Smoking Cessation Device Helps Wean You Off Gradually

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 03 Jan 2006 - 14:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, if making a New Year's resolution for 2006 is your only strategy to quit smoking, your chance of success is just 1 in 20. Indeed, this represents a 95% failure rate. If you do not at some point come up with an effective action plan, you will likely keep smoking until it kills you. Nearly half of all adult smokers are destined to smoke themselves to death, each an average of 15 years early.

The half getting killed is not for lack of trying or wanting to quit. It's because most smokers deeply believe they can figure out how to quit on their own, but run out of time before getting it right.

For many smokers, quitting 'cold turkey' is next to impossible. Accordingly, the 'quit smoking' industry has grown to a billion-dollar-a-year business, with products ranging from antidepressant pills to nicotine replacement therapy like patches or gum, to newer experimental drugs.

But to many people, it does not make sense to use yet more drugs in order to quit smoking. An alternative can be found in a relatively new class of products for quitting smoking of which most people are unaware. These products, called Smoking Cessation Devices, enable people to wait longer and longer between cigarettes, so that they can gradually wean themselves from their addiction. The problem is that the smoking cessation devices that have been on the market so far have been inconvenient to use.

Brady Development of Avon, CT reports that you can effectively and conveniently alleviate the irritable effects of nicotine withdrawal by using their new Linkman Habit Reversal Tool. The battery-powered device is shaped like a cigarette for a placebo effect, but is small enough to be worn as a pendant or carried on a keychain.

"Other smoking cessation devices beep or flash, telling you when to smoke. This is less effective than anticipated. If you are in a meeting, for example, or at a movie, you can't smoke, and it throws you completely off your plan," Linkman inventor J. B. Snyder says. "Being permission-based, our new device solves that problem while removing the guesswork from quitting."

To use the Linkman, you double-click a clear button on the end to request permission to smoke. If you haven't waited long enough between cigarettes, this button blinks red, indicating that you must fight the urge to smoke for a little while longer. There is no penalty for asking too early - the Linkman simply says "not yet" with a red flash.

If you double-click the button after waiting long enough, you get a solid green light. This is the Linkman's way of granting permission to smoke one cigarette. "You can just check the Linkman AFTER the meeting," says Snyder. "If you've waited long enough since your last cigarette, you can light up. You'll still be sticking to your plan."

For each cigarette, this cycle repeats with a slightly longer waiting period based on a compounding algorithm. In this way, the device weans you gradually and systematically, allowing you to quit smoking within a few months of use.

So, for people who can't seem to quit cold turkey, and don't want to use yet more drugs to help them keep their New Year's Resolutions, there is an effective alternative. And because it is reliable, convenient, and permission-based, there is an even greater chance that the Linkman will save more lives.

Made in the U.S.A. and patent-pending, the Linkman can only be purchased on the World Wide Web at http://www.linkman.com.

• Additional
• References
• Citations