Considering using cold turkey to quit smoking? Here’s everything you need to know. If you read to the end I will give you some practical tips so you can actually use cold turkey to quit smoking for the rest of your life. So, if you’re one of those people thinking I’m going to use the cold turkey method to quit smoking this is everything you need to know about how you can increase your likelihood of success.
If this information is helpful to you, please, like and follow my content, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and click the notification button. It will simply tell you when I post new content. I post two new YouTube videos every week on tips, tricks, and hacks to help you quit smoking for life. Also, I will put a link at the bottom of this post that you can use to book yourself into my calendar for a free 30-minute quit smoking consultation. I used to charge for these, but I’m now making spots regularly available so I can help people that may not do my program, or are trying other methods. Please take advantage of that and book yourself into my calendar. It’s free.
Are you using cold turkey to quit smoking? If so, make sure you read to the end because I’m going to give you some tips, tricks, and hacks on how to increase your likelihood of being successful.
The very first thing is we need to understand what cold turkey is. We all think, “I know what this is. It means just stopping.” Okay, yes. That is true. That’s what it means, but to really get into this subject, to really understand and learn how to better utilize it you really need to understand what it really is.
So, quitting smoking cold turkey is when you stop smoking abruptly without using any quit smoking products or aids. That means without any help, essentially. You quit without any professional support. Basically all you’re using is your own mental strength and determination, or fortitude, what we often call willpower. That’s what cold turkey means.
Cold turkey means that you are quitting abruptly without any outside help. You’re essentially doing it alone. You’re going to use your conscious mind to battle the cravings and all those other things to be successful. You’re using your own willpower. That’s quitting cold turkey.
So, does quitting cold turkey work? Let’s look at what the science actually says. We can simply look at academic journals like the Annual Review of Public Health (It is a publication that publishes academic studies.). They published a study just last year called The Impact of Nicotine Replacement Therapy on Smoking Behavior. Here’s the conclusion of that study. About 90% of people who try to quit smoking use any outside support. This means cold turkey, quitting smoking with no aids, no therapy, or any medicine of any kind, has only 4% to 7% success.
Only 4% to 7% of those people managed to quit smoking for 6 months or longer, AND over half of them start smoking again.
If you’re using the cold turkey method you have a long road to hoe. It is an uphill battle, and it is by far the hardest way to quit smoking, but I don’t want you to get me wrong. Every method uses cold turkey. You have to use cold turkey to quit no matter what method, because it just means stopping. You have to just stop.
What we mean by cold turkey is that you’re doing it without any other aid or help. You’re doing just the cold turkey method. If that’s all you’re doing, and that’s your goal, well, I’m going to wish you the absolute the best of luck. Here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to give you some tips, tricks, and hacks that you can use to try and make sure that you get up into that successful 7%. If you’re insisting upon it, then let’s give you the best chance at success as you possibly can have.
Let’s dig a little bit deeper into this whole thing. There’s really two advantages to cold turkey. One is you get over the hump faster. What does that mean? You reap the benefits of not having nicotine in your system sooner than if you use other methods like for example, the patch, as it treats the smoking as if it’s an addiction and weeds you down off the nicotine.
Essentially, you get over the hump faster. That’s a benefit. There is one other benefit to cold turkey. It’s free! Don’t overlook that. That is a really great benefit for sure, especially if you’re in that 4% to 7%. You can quit smoking without having to pay. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!
Does quitting smoking using cold turkey work? Yes, of course it does. It absolutely works. There’s no doubt it works, but for whom is the question. For whom does quitting smoking cold turkey work? It works for 4% to 7% of people. That’s it. That’s what the science says. That’s what we know.
So, what about everyone else? What about the rest of us that aren’t in that 4% to 7%? All that means is you need outside support. If you are not in that 4% to 7% you need outside help. You need to look for a program or something else to help you get it from 4% to 7% and get you up over that percentage so that it’s more likely you quit. That’s really what we’re concerned with.
Before we start going down that road I really want to make sure that if you are trying hard to be in that 4% to 7% you have more likelihood of being successful.
First, prepare your mind for quitting smoking. Go download an e-book there are tons of e-books about how to prepare your life for quitting smoking. I have a free one on my website: wwlp.com. You just put your email address in, and it will automatically email you a PDF of How to Prepare Your Mind for Quitting Smoking. That will increase your likelihood of being successful doing cold turkey.
Support is number two. Get outside support that is free, like a friend or quit smoking buddy. That way when you hit the cravings and you hit the part where it gets difficult you can call them on the phone and they can cheer you on. Get support. That will help you increase your likelihood of success.
