Stop Smoking Aids

Stop Smoking Aids: Do they Work?

These days there are many kinds of stop smoking aids available. This article considers nicotine replacement aids and whether they help in the drive to quit smoking.

Smoking is an addiction and it is often said that the nicotine in cigarettes and cigars is as addictive as heroin, or even more. This is a real physical addiction, not just a habit. If you woke up tomorrow with total amnesia so that you could not remember anything about your life until now and even had no clue what a cigarette was, you would still feel the effects of nicotine addiction.

Some ways of quitting smoking involve supplying nicotine to the body in other ways to reduce these physical effects. For example, you can get nicotine gum, patches and inhalers. The idea is that by gradually reducing the nicotine intake, you reduce the body's dependency until it reaches zero.

At the same time, you quit the habit of smoking (holding a lit cigarette, inhaling, always smoking with a coffee, etc) on day one, so that is dealt with separately from the physical addiction.

These aids have a good success rate - around twice as many people are successful at quitting than those who go 'cold turkey'. It is hard to say exactly why, but if you think of other comparable situations, you can start to understand.

For example, using the idea of reducing dependency, you would think that a good way to quit would be to slowly reduce the number of cigarettes that you smoke each day until after 20 days or whatever you reach zero, and then you have quit. No problem, right? Wrong. You probably know this because you tried it already. Most everyone did, because it seems like it should be such a great method. In fact, it sucks.

Why? Because at some point, you must actually stop smoking. At that time you need a big boost of motivation. You have the motivation now - but will you still have it 20 days from now? Probably not. Somewhere along the way you are likely to start thinking that in fact, you would be happy if you just halved your intake. So you decide to do that instead, and then pretty soon it starts to creep up again.

Nicotine patches and gum are a lot better than the 'cutting down' method because they do require you to quit smoking the cigarettes right away.

Another big advantage that nicotine replacement has, is that it reduces the withdrawal symptoms. This is very important for some people and probably is the main reason why these aids really do help many people to quit.

Two things that bother people about giving up smoking are the tendency to put on weight, and increased irritability. Many people, even those who genuinely want to stop, would prefer to keep on smoking than to quit and gain weight. Others are afraid that stopping will make them so irritable that they may lose a relationship or a job.

Often they have had past experiences of trying to quit, with these consequences. For other people these fears are unconscious, but they are there all the same and they are a big motivation killer. Patches or gum can help with both of these.

So quitting aids can help people to quit in some circumstances, but you do still need motivation. The aids are not going to work by themselves. Combining them with other methods is the best way.

Nicotine is a dangerous substance. The sale of these products may be restricted in some jurisdictions. Always read the instructions on any medication and consult your doctor for advice before using stop smoking aids.