Who Writes This Stuff?

Stop smoking program reviews are written by people from all walks of life, depending if the web site is taking any money from a stop smoking product.  Some stop smoking reviews are little more than long commercials with personal testimonies that can’t really be proven if such a person exists. If something promises miraculous results, then those are the stop smoking program reviews you want to ignore.

You want to try to find stop smoking program reviews that contrast and compare a lot of programs and products.  They should be easy to read, laid out in a sensible way and have an easy to understand rating system so you can quickly repair.  They also shouldn’t promise to work any miracles.  The best stop smoking reviews will also let you know that any method of quitting will be hard work.

Education Is Best Defense

One of the advantages about stop smoking program reviews is that they are free to read.  By learning as much as you can about what smoking does to you, what other people went through during nicotine withdraw and what programs are available in your area, you can arm yourself against the siren song of the cigarette.

Even your body is a great source of knowledge.  For example, this writer’s mother knew it was time to quit cold turkey when she leaned over and completely lost her breath.  Her then two year old child looked up at her and asked Mommy what was wrong.  She had a sudden intuition that if she died, who would look after her kids?  That was forty years ago and she never smoked again.  Her body (and its pain) was a powerful teacher.

Ultimately, no stop smoking program review is going to substitute for the real work of quitting.  Just as there are many reasons why people started smoking in the first place, there are many methods by which they can successfully stop smoking forever.  Even if one method doesn’t work for you, there are plenty of more to try.

They Do Work

With all of the problems going on in the state of Pennsylvania, there are many citizens who grumble about their tax dollars going to support state stop smoking programs rather than for any other state project.  But these state stop smoking programs are working.  In 2004, there were an estimated 2.3 million smokers in Pennsylvania.  This has dropped to 2.2 million.

One hundred thousand people might not seem like much, but those 100,000 have now made their lives healthier.  They will less likely to further tax the over-stressed Pennsylvania health care system and will miss less days of work.  That’s 100,000 Pennsylvanian families who will be able to hang onto their loved ones a little bit longer.  Can you really put a price tag on that?

What They’re Doing

Parts of the state’s stop smoking programs have included banning smoking in many places like hospitals, universities and government buildings.  Another effective and humorous campaign has been to launch a series of public service announcements on television featuring ways to quit.  They also had another featuring a teenager buying cigarettes getting eaten alive by carnivorous rabbits.

Pennsylvania Free Quitline

But one of the most successful state stop smoking programs in Pennsylvania has been the Pennsylvania Free Quitline.  Even in a stop smoking program review by the website Goliath listed the free phone service as extremely effective, helping over 6,000 Pennsylvanians to quit within its first year of operation in 2003.

It’s not like talking to a phone psychic, though, where you hear what you want to hear.  You do hear a lot of stuff that may make you angry or upset, but it can also save your life.  This is because Pennsylvania Free Quitline is staffed by counselors trained to not only get you the information you need, but help give you the motivation you need.  They also can help find financial help for getting nicotine replacement products and find any local services, support groups or workshops in your area.  There are Spanish speaking counselors, too, so there’s no excuse not to call if you are only fluent talking in Spanish.

Advantages For WhyQuit

WhyQuit online program to stop smoking is available on the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  You go through a series of videos, articles and true medical case histories of people with smoking-related diseases to help give you the tenacity to help quit.  They do ask that you have been nicotine free for 72 hours, but no one enforces that.  Cold turkey means no use of nicotine replacement therapies such as the patch, gum or inhaler.

WhyQuit also has one of the most comprehensive list of links for smoking cessation support groups and articles on the web.  They are geared to the cold turkey approach to quitting smoking, so you won’t see much of anything about the use of nicotine replacement therapies.

There are also some really graphic images about the internal organs of smokers as compared to how the healthy organs look like.  Although they might seem shocking, they can be the kick in the pants you need to keep with an online program to stop smoking.  And one other advantage to WhyQuit – it’s free.

