Quit Smoking!

This is an intro to a quit smoking video that I did for the Canadian Forces. There are lots of quit smoking programs including e-cigarettes, the patch, and cold-turkey, but as a psychologist, I’m partial to harm reduction with a gradual behavioral program. Here’s how it works: Keep track for a week of every cigarette you have and the context (when you get up, with a coffee, on a break, with alcohol…you get the idea), or the mood (bored, lonely, frustrated, tense) associated with lighting up. Whatever the number for the week – say a pack a day (20 cigs), that’s your baseline. Choose which one you’ll leave out each day for the next week (maybe the second one on the break?), so it’s 19 cigarettes a day for the next week. At the same time, plan alternative activities to handle those moods – a phone call for loneliness, some exercise for tension, a movie/book/game for boredom. You get the idea. Keep reducing the number of daily smokes by one, for a week at a time. So the next week, it’s 19, then 18. If it takes 20 weeks to quit, that’s ok, because you’ve changed your habits and your body has had time to adjust to the reduced nicotine. Good practice!