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To Quit Smoking, Just Stop

One day, a man who smoked for several years looked out of the window and saw that it was raining. Rather than go to the store to pick up another pack, he decided enough was enough. Another man accidentally dropped his cigarette in his drink at a party, much to the disgust of his host. He thought, "These damn things," and has never smoked since.

Stories like these were repeated to a Canadian researcher, Dr. Lynne Larabie, who was surprised to find that so many could seemingly break the habit at the drop of a hat. Hearing of the study, Dr. Robert West of the University College London wondered if health officials were going about it all wrong. The public service announcements and "Great American Smoke-out" events, where smokers try their hand at quitting for at least the day, certainly have a place. But they have not made a huge dent in ending smoking overall.

Could stopping cold turkey prove better than motivational tapes and a lifetime of broken New Year's resolutions? To find out, West and his colleague, Dr. Taj Sohal, interviewed nearly 1,000 ex-smokers and a similar number of current smokers who had tried to quit at least once. The researchers asked them if they had planned to quit in advance or whether they just decided to all of a sudden kick the habit one day.

The results, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest that there are plenty of smokers who just need one final kick in the pants to realize that the dangers of cigarettes or tobacco should be taken seriously. Out of those who had quit for at least six months, West found that the unplanned attempts were more than twice as likely to succeed as planned ones.

"It's like an earthquake," West explains. "One small crack can lead to a giant shift."

The tipping point, he says, is when smokers have some sort of epiphany in which they realize that the costs of smoking, for whatever reason, are just not worth it. For some, this may be a storm that keeps them from going out to get a pack of cigarettes. Others may wake up one day, see a dirty ashtray in a different light and decide that smoking is disgusting.

"Something may catch them off guard and all of sudden they think, 'That's it, this is stupid,'" he says.

Such subtle clues may not work for everyone, nor does it mean that planning for your last tobacco day is a bad idea, West says. "Some people may need to step back, take a deep breath and really plan to quit."

He says that public health campaigns should adopt a three "T" approach to kicking the habit: showcasing the tension on the dangers of smoking, recognizing the triggers that can cause change and then offering immediate treatment to those who need extra help.

"When you're near that cusp, it may take only a little thing to change," says West. "If you have an epiphany to quit," he adds, "go with that."