Unless a smoker is properly prepared to deal with the nicotine cravings that plague them after they have smoked what they hope will be their last cigarette, the odds against their success at quitting smoking are stacked against them. About 20% of the population smokes and they smoke for one reason and one reason only: Lighting and smoking a cigarette makes the urge to do it... go away. But that urge to smoke a cigarette only goes away for about 48 minutes. That's because smokers are addicted to the drug nicotine - an addiction that is considered to be one of the most difficult addictions to kick. How tough is it? Well... if 1,000 smokers try to quit smoking today, about 930 of them will fail. Of the 70 smokers who make it, 56 of them will do it cold turkey. That means that all those other quit smoking methods, products and programs will only help 14 out of 1,000 smokers succeed at quitting smoking forever. I am part of that statistic because over a 40 year period, I smoked a minimum of one package of cigarettes every day (that's over 300,000 cigarettes) and, I failed to quit on over 70 different occasions. I eventually came to think that quitting smoking was so difficult to do that it would be impossible for me to accomplish. Then, I learned how to do it and then... I did it... over 5,640 days, 112,000 cigarettes and $48,000 after-tax dollars ago. Another sad fact is that most smokers have been conditioned to believe that their best chance of success at quitting smoking forever is to rely upon prescription drugs or other forms of nicotine products - pills, patches, gums, e-cigarettes etc. These methods have an embarrassing failure rate but an incredibly profitable return to the people who manufacture and market them and these efforts are propelled by a huge marketing and advertising budget. They offer a "solution" to the addicted smoker that is like trying to quit drinking by switching from 80 proof vodka to 60 proof vodka and gradually weaning yourself off the drug you are addicted to. Try running that concept past the folks at AA. That's where How To Quit Smoking and Save Your Life will help smokers - by showing them how to get themselves prepared and able to deal with what will come their way after they smoke their last cigarette. The message to smokers who want to quit is this: Learning how to do something before you try to do it will make it easier to do... much easier. So then... how do you learn how to quit smoking? The technique for learning how to quit smoking is no different than any of the other skills you have learned throughout your life. You identify exactly what it is you need to learn then you learn everything about it. (the more you learn, the better you'll get.) Then you do it. You may not get it right the first time but you'll get better if you approach quitting smoking from the point of view that you are in the process of learning how to do it and you are thoroughly prepared and highly motivated to do whatever it takes to accomplish that. All you need then is persistence... and this book.
About the Author: I live in Bright's Grove, Ontario, Canada on the shores of Lake Huron. I received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario - majoring in economics and philosophy. Along with Sylvia, my family, road trips with my friends, riding my bike, sailing, cool boats and good weather, I love music, movies and really good sound systems. After a sales career at IBM, I combined my love of good sound with my love for movies and for thirty two years, I owned and operated Keelans Audio Video Centre in Sarnia, Ontario; designing, selling and installing home theatre systems. I stayed on the leading edge of technology while offering a better picture-better sound-better service-for less money approach to my customers. My goal was to run the best small business in the world. Striving to be the best at something you do is an approach that has served me well. Even though I've never been the best in the world at anything, I became pretty good at a few things because I worked so hard toward my goal of being the best. After finally kicking a 40 year addiction to nicotine in 2000, I retired from the consumer electronics business to pursue a writing career. My goal was and still is to be the best writer ever. I know I'll never be the best writer in the world but I'll be a better writer than I would have been if I hadn't tried to be the best writer in the world. Today, I am the author of How To Quit Smoking and Save Your Life and 400 Jokes You Can Tell Anybody. I also have over 110 published articles in First Monday, a monthly southwestern Ontario business publication. I am currently working on a book of short stories called: Bucket Rides and an action-adventure-love story with a working title called: One Last Cruise. As Ralph Kramden said at the end of the Honeymooners Episode: Young Man With A Horn... "That's a little piece of it Alice!"