Medical handling

You've seen people chewing gum. Someone rolls up their sleeve to reveal a patch.

Nicotine-replacement products reduce withdrawal symptoms. Talk to your md, nurse practitioner or pharmacist about these over-the-counter products or about a prescription that can aid you lot quit smoking for good. Some drugs – what'due south in the patch, for example – can help increase your chances of success.

Find pharmacies in your neighbourhood.

Ontario Drug Benefit recipients

The Ontario Drug Benefit includes coverage to help you quit smoking:

  • upwardly to a year of pharmacist-assisted counselling (talk to your pharmacist or wellness care provider)
  • drugs (Champix or Zyban) if y'all are age 18 years or older

Common cold turkey

Common cold turkey is not for anybody. (Maybe you've tried.) Some people tin can pick a date and time to quit –and stick to it. They stop lighting up and live with the effects of nicotine withdrawal, with no assist at all.

Tips to help you quit

If you're still trying to make up one's mind between quitting gradually, counselling and support groups, or medical handling, try some uncomplicated tips.

Brand lists

Try making a list of the:

  • situations when y'all fume to help you identify what triggers you to lite upward
  • benefits you meet in quitting and keeping it handy so y'all can re-read it
  • activities y'all picture yourself doing instead of smoking, like going for a walk or run

Go moving

Exercise relaxes the listen and body, and helps repair some of the harm smoking has done to your health.

Avoid triggers

Figure out what situations brand you crave a cigarette and try to avoid or change them. If you usually:

  • fume while drinking coffee, try tea or water instead
  • smoke at parties, try to avert them until y'all feel confident nigh enjoying these occasions without smoking

Reduce cravings

Try these simple activities – fifty-fifty if they sound too uncomplicated – to reduce your nicotine-craving:

  • breathe deeply to help yourself relax
  • drinkable water to go on your hands and mouth busy (it helps flush the toxins from your organization, and you can heighten a glass to your success)

Wellness Canada guides

Whether it's your beginning or fifth attempt to quit smoking, Health Canada's guides will assist you become on the road to quitting.

Counselling and support groups

Talk to your doctor about getting individual counselling or joining a support grouping. You can also:

  • contact your local public health unit
  • visit Health Connect Ontario or call 811 for supports to assistance yous quit smoking
  • visit the Smokers' Helpline website to annals for online programs and text-message support

Coming upward with strategies to quit or sharing stories well-nigh quitting may be what you need to succeed.

Quit gradually

Yous may observe information technology easier to quit gradually. Smoke less oftentimes, smoke fewer cigarettes in a row or try to go longer between smokes. Some people battle the habit by developing new habits:

  • using matches instead of a lighter because they run out sooner and are harder to light
  • putting cigarettes in an out-of-the-way spot instead of having them on you, and then you lot have to become get them
  • butting out later on half a cigarette instead of finishing it
  • delaying your get-go smoke of the day past an hr and and so adding another 15 minutes to the time before the adjacent one, a one-half hr to the next and so on

To quit gradually, write downwards a plan and stick to it. Writing down why you want to quit, and how you'll do it, makes it more existent. Yous'll be more committed.

Being more than committed, you'll probably desire to talk to other people who become it: former smokers whose ain attempts seemed destined to fail – merely weren't.

Talking to friends and co-workers, you may observe a buddy – someone who wants to quit with you lot, who'll help you stick to the plan.

Quitting is personal

Everyone benefits – correct away and over time – when they quit smoking. Merely quitting is personal. Only you'll know what works for you.

That doesn't hateful you're alone in making this decision. More and more than people are choosing to quit. Look at these numbers from the Eye for Addiction and Mental Health:

  • in 2014, 43% smokers aged 18+ made a serious attempt at quitting (going without smoking for at to the lowest degree 24 hours) in the past year
  • in 2014, 32% of smokers xviii+ said they intended to quit in the next 30 days, upward from 23% the year before

As presently as you stop smoking, y'all start to feel ameliorate.

Longer-term benefits of quitting

The longer you get without a cigarette, the improve it gets: