approach, who understands the double-sided nature of a smoker’s addiction, you would still have to attend many sessions to see if it works – if it in fact it did at all.

Plus you can easily pay an exorbitant amount for these sessions – the cost to see a real person in there clinic or offices.

Why CDs And Tapes Are Not Effective?

In essence the key to successful hypnotherapy is whether the person really wants to quit and whether the hypnotherapist can successfully customise the course to the individual.

Smoking addiction is never a simple situation to deal with, and may be made more difficult by the subject having to deal with other issues at the same time such as family or money problems. This can affect the outcome, and the hypnotherapist may need to take all this into account.

CDs / DVDs, tapes and podcasts offering quit-smoking self-hypnotherapy have no capacity for customising a quit smoking program to the individual. They also do not deal with the nicotine addiction side of quitting smoking.

Laser Smoking Cessation

If you are a smoker, you will probably know how difficult it can be to quit once and for all. The thought that there might be a solution for us [smokers] captures every smoker’s imagination.

Unfortunately, the laser smoking cessation process you may have heard about is not the salvation that you hope it might be. This is because it is founded on the ancient art of acupuncture, a system derived without scientific process or rigour and one that is found to be wanting.

Before even bothering to wonder why laser light instead of metal needles or normal light would be a more effective variation of acupuncture, we should also ask whether or not acupuncture itself is a well-founded process for treating smoking (or anything else for that matter).

The answer is a conclusive ‘no’! Research from the Cochrane Collaboration shows that acupuncture has no better success at helping people quit smoking than quitting cold turkey. Acupuncture has been found useful only in relieving pain but not in any other field of medicine, addiction treatment or therapy.

The bad news is that this sort of treatment [laser smoking cessation] falls into the sphere of what I call ‘meta-medicine’. It is a parallel of metaphysics. It isn’t really medicine at all, it is just a ‘procedure’ based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever!

Whilst there are practitioners out there who will try to sell you laser smoking cessation therapy or so-called bio resonance treatments, their methods are no more proven than standing in a bucket of frogs is for helping you stop smoking.

My advice to you is to stay well clear of unscientific processes to deal with nicotine addiction and tobacco dependence. You are much better off avoiding unspecified herbal concoctions and faith healing methods and sticking closer to the mainstream and always demanding a 100% money back guarantee.

Getting Smoking Cessation Help From Organizations

There are people who actually are able to quit smoking on their own, but admittedly, there are only a few of them. Most other nicotine addicts find themselves always having to seek help from various quarters to break the habit. And that is not so strange either. With the level of addictiveness of the substance, a single exposure could hook you for life, and the craving for cigarette or cigar smoke can cause you to go back to the substance time and time again even as you try to abstain from it.

If you need assistance with breaking the habit – and you know you do too – you should try to get in touch with any one of these stop smoking organizations and let them lend a helping hand to you, they are easy enough to find on the Internet.

The American Cancer Society, for instance, offers extensive information on the health issues that are related to tobacco use, on government regulations and the tobacco industry, tips on quitting smoking and tobacco use, and other such resources that are a great help. You can get similar information and tips from the CDC’s – Centre for Disease Control’s – home page on the Internet. And there are countless e-books online that do precisely that.

Getting help for smoking cessation however should not be limited to reading of various materials on the subject. You should take decisive steps too that could save your life. See a doctor, sing up with a psychotherapist, join a support group in person and on the Internet, and buy you any number of quit smoking aids that you can lay your hands on.

There are physical and psychological aspects to nicotine addiction, and they all need to be addressed. If you have been trying to break the habit for very long, you may even have to sign yourself into a rehabilitation centre or something. At least in there you can get all the attention you can get medically and therapeutically for your quit smoking effort.

Finally, to manage the danger of relapse after you have succeeded in staying off of the habit for a while, you should keep in touch with your smoking cessation support group. Hearing from those who have tried and failed, and tried and succeeded before helps you stay focused in its own way. However, being there to help other people who are trying to break the habit, to share your own stories with them and to help them with their own struggle is also very rewarding. You are not complete until you have both.

