Looking to quit smoking once and for all?

One of Turkey’s most prominent anti-smoking centers is located at Hacettepe University’s preventative oncology department’s anti-smoking unit. There are thousands of cigarette addicts who have come here to curb their habit. Professor Ismail Çelik notes that people are behaving more knowledgeably these days than in the past when it comes to quitting smoking. He also says that prior to the ban on smoking in public places, the center was only open once a week for services, but now it is open twice a week. He says that with increasing demand, the center will be open more days a week if necessary.

All right, but which method will this center use to get you to quit smoking? The first thing you should know is this: As long as you don’t want to quit smoking, no one is going to make you quit. Which is why your first promise needs to be to yourself before you head out to get help. You will find therapy that relies on medicinal support as well as therapy that uses psychological support here. When you first arrive at the center, the doctor will ask you to provide some basic information, such as how long you have been smoking and since what age you have been smoking. After this, you will be asked to write down what it is you hope to gain from quitting smoking. Then you will have your actual medical check-up, which is the final step before the construction of a personal program based on your level of current smoking habit, personal health and personality. Çelik notes that the medicine-supported aspect of the therapy lasts for three months and that after that people come to the center for routine check-ups and follow-ups. He adds, “We use patches and gum as well as medicine employed in anti-depressant therapy.”

There is another important reason -- aside from your health, of course -- that has added recent urgency to quitting smoking: the price of cigarettes. One pack of cigarettes has risen to TL 7, which means that for addicts, especially those making minimum wage, smoking has become prohibitively expensive. One week’s worth of cigarettes has become extraordinarily expensive, and if you add this to the cost you will pay for all the health problems these same cigarettes might cause, this is enough to make anyone think twice.

If you can stop smoking for one year, you are free from addiction

If someone who used to smoke is able to stop for one year, his or her body is 100 percent cleansed of nicotine. Both doctors and therapists say that if they can get someone to stop for a year, it means the therapy has been one hundred percent successful. At the same time, if someone who has quit for a year starts up again after a year, the reasons for starting again are neither physical nor mental. It is basically the same thing as if someone who never smoked started smoking.

Of course, there are countless methods put to use in the struggle to get people to quit. Some of these are hypnosis, electric stimulation, herbal, ozone and acupuncture, to name just a few. Emre Çiçek, who is an aesthetics doctor based in İstanbul, asserts that people can stop smoking after just one session of acupuncture. Here is how he describes this method: “Our patients need to have stopped smoking 24 or 72 hours before coming to us. But I can get them to quit permanently at the first session. There are two more support sessions afterwards. Quitting smoking is something that calls for psychological support. With acupuncture, our first aim is to make the nicotine in the body active. When people are quitting, they need to feel that nicotine. We make the nicotine in the body active by using gold and silver needles.”

Çiçek goes on to describe the other stages of the acupuncture therapy, noting that each body has a “sympathetic nervous system,” and that: “This system helps people feel more active, more alive. When this system is really in action, people feel the need for more nicotine. We block this system and thus reduce the sensation of need for cigarettes. We also speed up the metabolism, thereby helping rid the body of toxins from the cigarettes faster. We speed up the working of the lungs, so they are cleansed faster.”

Here’s the way, if you say, ‘Now is the time to quit!’

Another method to consider is called MORA therapy. In this method, rather than classic uses of medicines, cessation of smoking is achieved through information sent through electromagnetic vibrations. Therapy is thus achieved as the patient’s body absorbs these vibrations into its own energy. The body is actually healing itself. The electromagnetic waves that spread throughout the body’s meridians naturally balance with information provided from outside the body, and the result is that the body’s perceived need for nicotine is reduced and balanced.

And, of course, there are always the most natural ways known to help people quit, ways that depend on some elements you might even have ready in your own home. Some people swear by mint, rosemary or even cloves and turmeric. Of course, these herbs may be better as support elements rather than your main course of action.