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HOW TO STOP SMOKING--PERMANENTLY by Walter S. Ross

HOW TO STOP SMOKING--PERMANENTLY

By

Pub Date: Jan. 3rd, 1984
Publisher: Little, Brown

Routine advice on quitting--featuring detailed instructions on using the new nicotine chewing gums. Ross, editor of an American Cancer Society journal on smoking, opens encouragingly: a recent U. of Ottawa study indicates that ""the best predictor of permanent quitting is having tried to quit three to five times""--in plainer words, few make it the first time, but if at first you don't succeed. . . . The program proper calls for analyzing one's smoking habits via questionnaires (on habits and feelings about smoking and quitting, and the support for each in one's environment); and then quitting with the aid of recently introduced prescription chewing gum that contains nicotine. (Tobacco is now recognized as a heavy-duty physical addictive substance.) The gum, we learn, takes the place of smoking--cold turkey--and is gradually tapered. To support the effort, Ross lays out all the physical damages caused by smoking, and how they're reversed after quitting. The ""know your own habit"" approach is well-known (and best presented in Marilyn Halper's 1981 How to Stop Smoking). The specific pharmacologic support of nicotine substitutes is new.