I will be the first to tell you that the craving for nicotine or tobacco never really does go away. Over time it lessens, but at any time that you let your guard down you could suddenly find yourself puffing away at another stick of cigarette again. For that reason, you really cannot be too carefree about the kind of help you get to break the habit because you may need it for as long as you live.

Successful Smoking Cessation is Greatly Enhanced

You must first and foremost know that you want to quit, and you need to know why. It may be helpful to make a list of what you will gain or how you expect you will feel after quitting. Keep this list handy and look at it whenever you feel challenged to smoke. In other words you need to want to quit.

ACCEPTANCE OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: The state of being held as the cause of something that needs to be set right (responsibility for smoking lies with the smoker); accepts blame, fault, liability, accountability.

You have to accept that you are responsible for your habit. Yes the cigarette manufacturers made it easy for you to get cigarettes, they made it look cool to smoke, and they put advertisements in your face, everywhere they could, however you lit the flame, you could have said no. Smoking is a choice, you could choose not to.

PERSONAL DISCPLINE: training that corrects moulds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character; control gained by enforcing obedience or order, orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behaviour.

You will have to have personal discipline to force yourself to not light up. Contrary to popular opinion you will not have physical discomfort from quitting, no physical withdrawal symptoms if you will. However, you will have strong habitual mechanical reflexes to overcome, reaching for a pack or lighter, you will have strong mental urges to overcome.

Some of these reflexes and urges will go on for many years; they will surprise you when they happen. It takes personal discipline to overcome these reflexes and urges.

COMMITMENT: an agreement or pledge to do something in the future; something pledged; the state or an instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled (a commitment to quit smoking).

Commitment is the cement that will hold this all together, if you will promise yourself that you can succeed, you will. Tell other people that you have quit smoking. Some will try to derail you; they are the ones who do not have the will to try to quit them.

Challenge yourself to show them that you really do have the commitment and will power to quit. Try to find some ex-smokers to hang out with, they have fought the battle you are fighting, they know this is hard work, they will support you.

PASSION: This is the real secret. Transfer the passion that you have for smoking, to not smoking. Do you think smokers are not passionate about their habit, check when they only have 1 cigarette left? Passion can be defined as an intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.

Become passionate about not smoking, about improving your health and the health of those around you. Maybe you can even save your own life. It really is that important.

The Invention of Smoking Cessation – E-Cigarette

Some consider electronic cigarette a wonderful invention; others look on them with concern. At first, they were seen as a tool for the cessation of smoking, but over the years have become increasingly considered as a substitute to actually quitting. When they first arrived on the market it was believed by most people that it was a sure fire way of stopping smoking and most health organizations welcomed them as an easy way for people to break the habit.

Unfortunately, that didn’t prove to be the case. An artificial substitute for inhaling nicotine is just that, a replacement or displacement of the craving, but doesn’t actually stop the addiction. That isn’t to say that some people did have success breaking their habits by using electronic cigarettes, but it is more due to will power than any make-believe cigarettes.

The World Health Organization has claimed that there are no effective studies that prove that they are safe and effective in reducing smoking. Other studies differ. The American F.D.A., although it doesn’t condemn them outright, it does discourage their use, claiming that there isn’t enough evidence in their favour.

As you would expect, the Electronic Cigarette Association doesn’t agree. They point to a study carried out by the Boston University Public Health Unit which claims they found traces of harmful carcinogens lower than a thousand times the level of ordinary cigarettes and that there is little to be concerned about. The Canadian authorities have banned them, believing their harmlessness hasn’t been proved.

The United Kingdom prefers the use of the e-cigarette to trying to quit alone. They believe that nicotine patches and e-cigarettes all help smokers stop. While the debate rages, more and more people are turning to e-cigarettes as a healthier alternative to smoking.

Side Effects For Smoking Cessation

As you try to kick your smoking addiction, you certainly can you use the help you can get. Physicians and psychotherapists are not unaware of the stress you have to go through while you are trying to stop smoking.

Nicotine withdrawal symptoms like headaches, irritation, and anxiety can be rather severe even if you are prepared for it. At such times, even group therapy many not be enough to keep you calm. As such, your best bet may be tried on some antismoking drugs as prescribed by your physician.

