Do you recall the opening words of each of Pfizer’s 7 cute and cuddly 2019 Chantix "slow turkey" commercials?

"It’s tough to quit smoking cold turkey."

But, is it true? If untrue, and if honesty isn't Pfizer's strong suit -- as suggested by its 2018 Ray Liotta ad campaign -- should smokers trust and hand Pfizer up to $1,555.00 for a full 90-day prescription that comes with some rather disturbing warnings?

According to a "Fact Buster" article by Simon Chapman, a University of Sydney professor and former editor of Tobacco Control, "cold turkey is the way that people don't like talking about but it's overwhelmingly the most popular and successful way that most people quit smoking."

Merriam-Webster’s defines "cold turkey" as "abrupt complete cessation of the use of an addictive drug."

Pfizer's pilfering of cold turkey's mascot aside, its commercial's assertion that, "With Chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting" is the diametric opposite of quitting "turkey."

Question. What are the "unintended" consequences of Pfizer seeding real cold turkey quitters with the idea that successful quitters can, at first, continue smoking?

Half of adult smokers running out of time and chances before smoking themselves to death, the far larger and more destructive seed is the doubt Pfizer's cold turkey confidence bashing plants in every cold turkey quitter's mind.

If the number of Chantix quitters is small in relation to cold turkey, is it fair to push back?

Most Quit Cold Turkey

Chantix was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for smoking cessation in 2006. That year, an Australian study was published reviewing patient smoking and quitting data of 1,000 family practice physicians.

Not only did this pre-Chantix study find cold turkey the most effective method -- doubling nicotine gum, patch and inhaler success rates -- it accounted for a jaw-dropping 88 percent of ex-smokers (1,942 of 2,207).

Here in the U.S., a 2013 Gallup Poll found that most ex-smokers succeeded by quitting cold turkey. Talk about the tail wagging the dog, all approved quitting products combined accounted for only 8 percent of successful quitters.

Two key factors in valuing quitting methods are its productivity and effectiveness. The July 2018 PLoS One Weaver study was the most comprehensive population-level quitting method study yet.

There, according to Table 7 data, cold turkey generated 5 times more ex-smokers than all approved quitting products combined, while being twice as effective as Chantix and Zyban combined, 3 times as effective as NRT, and 2.6 times as effective as e-cigarettes.

An aside, although Weaver presents the most complete quitting picture to date, with arrival of Philip Morris' IQOS systems (I Quit Ordinary Smoking), the array of products for introducing nicotine into an addict's bloodstream continues to grow.

Until cessation's primary benchmark becomes long-term nicotine dependency recovery (use's root), the risk uncertainty and cloudiness associated with transferring to and using one or more alternative nicotine delivery devices will continue to masquerade as victory.

Efficacy Isn't Effectiveness

So, why does Chantix prevail inside clinical trials against quitters given identical-looking placebo pills, yet get clobbered by cold turkey under real-world conditions? A number of reasons.

Most disturbing, while placebo is the gold standard in most study areas, in smoking cessation studies it's license to steal. Why? Because experienced quitters have become experts at recognizing the presence or absence of their withdrawal syndrome. As in NRT trials, Chantix clinical trials were not blind as claimed.

Also, a form of bait and switch, Chantix clinical trials involved record levels of support, with up to sixteen one-on-one counseling sessions and up to eight follow-up telephone support calls.

After filling their prescription, nearly all real-world Chantix users use it with little or no professional assistance.

Most glaring, ask yourself, why would cold turkey quitters dreaming of quickly meeting, greeting and moving beyond withdrawal join clinical trials dangling up to 3 months of free quitting products as study recruiting bait?

Pfizer is fully aware that the only time Chantix goes head-to-head with cold turkey quitters is out in the street under real-world conditions.

Free quitting remains championless, while cessation science and quitting policy were long ago totally devoured by profits, income and greed. Professor Chapman refers to it as global research neglect of unassisted quitting.

Vaping Indebted to Pharma

Those selling quitting products have made billions by decades of getting smokers to fear their natural quitting instincts, by bombarding them with false suggestions that few succeed on their own, and that real-world quitters using their products succeed at vastly greater rates.

If true, where are they? The 2013 Gallup Poll found that only 1 in 100 successful ex-smokers credited nicotine gum after billions spent by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on nearly three decades of Nicorette marketing.

Have you seen "how hard" GSK claims quitting is in its new December 2019 Nicorette and Nicoderm CQ commercials? How hard? *%@#&$ hard.

You can almost hear Big Vape collectively shout, "Yes!"

The e-cigarette industry feeds off of and is deeply beholden to pharma for convincing smokers that quitting is far harder than it actually is. The only remaining e-cig brainwashing needed is to convince smokers that inhaling a natural insecticide for the rest of your life, and all the chemicals arriving with it, isn't dangerous but wonderful.

There too, vaping is forever indebted to pharma for funding and orchestrating a massive body of placebo-controlled junk-clinical-science supporting assertions that the addictive toxin nicotine is "medicine" and its use "therapy."

Cold Turkey Basics

Contrary to their economic interests, don't expect pharma or the neo-nicotine industry to ever teach smokers even the most basic nicotine dependency recovery lessons.

Architect of the world's smoking cessation "science-base," the pharmaceutical industry has directly and indirectly used its economic muscle to effectively eliminate government, non-proft, and, most recently, search engine visibility and support for the planet's most productive quitting method.

Slaves to inhaled nicotine would benefit by mindfulness of the fact that nicotine's two-hour elimination half-life guarantees that within 72 hours of ending use that their body would become 100 percent nicotine-free and their brain begin re-sensitizing to functioning without it.

For them, peak withdrawal will have passed. The worst is over.

Oh, there will still be urges and craves, but the underlying current of anxiety has eased off. With each passing day the moments of challenge will gradually grow fewer, further apart, and generally less intense. But just one puff and it's back to square one.

Contrary to Nicorette commercials, unlike when smoking, crave episodes during recovery are moments of healing and good, not bad. Rarely lasting longer than it took to smoke a cigarette, arrival of a crave is normally a sign of an impending reward.

Mustering the resolve to say "no" to a use cue somehow results in the subconscious mind extinguishing it. This gifts the quitter the return of a time, place, person, activity or emotion during which they had trained their mind to expect a new supply of nicotine.

Silence all use cues and experience the calm, quiet and beauty of a mind and life reclaimed.

There's only one rule. It's that one puff would be too many, while thousands wouldn't be enough; that while one equals all, that success is 100% guaranteed so long as all nicotine remains on the outside.

In fact, brain scan studies teach us that just one puff and up to 50 percent of brain dopamine pathway receptors become occupied by nicotine.

While most walk away from trying to cheat when quitting feeling like they've gotten away with it, it isn't long before they find their brain wanting, plotting to obtain, or even begging for more.

Yes, only one rule in breaking and staying free, no nicotine just one challenge and day at a time, to never take another puff.

---

---