The Cost Of Smoking Index

If the physical effects of smoking aren’t enough to keep you on any online stop smoking program, then you should take a look at a brilliant section on WhyQuit entitled “The Real Cost of Smoking”.  You can see just how you’ve been wasting your money and lining the pockets of fat cats in the tobacco industry.

Paying yourself not to smoke is recommended by many online programs to stop smoking.  All you do is put your smoking money in a jar, envelope or savings account.  You can even put your beer money in there too, if you always have to have a beer or other alcoholic beverage while smoking.  In just a few months, you will be amazed at the amount of money you have.  Treat yourself to a vacation or a concert.

Please See Your Doctor

Although some people are able to quit cold turkey without the help from a doctor, most people in modern times need the help of a doctor in picking the best stop smoking program for them.  You need to have a good idea of the current state of your health and if you have any conditions that may be aggravated when you try to quit.

For example, most smokers get depressed when they quit.  If you already have depression, then you may need a temporary increase in your medication or your doctor may advise that cutting back gradually would be the best stop smoking plan for you.  This would mean that you would have to stay busy in order to keep from thinking about smoking and take a product to help wean you off of nicotine, such as the inhaler, the patch or nicotine gum.

What About Those Commercials?

There have been a lot of television advertisements from the tobacco industry about the websites they have set up for an online program to stop smoking.  Some of these are not free.  There are also many websites online that offer information and support that are free.  Some will give you a month free to enter their “best stop smoking program”, but from then on you need to pay.

Basically, these programs just consist of a book and a forum or message board to interact with other people trying to quit, too.  These can be the best stop smoking programs for people with not a lot of time and a more introspective nature.

If you don’t like to be alone, then online programs won’t be the best stop smoking programs for you.  You may really need the direct contact and social interaction with a doctor or therapist to help you learn the tools and habits of the non-smoking life.  In this case, you should look for a retreat or workshop to help you quit.  Searching online under “smoking cessation” may help you yield results rather than just entering “best stop smoking program”.

Fire Up The Mouse

There are many free stop smoking programs available on the Internet.  Tobacco companies have been ordered by the government to put up websites and make packets of accurate information available to those who decide to no longer use their products.  If you don’t have Internet connections at home, you could try your local library to get online or ask your doctor for help.  They may have a lot of booklets for you based on those free stop smoking programs.

Perhaps you’ve seen television commercials about people who’ve lived under a rock all of their lives and were surprised to discover that cigarettes were addictive and that’s why they were having trouble quitting.  Those commercials are for the free smoking programs on their websites.

What Do They Include?

Basically, all these free stop smoking programs are is a book – either they send you a book or they have it up online for you to read.  It tells you the facts of why you need to quit, all of the frightening things that will happen to your body if you don’t and lists of techniques smokers have used to become smoke-free.  They often include coupons for various anti-smoking products like the nicotine patch, nicotine gum or inhalers.

Perhaps the best part of these kinds of free stop smoking programs is that they often have forums, chat rooms or support groups so you can connect to other people going through the same exact problems that you are.  When you do try to quit, it can often seem as if you are the only person in the world going through your physical struggles.  You may often feel ashamed of yourself and then wonder if quitting is really worth it.

Quitting smoking can produce emotional effects that are almost the same as for those people with clinical depression. You may even start getting suicidal thoughts.  You might not be able to sleep or have incredible troubles concentrating and making decisions.  These can be easily rectified through a course of antidepressants.

When Cold Turkey Is Best

If no one else in your house smokes, then going cold turkey will be a viable stop smoking program for you.  If you seem to be the only smoker left in your social circle, this is another indication that going cold turkey may be the best plan for you.  When you quit, you don’t need the whiff of tobacco smoke or see another person light up.  That’s just too tempting.