Antismoking drugs have their various characteristics and can be rather thorough in their function. A few of them simulate the effect of nicotine in your body the way nicotine replacement products do, while others actually inhibit the chemical processes that set about your craving for the substance.

There are over four thousand chemicals in tobacco, and about forty-three of them are carcinogenic. Nicotine is chiefly responsible for addiction, so that if you can stop or hamper it action in your body, you can actually break the habit with that much more ease.

The first stop smoking drug you should know of is Chantix. Chantix is a great for adults who are trying to stop smoking, as opposed to kids in the same category, especially because of its rather severe side effects. It is one of such substances that keep you from feeling the craving for nicotine so that you can go through your day without even thinking of smoking.

The side effects may be severe however, including consequences like nausea, sleep disorder, constipation, headaches, and loss of appetite, mood alterations, and sometimes rashes.

In the face of the adverse effects of Chantix, you may want to consider the milder Zyban. Zyban is one of a group of antidepressant drugs that inhibit the reuptake of the serotonin neurotransmitter. When secreted, these chemicals in your body cause a spike in your pleasure-seeking behavior, which makes you ‘crave’ nicotine.

Zyban is the brand name for the substance bupropoin, which is not without it’s own side effects. Offshoot symptoms of bupropion include dizziness and fainting, dehydration, mouth dryness, difficulty urinating, and drowsiness. While on bupropion, you may want to abstain from milks and cheese because they set off a whole new range of side effects.

Scopolamine and Atarax are two drugs that can help you stop smoking too, except that they are not orally administered drugs like the previously mentioned ones. These two, blended together into a single SMART injection are given to you intravenously. Although they are individually FDA-approved, the cocktail is still in the review process. They work well to help your smoking cessation efforts, but they also have side effects similar to those mentioned above.

The fact that a drug works and saves you from the worse potential effects of nicotine is often reason enough to keep you in the program. Nicotine causes irregular heartbeats, high blood pressure, nausea and vomiting, and is a poison used in most insecticides.

The other chemicals in tobacco proffer little more than increased risks of cancer and heart disease, which should convince you to stay with the program until you don’t need the drug anymore. Smoking cessation is not an easy thing to achieve, but there are people doing it all around you. Perhaps it is time for you also to give it what it takes and never smoke another cigarette again.

The Lungs After Smoking Cessation

Many smokers who finally manage to end their smoking addiction swiftly come to be disillusioned because they feel their lungs after smoking cessation still feel awful and their breathing and full, health have not greatly improved. Many then fall back into the smoking habit, using the poor excuse that they have already done so much harm to their bodies already, why stop now?

This is of procedure ridiculous as it will only make things worse that they currently are. To give you an idea of what your lungs do face due to smoking, here is a sobering list.

Tar – This sticky aggregate that comes from cigarettes is a major question for your lungs. It coats the inside of your airways and also seeps into the lung tissue itself. It irritates the lungs, traps in poisons form cigarettes and can cause scarring as well. It is very hard to remove.

Toxins – Cigarettes comprise over 6000 chemicals that are risky to the human body. Among them are poisons used to kill rats for one, and many that are known carcinogens (they cause cancer). These toxins stay in your lungs and get into your bloodstream, going all over the body. They are sheltered from your natural detox systems by the tar present in your lungs as well.

Emphysema – This health is caused by an aggregate of heat and chemicals when you inhale cigarette smoke. The alveoli – which are tiny air sacs right at the end of the lung ‘tree’ – are destroyed by this combination, never to be repaired. This inhibits the vital function of putting oxygen into the bloodstream and taking our carbon dioxide. If you lose too many of these air sacs you will find it very difficult to breath and nothing can heal this!

Bronchitis – This is a health caused by irritation of the bronchial tubes in the lungs. Tar and toxins have vexed the tubes, this causes inflammation and sometimes irreversible scarring. Then succeed is an uncontrollable cough and often a coughing up of fluids. Lasting bronchitis is where this happens all the time thanks to your smoking habit.

Infections – The chemicals in cigarettes can linger in your throat and lungs for a long, long time. Trapped by the tar and mucus they can often cause infections which can be irritating, painful and sometimes even incapacitating! Your lungs, throat and all parts of the pulmonary theory can be affected by this.

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