Making use of dangerous drugs such as Prozac or Zyban are not really the way to go about stopping your addiction to nicotine. In a way it is just like replacing one dangerous drug with another. So to is using NRT, so there has to be another way to stop smoking without using nicotine replacement, and there is. In fact there is a wealth of information available in the form of self help, but it is hard to stop smoking and even harder when you are on your own in this quest.
You have to deal with the dependency on nicotine in the correct way. Cold turkey may have worked for some of the more hardier personality types like General De Gaulle perhaps, but we are not all cut of the same cloth. Nicotine addiction affects the person physically, emotionally and psychologically. It is not a simple addiction to deal with particularly if you have people around you who still smoke.
What seems to be working very well is the free telephone counseling some states in the US have started. Counseling is a far better alternative to nicotine replacement therapy and has actually proven to be working. Findings have shown that with this kind of support, smokers are twice as likely to stop.
If you think that heroin is a habit forming substance, look at the amount of smokers there are compared to the amount of heroin addicts. You will notice a substantial difference! Nicotine is an incredibly habit forming drug, one of the worst we actually know of. It is because of this that it is so difficult to stop the habit and because of this that support is so vital. Encouragement from everyone involved in the life of the smoker is necessary, and it is the one main factor that smokers who have been successful say they could not have done without.
Information for the smoker who wants to stop is available from many resources. Health insurance companies, your local gym, hospitals, support groups and even your employer. However these just make some of the resources available, and the most efficient assistance does come from a trained counselor.
You can receive both group and individual counseling or as we said before, simply over the telephone. A counselor will assist the smoker to recognize the emotional and psychological issues that arise when they first stop smoking and withdraw from nicotine. It is not an easy task as the addiction to nicotine is one of the strongest there is.
The thing to remember is that once you stop smoking, the nicotine remains in the body for as long as three to four days and it is when this period is over that the withdrawal symptoms begin to manifest. These are liable to last just a couple of days or in some instances even weeks. It is this time when the support is needed most so that the smoker has someone to turn to rather than back to the cigarettes.
With nicotine replacement therapy, you are still subjecting your body to the effect of nicotine. Research has indicated that people who make use of counseling as apposed to NRT are seen to be four times more likely to achieve success when stopping smoking.