Do you really need a quit smoking aid to help you to quit smoking? Many people believe that they do simply based on the fact that they have tried desperately to quit in the past and they have always failed.
Pretty much every smoker has tried to quit cold turkey. They decide that they will give it a try, sometimes even just on a whim, and they are overpowered by the wicked withdrawal symptoms. They had no idea how uncomfortable they would get when trying to quit cold turkey. So this experience of trying to quit and encountering the devastating withdrawal symptoms plants a memory in their mind that quitting is really difficult and really uncomfortable.
Now the next time they are forced to go for a long time without a cigarette (such as at a social function of some sort), they will feel the onset of withdrawal and know that if they ever try to quit again, they are going to go through that pain all over again. And they have no real idea of how long that detox will last, they just know that it is longer than what they experienced before.
So you have a psychological battle going on in the mind of the smoker, and they feel like they “need something” in order to help them.
The problem is that in many cases, the quit smoking aids actually perpetuate smoking. For example, the long term success rates of nicotine replacement products such as the patch and the gum are generally measured as being worse than the success rates of cold turkey. If you measure the short term, like 90 days or 6 months, then the patch and the gum win, and cold turkey loses. But if you look at the long haul, cold turkey quitters are better off, and all of those people who took the easy way out with the nicotine patch are smoking again. Now this is just the statistics on it and of course there are always exceptions. But you should realize that the mindset that “you have to have something in order to help you” is wrong.
Cold turkey quitting is not pleasant but it is fast. Quitting with other methods is slow. Wearing the patch will have you hooked on nicotine for several more months. Rip the band-aid off all at once. You can be completely through with your nicotine detox in a week or even less if you go cold turkey and drink plenty of fluids to help flush your body.