If you are in basic good health – except for smoking – than going cold turkey is a viable stop smoking program.  You will go through massive physical withdraw symptoms, including a headache and pounding heart.  Symptoms of nicotine withdraw are different for each person.  If you have a major health condition or a condition which limits your movements, then talk to your doctor before going cold turkey.  A gradual plan might work best for you.

Keep Busy

When you use cold turkey as your stop smoking program, you need to keep busy.  You need to not only keep your body busy with walking, gardening or household chores, but you need to keep your hands and mouth busy.  Chewing on gum, celery sticks, carrots or even sucking on hard candy can keep your mouth busy.  Arts and crafts can help encourage your hands to be busy.

Know Anyone With Emphysema?

Another thing you can do in your cold turkey stop smoking program is to visit someone with advanced lung conditions such as cancer or emphysema who still smoke.  There’s nothing like watching a patient unhook himself from his oxygen tank, crawl outside, have a smoke and then crawl back inside and hook himself back up to the oxygen tank to inspire you to quit.

When you do manage to stop smoking for at least one month, try not to convert every smoker you see to your stop smoking program.  They will not only take offense, but will do everything they can to get you to smoke just out of spite.

Addicted To Nicotine

Smoking cigarettes means that you will soon become addicted to nicotine and then when the smoker desires to quit smoking they will, in all probability, worry about the cold turkey those results when their supply of nicotine gets cut off. However, with a bit of education regarding smoking and its many dangers it is quite possible that you will succeed in quitting smoking without experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms.

Thanks to some new and advanced prescription stop smoking aids it is now possible to quit smoking the painless way. You should, at the very outset, prepare you for the war against smoking and the first step in this direction is to consult your doctor about which the best means of quitting smoking is and how to go about using different prescription stop smoking aids to become a non-smoker.

The good news is that there are quite a few prescription stop smoking aids available and with the help of your doctor you should easily be able to pick one that will suit your smoking habits as well as your situation. Another positive to using prescription stop smoking aids including drugs is that these drugs are not habit forming and so there is little risk that you will be substituting one addiction for another.

The key to succeeding in quitting smoking lies in getting your doctor to prescribe the right prescription stop smoking aid with which to kick the habit. Once you make a conscious decision to stop smoking you will also need to enquire from your doctor about suitable stop smoking programs. There are many novel quit smoking solutions worth checking out including trying meditation as well as yoga or you can even take simple steps to help you kick the habit such as throwing every little thing that is associated with smoking – both at home and in your workplace – out of sight. Once the thought of smoking is banished from your mind you will then find many new avenues with which to do something other than light up a cigarette.

Chantix, An FDA Approved Drug

However, all is not lost for smokers because thanks to prescription stop smoking pills such as Chantix that is an FDA approved drug being manufactured by Pfizer, smokers stand a much better chance of succeeding in being able to quit the wretched habit of lighting up a cigarette. In fact, Chantix is a wonderful prescription stop smoking pill that uses a wholly new approach to fight addiction to nicotine in a way that will help almost every smoker in giving up the habit.

Before a prescription stop smoking pill such as Chantix became available on the market, smokers were generally prescribed a prescription stop smoking pill called Buproprion that was sold as an anti-depressant called Wellbutrin. According to research on the effects of Wellbutrin it was found that it helped in causing nicotine receptors from feeling too much craving for nicotine and this had the effect of making people not have such strong desires to light up a cigarette. This in turn meant that some smokers were able to quit smoking.

However, Wellbutrin was more of an anti-depressant and so researchers realized that there was a greater need to find an alternative prescription stop smoking pill that would address only the task of making smokers give up their habits. This in turn led these researchers to use the knowledge gained from using Wellbutrin and applying it to developing new prescription stop smoking pills that would address the task of making smokers quit lighting up.

