How to Quit Smoking - Go to a Doctor or Counselor

Although smoking, like all addictions, is a physiological problem, it has a profound effect on a person’s psychology as well, and may in fact be partly caused by psychological factors. This means that it is extremely difficult for people to quit smoking on their own - they have to battle against their body and their mind. Some people are strong enough to do this, but for most of us, when faced with the dilemma of how to quit smoking, it makes more sense to resort to outside help from professionals. They can tell us, right away, that cutting back on smoking is not going to help, and that we need to aim for total cessation.

While our friends and loved ones can certainly try to help us give up our cigarettes, pipes or cigars, they usually put their efforts into the physiological side of things. They try to control our actions, but they find it much more difficult to help us overcome our psychological dependence on nicotine. Even then, it is very difficult to control an adult (or even a teenager) if they really haven’t made the final decision to quit. Most people can find as many moments as they need to slip off somewhere for that cigarette or pipe. So, unless the “addict” has made up their mind, there really is little our friends can do, which is another reason why we need to consult a professional if we really want to know how to quit smoking.

Mainstream and Alternative Medicine Knowledge Streams on How to Quit Smoking

Doctors and practitioners from all systems of medicine can tell patients how to quit smoking, though their methods may not be the same. A primary care physician is the best person to consult for advice and for information, since this person should have access to all the relevant medical information. An array of modern drugs and traditional herbal abstracts are available to help people along the path of how to quit smoking. Modern medicines act faster, and have a number of convenient and effective presentations, though they tend to be expensive, and may have some harmful side-effects. Psychological counseling or psychiatric treatment can also help people overcome any form of substance abuse, and experts from these fields have their own bodies of knowledge on how to quit smoking.

Side-effects may complicate the chosen method of how to quit smoking, but physicians from various medical systems, and counselors with experience, are equipped to deal with such situations. The most common problem in this respect is for former smokers to gain weight, since food tastes better after nicotine and tar traces have left the taste buds. In some cases, over-eating is a psychological reaction, a kind of substitute for the cigarettes that they can no longer smoke. Whatever the reason, it is not uncommon for people to become obese when they give up smoking. In these cases, doctors must decide what the priority should be: should the patient give up smoking and become obese, or should they continue smoking to avoid it? In most cases doctors will first try to help their patient to stop smoking, and then combat the weight problem.