Quit Smoking Site Swamped
WhyQuit.com recorded 249,572 requests (hits) yesterday, January 3, 2011. What makes the site's popularity so astounding isn't that it's staffed entirely by volunteer quitting counselors, that it sells nothing, is ad free or declines donations. It's that since 2000 government health officials have consistently and diligently worked hard to discourage smokers from attempting to quit cold turkey.
Visitors to WhyQuit are greeted by rotating images of young smokers claimed in their 30s and 40s by smoking related diseases, primarily lung cancer. After getting your attention, WhyQuit leads visitors into the Internet's largest library of original stop smoking materials. There, they are introduced to free quitting e-books, and audio and video quitting lessons. After their motivation and education feasts, smokers are introduced to hundreds of thousands of messages at Freedom from Nicotine, a highly focused and deadly serious peer support group.
Established in July 1999, WhyQuit is cold turkey's leading defender. The site's primary message is that each year more successful ex-smokers quit cold turkey than by all other quitting methods combined. It's a message contrary to all government health websites, which in June 2000 officially adopted the pharmaceutical industry's mantra that quitting cold turkey is nearly impossible, that few succeed.
While pharmaceutical industry quitting product marketing suggests that quitting without their product is nearly impossible, WhyQuit teaches that the vast majority of successful cold turkey quitters have never heard of WhyQuit, and that finding and using the website is not necessary for success.
Instead, WhyQuit attempts to boost confidence in the smoker's own natural quitting instinct to totally end nicotine use, not replace it or swallow pills designed to imitate nicotine's effects.
The one lesson WhyQuit strives to teach every visitor is that chemical dependency upon smoking nicotine is as real, permanent and involves many of the same brain pathways as alcoholism, heroin or meth addiction. Why? Because fully accepting chemical dependency greatly simplifies quitting's rules. In fact there's really only one. It's that lapse equals relapse, that one is too many and a thousand never enough, that just one puff of nicotine and you should fully expect your brain to soon begin begging for more. WhyQuit calls it the "Law of Addiction."
Quitting is simply a matter of stopping. After that, continued success is a matter of sticking to your original commitment to - just one hour, challenge and day at a time - not allow nicotine back into your bloodstream.
How to Quit Smoking
Share this article with friends & loved onesPDF copy for saving or printing |
Discover Smart Turkey Quitting
- WhyQuit.com - WhyQuit is the Internet's oldest forum devoted to the art, science and psychology of cold turkey quitting, the stop smoking method used by the vast majority of all successful long-term ex-smokers.
- Nicotine Addiction 101 - WhyQuit's basic guide to understanding nicotine dependency.
- Nicotine Cessation Topic Index - An alphabetical subject matter index to more than a thousand nicotine cessation articles, videos and support group discussions.
- Joel's Library - Joel Spitzer began presenting stop smoking clinics and seminars in 1976. WhyQuit's education director since 2000, Joel's Library is home to his life's work. It includes Joel's "Daily Quitting Lesson Guide," more than 100 original stop smoking articles, his free ebook "Never Take Another Puff," and to his ever growing collection of more than 400 stop smoking videos.
- "Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home" - Written by John R. Polito, a former 30-year heavy smoker and WhyQuit's 1999 founder, Freedom from Nicotine shares the science underlying nicotine dependency and successful abrupt nicotine cessation.
- Turkeyville - Imagine surrounding yourself with more than 10,000 cold turkey quitters. Turkeyville is a Facebook support group exclusively for cold turkey quitters.
- Freedom - Freedom was WhyQuit's original 1999 stop smoking support group. No longer accepting members, its 453,000 archived posts continue to share recovery insights.