How to Quit Smoking

The very idea that you need a way, method, technique, or tool to quit smoking is odd. If you want to quit smoking, or quit doing anything, surely, you just quit!

Of course it’s not so simple in the case of smoking, and I’m only too well aware that many smokers have genuine difficulty in quitting.

A whole industry has grown up of quit-smoking aids, from nicotine patches and gum, e-cigarettes, and prescription drugs, to say nothing of gimmicks like hypnosis, laser treatment, magnets in your ears, coconut oil, and so on.

All these approaches offer techniques of one sort of another; none offers understanding.

The Symonds Method (the word ‘method’ is used merely for convenience) on the other hand is based on helping smokers to understand and to demonstrate to themselves why they really smoke and why quitting seems so hard; then it will be easy.

WHO’s Ambition for Smokers to ‘Commit to Quit’

The WHO, bless their cotton socks, in December 2020 launched a ‘year-long global campaign for World No Tobacco Day 2021 – “Commit to Quit” ’ and as part of this [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-12-05T08:28:12+00:007 March 2021|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, How to Quit Smoking, WHO|

How to Solve the Smoking Problem

It is a truth that appears not to be universally acknowledged that in order to stop doing something you have to start doing it first. People are not born smokers. [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-07-06T08:20:49+00:008 August 2019|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Popular Blog, Quit Smoking Services, Tobacco Control|

The Tear-Jerker Way To Quit Smoking

A recently released short film, produced by a number of local health authorities in the north of England, is titled ‘Don’t be the 1’. This is an admonition not to [...]

Gabriel Symonds2020-12-14T23:47:36+00:0025 September 2018|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Reasons to Quit Smoking|

How E-Cigarettes Make You Feel Bad

It seems these days everyone is jumping on the e-cigarette bandwagon—the debate is swirling back and forth. Are e-cigarettes harmful or good for smokers? If they’re harmful, how much less [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-08-20T05:37:42+00:0021 September 2018|Categories: E-Cigarettes, How to Quit Smoking, Vaping|

Nicotine Patches for Nicotine Addiction

It’s an unfortunate fact that many smokers, although they dislike smoking and wish they didn’t have to do it, find the prospect of quitting very difficult. Therefore it’s understandable that [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-01-06T00:50:52+00:006 June 2018|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction, Nicotine Patches|

The Hard Way to Quit Smoking – Part II

The august American Cancer Society, in its efforts to scare people into quitting smoking, sponsors an annual event in November that they call the Great American Smokeout. They show a [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-04-27T00:51:52+00:0027 November 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

Mrs May to the Rescue!

My blog Mrs May – Save Us! was a critique that I wrote in January 2017 of an appeal by a group of 1000 doctors to the UK Prime Minister [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-04-19T11:43:39+00:0020 August 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Replacement Therapy, Smoking Harm Reduction|

How Addicted Are You?

A little-known advantage of not smoking In the NHS Smokefree website there’s a section headed ‘Addiction test’. The purpose of this is to find out how dependent you are on [...]

Gabriel Symonds2018-07-23T22:19:07+00:0016 August 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

Smoking Cessation and Humour

Healthline does it again. They put up a website in 2014 entitled ‘29 Things Only a Person Who’s Quitting Smoking Would Understand’. Apart from the crudity and smugness of the [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-12-05T00:15:26+00:0011 June 2017|Categories: Benefits of quitting smoking, How to Quit Smoking|

What the ’Eck! Journalism or Medical Advice?

My attention was drawn recently to a badly written ‘Ezine’ article from 2010 by the well-named so-called expert author Hayden Eck with the confusing title ‘Do Not Give Up – [...]

Gabriel Symonds2020-06-30T01:48:43+00:001 May 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

The Rubbish Way to Stop Smoking

If you were new to the piano and wanted to play Bach’s C major prelude you would need to practise. (There are YouTube videos showing how to do this.) But [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-01-17T00:54:14+00:009 April 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

How Not to Stop Smoking – Part III

In the Tobacco Control Industry three unhelpful concepts regularly crop up in learned articles in scholarly journals. Or scholarly articles in learned journals. Trying to give up This is the [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-03-29T00:29:25+00:0022 January 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|

Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms and Readiness to Quit

What are nicotine withdrawal symptoms? I have done a survey of the records of the last one hundred patients I treated for smoking cessation in face-to-face sessions. These records contain [...]

