I’m looking for ways to quit smoking and came across the terminology “Cold Turkey exercise”. What are Cold turkey and acupuncture methods? Are they really helpful? Is there another method available to quit smoking.

Hi!

The "Cold Turkey" method, is actually the lack of a method!, it means that without any preparation, substitutes, etc, "out of the blue" you just wake up one day and stop smoking - you just don't light another cigarette. Acupuncture is a method indeed, aiming mainly to alleviate the symptoms of drug addiction in the first weeks one stops smoking, which is the critical period. Acupuncture involves putting needles in the body and (I think) the ears.

Perhaps different persons need different ways to quit, but in all cases there is at least one thing in common: you have to really want to quit. There is a modern Greek proverb, that "if a sin is not multiplied, it doesn't stop". Aeschylus said that God gave us knowledge through suffering - you first have to suffer your mistakes, and through them to gain knowledge.

Since you are a smoker, you have to suffer from your addiction, see your health deteriorating, see your freedom vanishing, and when you will have suffered enough, you will be ready to quit.

In my case, besides the decision to quit I was helped by just learning what exactly smoking is, i.e., an addiction and not a pleasure. Music is a pleasure, and if I am not going to listen to music for some hours, I don't become mad - but I couldn't imagine myself without a smoke for hours. Therefore, there must be something else in smoking, and not pleasure, which is evident also in another way: why, if smoking is a pleasure, why wasn't it a pleasure when we started to smoke. All smokers remember that their first cigarettes were disgusting.

It was learning these things that helped me quit smoking, since I understood that I was not following a pleasure even to death, but that I was just a junkie. I learned also how smoking started to become popular, that it was propagated by the US government itself during the world war.

You can try some method, if you will, but let me also suggest that you read www.ellopos.net/education/carr-stop-smoking.asp" target="_blank">Allen Carr's, My experience from smoking (excerpts from a book that helped not only me, but a lot of people, the most important parts, in my opinion, together with an introduction that I wrote with the title www.ellopos.net/education/smoking.asp" target="_blank">Why do we smoke, really?).