Next, pick a quick date. Lots of people, when they quit smoking they just simply say, “That’s it. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’m quitting now.”, and they throw their cigarettes out.
Here’s the problem with that. They haven’t given their mind any time to prepare. So pick a quit date that’s at least three days off. What that does is it allows your mind to start to wrestle with the fact that you’re going to quit smoking in three days. That will help prepare your mind to learn how to deal with cravings.
I have helped over 9,000 people quit smoking for life in my program. Here’s what I can tell you. They all tell me the same thing. They come to me because the cold turkey didn’t work, and they all say the same thing. They say, “I couldn’t deal with the cravings. If only I could have gotten rid of cravings quitting smoking would be easy.”
If that’s you you’re going to want to look at a program to help support you.
We’ll come back to that. The next thing you can do is avoid triggers. We have tons of triggers. It could be when waking up in the morning, it could be when having a coffee, or it could be when driving a car. You really can only do two things. Either you avoid the trigger altogether or you do the trigger differently. So what do I mean? If you’re avoiding triggers all together and your trigger is drinking a beer or having a glass of wine with smoke don’t drink for a month. That will help you avoid the trigger. If it’s something like driving though you’re not going to not drive so change how you drive. Drive a different route. It will help lessen the craving, which will help you be more successful doing cold turkey. If you always smoke when you have a coffee put less sugar in your coffee. Change when you drink your coffee. Those things will help.
Next on the list is de-stress. This is an obvious one. We know people that deal with stress better are more likely to be successful at cold turkey. So, learn to deal with stress better.
Exercise. This one really helps. Here’s what happens. We’re sitting on the couch and we start thinking about a cigarette because maybe we smoke when we watch TV, who knows, and we think to ourselves, “Wait a minute. I’m thinking about cigarettes. Is this a craving?”
We start to do what we call in neuroscience catastrophizing.
“I’m having a craving. I’m starting to have withdrawal.”
We start down that slippery slope. This is where failure comes from in the cold turkey method. So, exercise. What does that do?
Emotion follows motion. Get up off the couch and move your body. Dance. Listen to music. Go for a walk. Exercise. That’s your thing.
What will happen is you’re basically moving your energy. As you start catastrophizing because you’re thinking about a cigarette and start thinking you’re having a craving you need to get up and physically move. Exercise helps.
These are the things you can do to help give yourself a better chance at quitting using cold turkey.
Let’s talk about now – we’re going to come after this with more tips, tricks, and hacks – what to do if you’re not in that 4% to 7% group, because chances are, if you’re watching this video you’ve probably already tried cold turkey, and you already know it didn’t work for you. You’ve already tried it and failed.
So what do you do if cold turkey doesn’t work, and you’re not in that 4% to 7%? You need to get outside help. Cold turkey is using no outside help. You need outside help. You want to look for programs specifically programs that use stacking.
What is stacking? We’re going to go into that and why stacking is so important. Stacking is a method I created 6 years ago. It’s been extremely successful. More and more programs are being based on and built on this model. Stacking is simply using science based understanding or science based thinking to increase one’s odds to be able to quit smoking for life. That’s a great definition, but let’s get into what do we really mean by stacking.
There are nine known methods to quitting smoking. I’ll list seven here just because I’ve combined two them into one.
- Hypnotherapy
- Drugs
- Behavioral Therapy
- Nicotine Replacement Therapy
- Placebo
- Books
- Cold Turkey & Apps
We know all the success rates of these different methods. These are the success rates or what we call in neuroscience the efficacy rates. Hypnotherapy is number one with a 60% chance. The drugs have a 22% success rate. Behavioral therapy, which means counseling, has 40%. NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) the patch, the gum, lozenges, and things like that have a 14%, and, just so you know, placebo is 12%. So, is the nicotine replacement therapy working, or is it that you believe that it’s working? We actually don’t know.
Books have a 7% efficacy. I’ll come back to books in a second. Apps have the same percent as cold turkey – 4% to 7%.
So, let’s talk about the books. The most famous book is Allen Carr’s book. Lots of people read it. I’m not advocating not to read it. It is a really good book. I just want to make a comment about out using books. When Allen Carr wrote his book, he wrote it after he quit smoking, not before. Allen Carr himself successfully quit smoking, but he didn’t quit by reading his book. He had already quit. Allen Carr quit by using hypnotherapy. He was hypnotized. He then wrote his book.
I just think that’s really important to understand. I’m not saying don’t read the book. I’ve read the book. It’s a really good book. There’s nothing wrong with reading the book, but it’s not going to get you to quit smoking any more so than me giving you a sugar pill. Actually, in fact, if I give you the sugar pill (the placebo) and say, “This is good. This is a magic pill. You’re going to quit smoking.” you’re actually twice as likely to quit on the sugar pill.
