Successful Tobacco Cessation Programs: Behavioral Therapy

Okay, there are three reasons you keep puffing your life away. There are also three ways to help you kick the habit of puffing your life away. They are:

 Behavioral Therapy

 Medicines. Nicotine replacement including a nicotine replacement patch, gum, and nasal spray. Newly introduced prescription medications like the antidepressant bupropion approved by the FDA for tobacco smoking cessation use in 1997 marketed as Zyban.

 A long range plan to help start, support, and succeed at tobacco cessation and support to help you work the plan.

Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive therapy is quick and helps adjust your lifestyle and habits as they now are. It leaves your great grandparents and Mommy and Daddy out of it. It’s productive and can help some people a lot.

Tobacco quitting support groups are invaluable, especially online forums. The folks in them understand your problems, they are going through the same experiences, and it’s private. I mean, it’s not like sitting in the town square spilling your beans and hoping it won’t be the next day’s diner gossip.

Group Quits. The pulling together of close friends or family members who also want to quit using tobacco products can be incredibly helpful support for each other. A group of us used what we called “dime therapy” to support each other. It simply meant calling each other for moral support when we weakened.

Another support can be your own words – written in a journal. Anytime you need a boost you can check out your progress and or check out why and when you smoke so you can avoid those times. Journals can help you keep your quitting program running on target, especially since the first quitting step is to create a long term plan. The second is encouraging yourself and a journal can include gratitude notes, reminders why and how to quit using tobacco and anything else that will help you quit. Has a celebrity you admire come out against smoking? Write down their words for when you need them most. A journals power is endless. And best of all, you don’t have to be a professional writer to benefit from your words.

Your doctor, dentist, or pharmacist can also point you to places to find support.

Sources: www.drugabuse.gov, www.nida.gov or www.cancer.gov or www.smokefree.gov Or, call the National Cancer Institute’s Smoking Quitline at 1-800-784-8669