Host: How do you quit smoking?
Eletta Hansen: Quitting is a personal choice. The most important and fundamental thing is your motivation. You need to think about when you're ready to quit smoking, think in terms of a scale of one to ten, how important is it for you to quit? How confident are you that you can quit smoking? And how ready are you to quit? Identify your strengths, think about the areas that you are going to need more support with.
Set a quit date, prepare for the quit date, talk with the health care professional about the medications that are available, choose the medication that you are going to use. People who use medication are twice as successful in quitting as people who do not use medication. It is much more than will power.
Think about the cravings that will ensue, prepare, get healthy snacks, get lollipops, get gum, get mints, get a stress ball, think about what you are going to do in the place of smoking, enroll in a support group. There is nothing more powerful than being around other people who are going through the same struggles and journey that you are. I contribute most of my success, basically all of my success, to my support group. They are wonderful group of people. We meet once a week, that is the one day that I have set aside for myself. That is for me, that is for my treatment, it is for my healing process. It's the people who have gone through the same thing I have or are going through it now.
We are able to be there to support one another that no body else understands unless you have been a smoker and you are dealing with it, what it exactly in entails to quit smoking, and that's what I get from my support group.