JW, a working mother of two, decided to stop smoking because she didn't want her children to grow up having a mum that smoked.
She didn't consider herself to be a heavy smoker - she smoked about 18 cigarettes a day. JW couldn't imagine giving up her cigarettes all at once, and so needed to find a different way to stop that allowed her to cut out her cigarettes more gradually. That's why JW decided to cut down first before stopping completely.
Step 1
JW decided to aim to cut down gradually to about 8 cigarettes a day - which is less than half of what she used to smoke - by 4 weeks. She looked at all the cigarettes she smoked and realised that half of them she could get by without, like the ones she used to smoke walking to work in the morning.
So JW started by cutting these out first and if she got any cravings, she would just have a piece of NICORETTE®Gum instead. Within a week, JW was down to 14 cigarettes a day and this gave her a genuine sense of satisfaction and much more confidence to continue cutting down to her goal of 8 a day.
Step 2
By now, JW was beginning to feel a real sense of achievement and had cut down to 8 cigarettes a day. She decided to keep going, using NICORETTE®Gum to control her cravings. It wasn't easy, but NICORETTE® Gum really helped and soon JW was down to 1 or 2 cigarettes a day.
Step 3
JW stopped smoking completely within 4 months. As she had cut down gradually, it wasn't as hard as she thought it was going to be. At the end it was really easy to cut out the remaining 1 cigarette a day that she was still smoking by using the gum whenever she needed to.
Step 4
JW knew that she had to stop using NICORETTE®Gum, and the next month she stopped using it completely. She did keep a few packs of the gum though, just in case she ever got any further cigarette cravings. Smoking less meant JW spent less on cigarettes, and she used this money for NICORETTE®Gum instead. Now that JW has stopped smoking completely, she is saving around $2000 a year.