Now, there’s a lot of good information in Allen Carr’s book, so please, read it. Just know and understand it’s not how he quit smoking. He did hypnosis.
So, let’s break this down. When you break down these seven different ways to quit smoking you realize there’s a pattern. They use different mechanisms to get you to quit smoking.
Hypnotherapy uses your unconscious mind.
The drugs use your physiology to stop your cravings. What they really do is they block the pleasure sensor in your brain from releasing dopamine. It helps you not get the cravings. That’s what the drugs do. The drugs deal with your physiology.
Behavioral therapy is about your conscious mind. You’re going to talk to a counselor about why you smoke.
Nicotine replacement therapy, again this is the patch and the gum, weans you down off of the nicotine treating it like it’s an addiction. That’s about your physiology.
The books are about your conscious mind, how you think, because when you read the book it’s explained to your conscious mind so your conscious mind understands. The book is not hypnosis which is what Alan Carr used to quit. It’s just for your conscious mind.
The apps bring you awareness on your conscious level how much money you’re saving and how many cigarettes you’re not smoking. This deals with your conscious mind.
Cold turkey is using your willpower. It’s a conscious mind activity.
So these are the different mechanisms, and what you’ll notice if you look carefully at this is there are only three mechanisms. There’s really only three ways to quit smoking. There are methods that deals with your unconscious mind, methods that deal with your physiology (the physical cravings), and methods that use your conscious mind.
So, what does this have to do stacking? Well, you know what stacking is. Stacking is not just using one method. It’s stacking different methods and using them all.
Here is the secret. You’re not three people. You don’t have three parts of your mind. You’re one person. Why are we only attacking it one way? It makes no sense. It’s why the success rates are so low.
Methods that use stacking like my program, don’t just use hypnosis. Yes! I’m a master hypnotist, but it’s not just hypnosis. It’s more than that. There’s hypnosis, there is neuro linguistic programming, and it has other things as well. It’s about identity. We’re using all three methods!
In my program I give a 95% success rate. I give a lifetime guarantee to people who do my program, so it’s a one-time fee, and I say if you have a single drag, draw, or puff from a cigarette again for the rest of your life you get back into my program absolutely for free. Why? Because only 5% people ever come back. Otherwise I’d be out of business.
Other quit smoking programs that use the model that I invented at six years ago, stacking, also have higher than 60% success rates. You can use another program, but you want to look for methods that aren’t just honing in on one way. You want to look for methods that are stacking. I now teach other people how to stack and get people to quit smoking. There’s lots of programs out there.
So look for a program that is utilizing stacking, or basically taking a holistic approach. You’re a whole person. We’re going to attack this from all these directions, and you’ll be more likely to quit smoking.
This post is really to help you use the cold-turkey method or help you consider what do. You need to know that if you’re using cold turkey you are using the most difficult way to quit smoking. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to work! You could be in that 4% to 7%. I just want to give you the information so you’re not fooling yourself. It’s not the only way. There are other ways. If you’re determined that you’re going to use cold turkey, and you’re not going to use a more successful method maybe because it’s free, or because you have the money, but you’re just going to try that first I want you to get the best chance at being successful. These are the things you have to do.
- Prepare your mind.
- Get support.
- Pick a quit date. Choose one that’s three days out or farther.
- Learn how to deal with cravings. You can watch my video. I have a video on the six ways to beat the nicotine craving. Watch other videos on dealing with cravings.
- Avoid triggers. Either don’t do them all together, or do them differently.
- Learn how to de-stress. Do whatever that means for you whether it’s yoga, meditation, or breathing. Learn how to deal with stress.
- Exercise. When you get a craving get up and move your body.
If you do those seven things you will get yourself up to that 7% or higher. We know the people that are up there in the higher success ranges are doing these things, or they’re at least doing three to four of them.
So there you go. There are seven tips, tricks, and hacks. If you’re going to use the quit smoking method of cold turkey that will help you be successful.
If you like this post please follow my content, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and hit the notification buttons. Please, use the link below, and take advantage of the free 30 minute phone consultation for quitting smoking. Even if you see that link in previous content I’ve made, I’m still doing it. So, please, click the link below, book yourself into my free 30-minute quit smoking consultation, and I will get you off in the right direction. I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Email me, direct message me, and join my YouTube channel. Use these posts to motivate you to quit smoking for the rest of your life! Thank you and blessings to everyone. I wish you the best of luck.