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Smoking cessation products at Wal-Mart™. Life savers or snake oil?
Apparently, you are supposed to substitute nicotine from cigarettes with the nicotine from the patch or gum, but here's what I don't get: How are you supposed to quit the patch or gum?
Once you are addicted to the alternate nicotine source, you are supposed to gradually decrease the dose until -- voila! -- you're cured! But how is that any different from slowly weaning yourself off cigarettes (which smokers obviously can't do)? Now that you're addicted to a supposedly "clean" nicotine source, what is to prevent you from taking more and more of it? (At least with cigarettes, there's a limit to how many you can smoke in a day.)
These products claim to be backed by clinical studies, but if you read the details of these studies you'll see that the success rate is abysmally low. The real key to quitting is deciding that you can and recognizing that it's solely your own responsibility to do so. By definition, if you rely on a product or program to fix you, then you aren't taking responsibility for your own addiction, and the cure will fail. In the meantime, the manufacturers get rich selling these very pricey items.
See my essay on addiction: "Words Don't Work" http://kilroycafe.blogspot.com/2009/01/k
Apparently, you are supposed to substitute nicotine from cigarettes with the nicotine from the patch or gum, but here's what I don't get: How are you supposed to quit the patch or gum?
Once you are addicted to the alternate nicotine source, you are supposed to gradually decrease the dose until -- voila! -- you're cured! But how is that any different from slowly weaning yourself off cigarettes (which smokers obviously can't do)? Now that you're addicted to a supposedly "clean" nicotine source, what is to prevent you from taking more and more of it? (At least with cigarettes, there's a limit to how many you can smoke in a day.)
These products claim to be backed by clinical studies, but if you read the details of these studies you'll see that the success rate is abysmally low. The real key to quitting is deciding that you can and recognizing that it's solely your own responsibility to do so. By definition, if you rely on a product or program to fix you, then you aren't taking responsibility for your own addiction, and the cure will fail. In the meantime, the manufacturers get rich selling these very pricey items.
See my essay on addiction: "Words Don't Work" http://kilroycafe.blogspot.com/2009/01/k
by Glenn