Gabriel Symonds2018-06-14T07:43:32+00:003 January 2017|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

The Dangers of Stopping Smoking

I've said it before and I’ll say it again: almost everything that most people believe about smoking is wrong. Browsing the internet will reveal plenty of examples. Here's one I [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-11-26T08:01:36+00:0028 December 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|

The Helpful Guide to Quitting Smoking

As an example of everything that’s wrong with the orthodox approach to smoking cessation we need look no further than an online feature from Helpguide.org called How to Quit Smoking [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-05-08T02:47:45+00:0019 December 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Patches, Nicotine Replacement Therapy|

E-Cigarettes: a Public Health Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Heavy smog in Piccadilly Circus, London, December 1952. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Do you know what a pea-souper is? You don’t really want to know, at [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-10-20T00:23:54+00:007 December 2016|Categories: E-Cigarettes, How to Quit Smoking, Vaping|

E-Cigarettes May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Is this the beginning of the end for ENDS? The acronym – much medical writing is peppered with annoying non-standard abbreviations of this sort – means Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems. [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-04-09T02:53:39+00:001 December 2016|Categories: E-Cigarettes, How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Replacement Therapy, Smoking Alternatives|

The Art of Medicine and Stopping Smoking

The distinguished medical journal, The Lancet, in June 2016 reported the results of a huge multinational collaborative effort to investigate the risks of psychiatric side-effects of two drugs used in [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-11-19T01:00:41+00:0011 November 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Patches|

E-Cigarettes and the Charity Commission

Not everyone is happy about e-cigarettes – and it’s not just I. The BBC online news (5 November 2016) carries a report that Dr Phil Banfied, chairman of the British [...]

Gabriel Symonds2018-06-14T00:39:39+00:006 November 2016|Categories: E-Cigarettes, How to Quit Smoking|

Chewing the Wall and Climbing the Carpet

In the best tradition of the orthodox approach to smoking cessation, this year’s vintage of the quaintly named Stoptober scheme, produced by NHS England, has just finished. At least it’s [...]

Gabriel Symonds2019-05-15T10:35:59+00:0029 October 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|

Why NRT Makes it Harder to Stop Smoking

NRT, let me remind you, means so-called nicotine replacement therapy. Why ‘so-called’? Because nicotine is not a replacement for anything, nor is nicotine being replaced with something, so the name [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-12-18T01:26:50+00:0019 October 2016|Categories: E-Cigarettes, How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine gum, Nicotine Patches|

Stopping Smoking is its Own Reward

In my research on smoking I recently came across a book and a website with the following titles: ‘Smoke-free in 30 days’ and ‘STOP SMOKING! in 28 days’, respectively. Here’s [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-10-07T00:53:05+00:009 October 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|

Cold Turkey

So much activity in dealing with the smoking problem is directed towards trying to get smokers to stop. But you have to start doing something before you can stop doing [...]

Gabriel Symonds2019-01-13T07:16:08+00:0027 August 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|

Guidelineitis Strikes Again! Or, How Not to Quit Smoking

I recently came across an interesting guideline for doctors who are trying to help smokers quit. It’s a publication from 2008 by the US Department of Health and Human Services [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-08-10T01:30:49+00:0026 August 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

How Many Attempts Do Smokers Need Before They Quit?

How many centuries spent The sedentary soul In toils of measurement…? (W B Yeats) This curious concept is [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-03-13T12:55:19+00:0022 August 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction|

Tobacco Treatment Specialist

If a doctor were to call himself a tobacco treatment specialist what would you think he does? It’s ambiguous. Is he treating a disease called tobacco, similarly to the way [...]

Gabriel Symonds2023-01-30T00:47:05+00:0020 August 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Patches|

How to Quit Smoking

I have just come across a brilliant feature from the Reader’s Digest: The 23 Best Ways to Quit Smoking. It’s really about hints or tips that might be helpful to [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-09-07T00:40:42+00:001 August 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Quit Smoking Tips|

How Not to Stop Smoking – Part II

What does the US National Cancer Institute have to say about stopping smoking? On their website there’s a long section titled ‘How To Handle Withdrawal Symptoms and Triggers When You [...]

Gabriel Symonds2019-05-10T01:34:46+00:0026 June 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Patches, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Why Do Smokers Smoke?

The other night I was eating with a friend in a local restaurant—non-smoking of course—and had occasion to observe my fellow diners. There was a party of what are known [...]

Gabriel Symonds2021-01-16T12:25:28+00:0024 May 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|

Why it’s a Bad Idea to Set a Smoking Quit Date

Nearly all stop smoking methods will tell you to pick a date in the near future when you intend to quit. This is a bad idea. Here’s why: First, it [...]

Gabriel Symonds2022-02-18T00:39:45+00:0010 May 2016|Categories: How to Quit Smoking|