It's very nice that you want to help someone quit smoking, but to be honest, it's impossible to help someone stop smoking just by telling them that it's unhealthy and they should stop.
It's doesn't matter if you tell them a thousand times. It doesn't matter if you beg them, bug them or bully them. It won't help.
You might as well try telling an untrained dog to stop begging for food at the table. It won't listen and it won't stop. It needs to learn.
You can tell a smoker to stop smoking but they won't listen and won't stop. For a smoker to stop smoking he or she needs to want to stop and needs to learn how to stop.
Smoking is an addiction. It's a drug dependency. Even if smokers want to stop smoking, most of them just can't do just using willpower. This is there is a drug called nicotine in the smoke which makes smoking a drug addiction. So telling them to stop over and over again won't make any difference.
So how can you help someone stop smoking?
Most smokers, and especially long term smokers, do want to give up smoking (even though they might all not admit it). But they can’t do themselves, or they would have done it already. Most smokers try to stop or to cut down but they can't do it.So you are not helping by telling them to stop or telling them it's unhealthy. They know all that. And they know how difficult it is to stop smoking for good.
So having family and friends pester them to stop is actually a constant and annoying reminder, that they can’t stop by themselves. In fact pestering smokers to quit, is often very counterproductive.
One of the problems is about well-meaning non-smokers telling you to stop smoking, is that non-smokers just don’t know what they are talking about. They don't know what it's like to be a smoker and be addicted to smoking.
People who have never smoked, think that smoking is a a choice. They think that smokers could just stop smoking anytime they want. They get annoyed when smokers don't listen to them. We, the creators of the quit smoking method "Stepbac® from Smoking" were heavy smokers for 30 years.
We the creators of the Stepbac® method, are brothers - our mother, who was a non-smoker, probably begged us thousands of times to stop smoking. She hated the smoke and knew from her father's health that it was very unhealthy.
We couldn't stop. We were addicted to the nicotine. She didn't get understand that. Nor did we in the beginning.
Only after years of smoking, after seeing our father paralyzed from a stroke and seeing our grandfather die of lung cancer did we begin to understand that smoking was a real killer.
But people like our mother, who never smoked, have no idea how strong an addiction smoking is. The pop singer David Bowie once said it was easier to quit heroin than cigarettes.
So back to the question that brought you to this page: How can I help someone stop smoking? Here is some advice which we hope will help.
First step to help someone stop smoking
Stop the pestering, nagging and scolding. It will not help. A smoker does need support and encouragement to stop smoking but in a useful and constructive way.Hugs, high-fives and ‘you can do it’ chants are nice, but they won’t last 1 round in the heavyweight fight against the nicotine addiction of a heavy smoker.
So if you have a heavy smoker in the family or your partner is a daily smoker, then you have to find another way.
Second step to help someone quit smoking
The only way, in our opinion, to help someone stop smoking, is to first understand yourself how smoking and nicotine addiction works.You can do this buy reading an article of ours about smoking and nicotine. Or you could buy our “Stepbac® from Smoking” e-book, or paperback and read it yourself to educate yourself about smoking and nicotine.
We actually recommend this to parents who want to understand about smoking so that they can educate their teenage kids about the dangers of smoking.
Our book “Stepbac® from Smoking” explains all how smoking and the nicotine in an easy way with many illustrations.
It takes a couple of hours to read. After reading “Stepbac® from Smoking” you will know what you are dealing with. Remember the enemy here is nicotine, not the person you love.
Third step to help someone quit smoking
Third step, and this is the hard one, how to get your smoking friend or loved one to read the book.
You can´t just leave in on their pillow. In our experience giving the book to someone who smokes rarely helps.
The smoker will thank you, but won´t read the book. Then might say they read the book and that it didn't work. Of course they won't have read it.
You have to understand that for a smoker addicted to nicotine, there it never feels like a good time to stop, so many smokers live in denial and keep pushing the quitting date in front of them.
Often family and friends who keep trying to help will be told to in a nice way to “mind their own business.”
A smoker will tell them thanks but I “will quit when I am good and ready” or I will “quit in my own good time,” and so on. You might have heard all this.
So how do you get them to read“Stepbac® from Smoking”? Well you could wait until they mention themselves that they want to quit and then perhaps tell a little white lie about someone else stopping after reading “Stepbac® from Smoking”.
Or if you feel you have tried many other things, then you could try ordering a signed and number paperback edition of our book “Stepbac® from Smoking”. We will sign and number it. If you tell us what to write we can include a personal message from you. Then we will send it to you and you can add your own message and get others to add it. Read more about this idea in our article "How can I help someone else to stop smoking?"
You then give this special edition of “Stepbac® from Smoking” a present to the smoker. But do it privately – not in front of all the family. Do it one on one.
Doing it this way will send a deeply personal message. The message could be something like this:
"Dear....
I love you, I care about you and I really want you to enjoy a longer and happier and healthier life with you, so I have made a personal effort to find a great way for you to stop smoking.
I even read the book myself and I have made a special effort to get you a signed copy of this book. Finally I put my own special message of love and support and encouragement in the book.
I did all this, because I love you very much and I care deeply about you and our life together. So all I am asking is that you spend the couple of hours to read the book.
That’s all I am asking. Please just read the book “Stepbac® from Smoking”. I am not asking you to stop smoking this time. I am asking you to read this book. Then, if you feel you are ready to quit after reading the book, then it will be your own decision, which of course I will support all the way. "
That’s it.
Will it help someone you love quit? It might. We hope so. Try it.
Order a signed gift edition of “Stepbac® from Smoking”