Check out my answers to the other sibling comments.

Would you settle for quit smoking by a self-help book? ;-D

Here's something that blew me away...

My sister just quit smoking. From ten cigarettes a day to zero. We (her family and friends) are all so overjoyed. How did she do it?

https://www.allencarr.com/

She read that book. That's all. When she was done, she was no longer smoking. Within a few days her sense of smell came back and now cigs smell disgusting to her.

Go ahead and be skeptical. If it hadn't happened to my own sister I would be too.

And then get the book for the smokers you love in your life, eh? I mean, you can return it if it doesn't work for them, but if it does... My sister just got back years of her life!

I don't mean to be pushy or saleman-ish, and I'm not affiliated with Carr in the slightest. I only remembered that a book cured my sister of smoking addiction in the time it took to read it after reading your comment goto11, cheers!

I had a friend who also read that book. I don't know if he picked up smoking again but I remember him telling that the book basically hammers it into you that smoking is bad for 150 pages and that you just have to give up smoking because it's so annoying to read about how bad it is.

The core idea of the book is that you're not giving up smoking. You're just deciding not to smoke this cigarette. You can still smoke if you want to. You just don't want to because $HUGE_LIST_OF_BAD_STUFF.

I don't know if that's an evidence based approach, but some people find it useful.

My dad, who was smoking at least 40 a day (and really smoking -- down to the filter, deep inhalations, carried on when he knew it was doing him harm) read it and cut down for a week or so, but then started smoking cigars (in the same way as he smoked cigs), and then switched back to cigarettes.

I think the current evidence strongly recommended a combination of psychological work and nicotine replacement. https://cks.nice.org.uk/smoking-cessation

Isn't that most self-help books? State your core idea in the first 5 pages, then fill the next 150+ pages with restatements of the same idea in slightly different ways.

No, pick one up and notice how it comes with exercises and how there are always more than a single core idea and it's more like 4-7 concepts layered out in chapters. It's more structured than just restating.

That's more-or-less what my sister said.

Whatever works.

I mentioned this thread to her and she wanted me to add that there was no withdrawal and her behavior didn't change. When she has tried to quit previously it had significant effects on her mood. This time we (her friends and family) didn't notice she had quit until she told us! It was the best Christmas present.

It is not uncommon for people to just make a decision to stop smoking. It is indeed possible to not light a cigarette if the motivation is there. That is completely different than "trying not to have a broken leg".

> It is not uncommon for people to just make a decision to stop smoking.

I don't think that true, but even if it is, so what? That's not what happened to my sister.

The “Have you tried not having a broken leg?” line is from e.g. https://sunflowerssunshine.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/breaking... I don't know if that's the original source.