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The First 72 Hours
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Why Prior Attempts Failed - A permanent successful recovery is not nearly as dependent upon "planning" as it is upon "learning." None of our prior attempts failed because we selected the wrong recovery commencement date. They failed because we failed to understand and master the principles underlying our addiction. It doesn’t take brute strength or raw courage to quit for the up to 72 hours that may be necessary for our body to become 100% nicotine clean, for 90% of nicotine's metabolites to pass via our urine, and withdrawal to normally peak in intensity. Instead, it takes dreams, desires and a bit of dependency understanding.
Discovering Online Support - When a smoker first discovers online support, with hundreds of quitters encouraging each other on message boards, it can be a pretty exciting time. The support encounter and experience itself has fueled thousands of successful recoveries but more often than not the novelty wears off, crisis arrives, and the uneducated quitter is left with little to fall back upon except words of hope on a screen.
Rule #1 - Put Your Recovery Education First - The below education links are intended as a roadmap of the basic knowledge, tools and skills needed to navigate the first 72 hours. The last link is to Joel’s Library , a collection of about 90 short clinic articles. Since 1972 Joel Spitzer has dedicated his life to nicotine cessation and prevention efforts. Today Joel provides smoking cessation and prevention services for the Evanston and Skokie Health Departments in the Chicago area while also volunteering as Director of Education at Freedom, WhyQuit's free online nicotine dependency recovery forum. Here Joel freely shares his program's core content and decades of wisdom. One complete cover to cover reading of Joel's Library will substantially enhance the likelihood that you'll never take another puff, dip, chew, gum or nicotine lozenge.
It's time now to go to nicotine dependency recovery school and put education first. There will be plenty of time later to post messages. Keep in mind that the six-month nicotine cessation rate for ignorant uneducated school-of-hard-knocks cold turkey quitters is only about 10%. Although horrible, according to a March 2003 study which combined and averaged the results of all seven over-the-counter (OTC) nicotine patch and gum studies only 7% of NRT users were still not smoking at six months.
A quality dependency and recovery education program should at a minimum elevate your odds over OTC NRT by at least 400%. None of us are stronger than nicotine but then we don't need to be as it's only a chemical with an I.Q. of zero. Our most effective weapon is education, understanding, new skills, quality support, and long-term reinforcement.
Cessation Advice Warning - Who are the new quitters giving cessation lessons to other new quitters? Except for older members who stay and share their accumulated wisdom, for the most part they are failed nicotine addicts still attempting to get it right. Accept their wonderful words of encouragement but be extremely cautious when it comes to relying upon their cessation wisdom.