Chantix therefore represents the outcome of these research efforts – even though it works on nicotine receptors in different ways than Wellbutrin. In fact, Chantix, a wonderful prescription stop smoking pill, helps to release tiny quantities of dopamine that has the effect of fooling the brain into believing that nicotine has got into the person’s bloodstream and so helps to alleviate symptoms associated with nicotine withdrawal.

Though there are several ways to help you quit smoking, you should still seriously consider using prescription stop smoking aids because not only are they very effective but you won’t also have to worry about experiencing ‘cold turkey’. In addition, it also helps to be better educated about smoking as well as its perils because the more knowledge you have about the subject the better are the chances that you will make the right decisions and choices in regard to quitting smoking the proper and effective way.

Generic Name Of Varenicline

This new stop smoking prescription drug has the generic name of Varenicline though at present Pfizer’s drug is not available in its generic form and therefore when you go out to buy Chantix you will be forced into paying a somewhat higher price. Nevertheless, Varenicline contains a compound that is toxic by nature and which is known as Cystine and in its previous stop smoking drugs, Pfizer was selling products that contained ingredients that were similar to but not the same as Cystine.

It is not possible for pharmaceutical companies to produce Cystine that is a compound that occurs naturally; these companies are therefore forced into producing what are known as ‘derivatives’ which need to be produced in laboratories. This in turn means that new stop smoking prescriptions cannot contain Cystine and instead contain Varenicline which is Pfizer’s patented synthetic compound that tries to mimic Cystine.

The main benefit of using Cystine is that in a proper dosage it can help block your body’s response to the presence of nicotine. This is also however witnessed in the new stop smoking prescription drug called Zyban that contains a compound that essentially does what Cystine does and that is reduces the amount of pleasure felt by smokers when they draw on their cigarettes. Even Chantix that is yet another new stop smoking prescription drug can do the same and so, both these new stop smoking prescription drugs help lower a smoker’s desire to smoke.

It must however be stressed that neither Zyban nor Chantix are any kind of magic pills and that they will be most effective only when used as part of a counseled quit smoking plan. Pfizer of course touts its Chantix to be superior to Zyban though there is no conclusive evidence to back up these claims. There is a lot of merit in regard to using Chantix that is certainly one of the better prescription stop smoking pills available on the market today. At the very least, Chantix uses a novel means of getting smokers to give their habit by limiting the smoker’s urge to light up.

Dangers Of Smoking

In the recent past, a concerted effort has been made by authorities in making smokers understand the dangers of smoking. In addition, there is a lot of effort being made in getting smokers to give their habit and this can be seen from the fact that certain states in the US have passed legislation that prohibits anyone from smoking inside commercial buildings.

However, smoking is not an illegal act though, in order to dissuade people from smoking, higher taxes are being levied on cigarettes so as to make them costlier and so, less of an attractive proposition. With prescription stop smoking aids such as Zyban readily available it is now possible to quit the habit and this prescription stop smoking aid also has the effect of becalming the user’s nerves that in turn plays an important role in helping smokers to give up their habit of lighting up another cigarette.

There are in fact several good reasons why Zyban is being touted as the best prescription stop smoking aid. For one it will make a smoker feel mellower and once a smoker’s nerves are becalmed the need to light up another cigarette is not as strong as would be otherwise. Smoking, in fact, leads to a rise in blood pressure as well as racing heart and even leads to feeling agitated. The upshot of smoking is that people light up when they need to calm their nerves and this can be seen from the fact that most smokers are also highly strung and addictive people as well.

Zyban is an excellent prescription stop smoking aid as it helps in bringing down stress levels and leads to feeling more relaxed and in addition it also helps smokers feel more confident about facing challenges of life without needing to light up another cigarette.

These days, there is a new stop smoking prescription drug available on the market that is giving smokers renewed hope of being able to quit smoking once and for all. This drug is none other than Chantix that has been passed by the FDA and it does offer real hope to smokers wishing to quit smoking altogether.

So, now there is more choice in regard to prescription stop smoking aids as you can now choose between Chantix and Zyban.