Why Most People Fail at Quitting Smoking

Quitting smoking isn't easy. Getting hooked, yeah, that's a walk in the park, but dropping the habit is probably one of the hardest things you can do.

This isn't because it's actually a difficult process, however. It's hard because nobody really knows how to do it. Most people think that you can cure a smoking addiction by taking some sort of magic pill (be it in the form of a gum, patch, doctor-prescribed thing, or otherwise), but nothing could be further from the truth. Let's examine a few of the wrong ways to go about quitting:

1. Nicotine Replacement Therapy Nicotine replacement therapy works by giving you a supply of nicotine that you don't need to smoke to get. While this seems like a great idea, it doesn't curb your want for cigarettes, it merely stops your want for nicotine. When you want a cigarette, you don't tell yourself that you want some nicotine, you want a smoke!

2. Nicotine Blocking Medication Nicotine blocking medications work by preventing your body from receiving the enjoyable effects of smoking a cigarette. This has a leg up on replacement therapy because you can still smoke, but it doesn't stop your want to actually hold the cigarette and go through the smoking process.

So, What Does Work? In order to properly quit, you need to break the mental ties that bind you to cigarettes. You need to stop the connection between, for example, hanging out at the bar and lighting up. Once you break those simple ties, smoking is merely a thing of the past.