How to quit smoking? It’s a question that plagues smokers daily, with no easy answers. Luckily, many options are available to help you put down that cigarette for good. The important thing is to find what works best for your situation.
If you want to try a patch, e-cigarettes, hypnotherapy, or cold turkey, that’s entirely up to you! As long as you find a method that works for you, you’ll be on the path to finally breaking old smoking habits.
Nicotine Addiction
The nicotine gum patch and lozenges at the pharmacy are useful for smokers wanting to quit smoking, but most smokers are not ready to quit if that means giving up addictive nicotine. Quitting smoking and nicotine at the same time often results in quitters soon returning to smoking to get their addiction needs met.
What Are The Options
Carry -On
The first option is to keep smoking, but the risks of smoking are extreme – cigarettes eventually kill half of those who continue to smoke past age 35.
Cold-Turkey
The second option is to quit smoking and tobacco all at once.
Smokers wanting to quit smoking and tobacco together should contact their doctor or the helpline 13 QUIT (13 7848), or if they are ready to do it and sure of success, go cold turkey. Quitline
Switch To Another Form Of Nicotine
The third option is to switch to another form of nicotine delivery. Several products can provide smokers with nicotine:
Nicotine Patches And Gum
The only method fully approved by the government, many nicotine addicts find it difficult to get enough nicotine from patches and gum. If they use both together, they find they do better.
A nicotine patch gives a steady background level of nicotine. To take care of sudden urges to smoke, many quitters chew on 4mg nicotine gum, which gives them a nicotine effect after ten minutes.
Gum and patches are sold in supermarkets and pharmacies. Suppose people smoke at the same time as using these nicotine medications. In that case, they may feel slightly sick, which means they are getting as much nicotine as they need and should now cut down on cigarettes until they rely on the nicotine gum and patch only for their nicotine.
E-Cigarettes
Many smokers successfully use e-cigarettes to quit or reduce tobacco consumption and save money.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that allow users to inhale vapour. The vapour contains water, nicotine, and a flavour of your choosing – typically fruity or minty flavours.
Many e-cigarettes look like modern-day versions of a traditional cigarettes, with an LED tip that glows like the end of a real cigarette when you inhale. E-cigarettes come in many different brands, sizes and shapes and can be used with varying flavours of e-liquid.
Nasal snuff
Regular users obtain high levels of nicotine, equal to cigarettes. It gives nicotine hit quickly, within two minutes. It is legal to sell it, and specialist tobacconists will likely stock it. It is addictive and may cause disease, but it is much safer than cigarettes. Now that smoking is known to kill half of continuing smokers, snuff could come back into fashion.
Because it has not been used, it has not been studied, and little is known about its effects. The safest nasal snuff with the lowest nitrosamines is from Swedish Match.
As the risks are likely to be similar to oral snuff (see below), nasal snuff, if it helps smokers to switch off smoking, will avoid the high risks of smoking, and used for the first year or so after stopping smoking, will reduce the risk of relapse to smoking.
Because of its fast action, it will be helpful if kept handy as an emergency source of nicotine and used to satisfy and counter the urge to smoke. Like glasses at parties, it is best not to share between friends.
Oral snuff
This traditional Swedish smokeless tobacco has to be ordered on the internet. It is barred from sale in Australia. It costs about two-thirds as much as cigarettes.
The only snuff worth using is made in Sweden and is very low in nitrosamines (under five parts per million), and is unlikely to cause cancer. It is used by a million Swedes, primarily men, daily.
Some 200,000 Swedish women now dip snuff (also known as a nicotine pouch). It is spitless and used in the form of a small teabag under the upper lip. It is kept there for half an hour and, over the course of a day, provides nicotine levels higher than nicotine patches or gum. Dry snuff does not have to be refrigerated before the sale.
It is about 5% as dangerous as cigarette smoking, and the risk of uncommon mouth cancer is one in five the risk for smokers. Smokers use it instead of going outside in the cold to smoke. As long as people satisfy their need for nicotine by not smoking, they are 95% better off health-wise.
