Do you think that "cold turkey" is the best way to quit cigarettes? Without nicotine replacements!

I’ve heard it varies by person.

I agree that it varies person to person. Suckers were my savior.

That’s what worked for me. It’s been more than 18 years now.

I quit smoking by using cigarette nicotine replacement, but then it was hard to quit the nicotine replacement. I’m still using nicotine replacement but I can say I quit smoking.

Definitely. It is the only real way, all you are doing otherwise is changing brands. I smoked when I was young, quite heavily, two packs a day. I was surfing one day, came out of the water and ran up the beach and felt chest pain. It registered that it was from smoking so I stopped that day. I have not smoked since. It was hard for about a week or so, very hard, then after that the hardest thing was the “habit”, reaching for a cigarette in a social situation. Once that passed it was quite easy.

For some it works. For others, the nicotine dependency is SO strong that cold turkey can cause severe pains and complications. There’s a reason there is such a huge smoking cessation market out there, and that’s cause it’s not easy to drop smoking.

I am lucky and I do not get addicted to smoking/the chemicals inside. Thus I can pick them up and put them down anytime I choose.

Remember, what works for you may not work for others. Humans are complicated beasts, and not everyone’s bodies and brains work in the same way as everyone else. Cold turkey is certainly not the only way of quitting. For some, slow and steady decrease is what’s best.

I smoke about a pack a day as same as my other friend and i know if i were to quit i would do it cold turkey because i feel like you have to have the willpower to just stop at that exact moment you decide. He on the other hand has tried the gum and the patch and he cant stop. I told him just quit cold turkey and he says he cant.

I think cold turkey is the best for anyone because when your thinking of quiting you need to do it at that moment because if not you will think about and think of reasons not to wuit. so doing it all at once makes it go faster :)

I quit a couple times. First time for 5 years, second time was in 2000 (still holding).
Cold Turkey.
Like for DarkScribe there has to be a definite moment when you decide “that’s it”.
(For me it was the impossible combination of learning a healing art and being a smoker).
The thing is to recreate the conviction of that moment when you need it.
Say, the next day or on the weekend in the bar with friends. It doesn’t help to say to yourself “Well, yeah, I am really trying to quit, blah blah, maybe just one for now, etc.”
When the going gets tough, go back to that moment when it was absolutely clear to you that you do not want to be a cigarette smoker. Make that decision again at this moment in time. With the same amount of conviction as the first time – recreate the emotion. Every time you waver, make the decision again – don’t just remember that you made a decision in the past. You will need to do this less and less as time goes by and you realize that as long as you can be true to that conviction you are not a cigarette smoker.

My last cigarette was February 22nd, I quite cold turkey after like 7 years of a pack a day. The first week I thought I was going to kill someone, I snapped at everyone, but once you get over that it’s only kind of hard. I chewed a ton of gum, it gets better, it’s all mental anyway.

I think it varies by person. It depends on how long you were smoking, whether or not you’re particularly prone to addiction etc. I stopped cold turkey when I left college 3 weeks ago. No cravings, no weakness, no effects at all really. I usually stop for MONTHS at a time when i’m away from school/home with my parents anyways though, so it’s not that much of a jump. If I was smoking a pack a day for the last 25 years I imagine it would have been a hell of a lot harder than smoking a pack a week during college. So to answer…I think it depends on a number of personal factors.