Why Nearly All Stop Smoking Websites Are Unhelpful

I put ‘How to stop smoking’ in Google and this is what came up (emphases added) :

Readers’ Digest

The 23 Best Ways to Quit Smoking…Make an honest list of all the things you like about smoking…Then make another list of why quitting won’t be easy.

WebMD

So you’re ready to kick the habit. That’s great! Making that commitment is half the battle. It’s not going to be easy. But choosing the best way to quit is a good first step to ensure you stick with it

wikiHow

Nicotine is incredibly addictive and it will take determination to quit….Be prepared for nicotine-withdrawal symptoms…When you stop smoking, you might experience increased cravings, anxiety, depression, headaches, feeling tense or restless, increased appetite and weight gain, and problems concentrating….

helpguide.org

We all know the health risks of smoking, but that doesn’t make it any easier to kick the habit…quitting can be really tough.

kidshealth.org

…it’s true that for most people quitting isn’t easy…Everyone knows it can be hard to stop smoking..the nicotine in cigarettes is a powerfully addictive drug…You’ll need patience and, yes, willpower.

Mayo Clinic

10 ways to resist tobacco cravings…Tobacco cravings can wear you down when you’re trying to quit…tobacco cravings or urges to smoke can be powerful…when a tobacco craving strikes…Try nicotine replacement therapy [or] prescription non-nicotine stop-smoking medications such as bupropion (Zyban) and varenicline (Chantix).

Medical News Today

How to give up smoking: Ten tips…Nicotine in cigarettes is addictive, which is why people experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when they try to quit. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)…helps to ease some of the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, such as intense cravings, nausea, tingling of hands and feet, insomnia, mood swings, and difficulty concentrating.

What is noticeable about all these – and they’re a representative sample of a large number of similar sites – is how discouraging they are! They tell you how difficult it will be to give up smoking, the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and cravings (whatever that means) that would-be quitters will have to face and propose nicotine products (when the smoker is trying to escape from nicotine addiction!) or prescription drugs which can only work by causing a chemical imbalance in the brain. No wonder quitting smoking seems to hard!

There is one site which appears fairly high on the list that I haven’t yet mentioned: Allen Carr. This comes nearest to what the Symonds Methods offers and, likewise, recommends no drugs or nicotine products but relies on a psychological approach. Incidentally, Allen Carr died in 2006, ironically from lung cancer, but his method is still available through the business he developed. The problem with it is that although he grasped intuitively why people smoke and therefore realised that a change of mind-set is enough in theory to get smokers to quit, he lacked the necessary medical and biological knowledge to explain clearly the mechanism of addiction, using instead crude similes such as ‘the little monster in your stomach’ and ‘the big monster in your head’.

Does the Allen Carr method work? This begs the question of whether any method of smoking cessation works. Smoking is a voluntary activity. If someone uses the X method and stops for, say, one year, and then a day later starts smoking again, does this mean X method has failed? No, it means the smoker has changed his or her mind about wanting to be a non-smoker. Nonetheless, a study was done in Holland in 2014 (https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-952) which, in spite of methodological limitations, showed that in a company setting 41% of participants were not smoking at thirteen months compared with 10% of controls – a four-fold difference. This is all well and good, but it still means that 59% failed to quit.

We now come to the method I have developed myself, which in all modesty I call the Symonds Method of smoking cessation. In theory, it should be 100% effective. Now hold on Dr Symonds, this is a bit over the top, isn’t it? Actually, no.

When a smoker sits down in front of me to learn how to be a non-smoker again, I ask them to give an undertaking that in the unlikely event they don’t happily stop after the first session, they will come back (without additional charge) for as many sessions as necessary until they do stop. The definition of success, therefore, is someone who doesn’t come back.

I have been accused of being self-serving by saying this, but I think it merely highlights the fundamental problem of smoking: in spite of being well aware of the risks, many smokers don’t want to stop or change to an allegedly safer way of continuing their nicotine addiction.

Gabriel Symonds

Dr Gabriel Symonds is a British medical doctor living in Japan who has developed a unique interactive stop smoking method. It involves no nicotine, drugs, hypnosis, or gimmicks but consists in helping smokers to demonstrate to themselves why they really smoke and why it seems so hard to stop doing it. Then most people find they can quit straightaway and without a struggle. He has used this approach successfully with hundreds of smokers; it works equally well for vapers. Dr Symonds also writes about transgenderism and other controversial medical matters. See drsymonds.com