If there was a five-minute nuclear warning, I\u2019d run straight to my local shop and buy a pack of cigarettes. Even now, after all these years. I stopped more than a decade ago \u2013 note that I say \u201cstopped\u201d rather than \u201cgave up\u201d because the latter implies a sacrifice, and I have been brainwashed (OK, hypnotised) not to use the term. But you are never really a non-smoker. You are just a smoker who is currently not smoking. In your soul, you are forever one of the people who leave the table after eating to go and have a conversation outside, even if you physically stay put these days.<\/p>\n
So, as someone who found it difficult to quit, it\u2019s baffling to hear that although two stop-smoking medications have been available in the UK since 2024, only 0.2% of those attempting to give up have used them, according to an analysis<\/a> of NHS data on smoking in England<\/a>. Cytisine (which also goes by cytisinicline) is a plant-based product that has been used in eastern Europe since the 70s and may appeal to those who prefer a natural option over a synthetic drug. It mimics the effects of nicotine, and tricks your brain into thinking you\u2019ve had a cigarette. Varenicline \u2013 withdrawn in 2021 over concerns about impurities, but now reformulated and rereleased \u2013 can apparently reduce the urge to smoke, make you enjoy it less when you do and ease withdrawal symptoms.<\/p>\n I tried everything when it came to my struggle with Silk Cut. Patches, gum, lozenges \u2013 I carried on smoking while I wore, chewed and sucked them all. I read the world-famous success story The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr (no, not that one<\/a>). I attended the NHS in-person sessions, three times, to no effect. I was a triple failure, and oddly proud of it for a reason I still don\u2019t quite understand.<\/p>\n I had neurolinguistic programming, where the man shook my hand as he greeted me, asking, \u201cAnd how long was it that you smoked for?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I still smoke now. I just had one outside,\u201d I volunteered cheerfully.<\/p>\n He tutted and told me that for some clients, talking about smoking in the past tense like that was all it took. I scoffed at those weaklings as I walked to my train afterwards \u2013 in a cloud of smoke, obviously.<\/p>\n The closest I came to victory back then was a hypnotist recommended by a friend, with the caveat that he sounded so much like Cliff Richard it was hard to take him seriously. She didn\u2019t mention that he worked out of an extremely insalubrious portable cabin at the back of a building site. As I knocked on the tin-can door (while simultaneously putting out yet another last ever cigarette), I reasoned that if he murdered me, I would technically have given up smoking, therefore this would have been a success.<\/p>\n Reader, he did not murder me. In gentle, dulcet tones, he told me I felt sleepy, while I felt embarrassed for him because I definitely wasn\u2019t hypnotised. When he \u201cbrought me round\u201d he asked me how long I thought I\u2019d \u201cbeen under\u201d. I\u2019d been thinking about what to have for dinner the whole time, so stifled a giggle as I told him: about 10 minutes. He replied that it had been two hours.<\/p>\n The next morning, it occurred to me that I hadn\u2019t even thought about smoking, let alone done it. Thrilled, I sent another friend, who had the same experience. However, a year later, almost to the day, we both started smoking again. I went back for a do-over but it didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n In the end, I probably spent about as much on trying to stop smoking as I had on cigarettes, and the thing that finally worked was free: boring old willpower. It was agony. Personally, I would have bitten the doctor\u2019s hand off if they could have given me a treatment that worked. And while of course no treatment is 100% effective, as I found out, stopping smoking is hard and gruelling. The more options people have<\/a>, and the more visible and accessible these options are, the better.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there was a five-minute nuclear warning, I\u2019d run straight to my local shop and buy a pack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,490],"class_list":{"0":"post-46316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}