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What is the Best Way to Stop Smoking?

There are many different ways to give up smoking and all have varying success rates. The most important thing is to plan ahead and set a date for quitting – in order to quit smoking and stay a non-smoker there must be a complete commitment to giving up.

The most popular route to giving up smoking is going cold turkey. This means quite simply stopping smoking without any aids, simply using willpower. This is a very difficult thing to do and the success rates of quitting in this way are not high; after a year of giving up an estimated 95% of people will be back on the cigarettes.

The upside is that it costs nothing to give up in this way, and the confidence boost for people who stop smoking using willpower alone is immense.

Another way to give up smoking is to use a form of nicotine replacement therapy. There are many products on the market including patches, nasal sprays, inhalers and chewing gum. People who decide to quit using these aids stand a much better chance of staying off cigarettes– possibly over a third are still ex smokers a year later.

Some people have found hypnotherapy useful when giving up smoking. This involves being sent into a deep state of relaxation while the hypnotherapist attempts to reprogram the brain in order to create an aversion to smoking. Only one session should be required but this could be quite expensive. The upside is that there is no involvement of chemicals such as nicotine.

Possibly one of the best ways of giving up smoking is to gradually cut down either the nicotine in cigarettes smoked, by changing to a lighter brand, or cutting down the number smoked. By decreasing the level of nicotine in the blood the body's requirement for smoking should decrease.