The majority of smokers spend a considerable portion of their smoking career wishing they could quit. When they do finally quit, the vast majority do so on their own, without professional help, and they quit using ‘cold turkey’, i.e. by abrupt withdrawal.
The American Cancer Society (2003) reports that 91.4 percent of former smokers quit ‘cold turkey’ or by slowly decreasing the amount smoking.
Doran, Valenti, Robinson, Britt and Mattick (2006) surveyed adult patients attending Australian GPs in 2002 and 2003. Oven a quarter of patients were former smokers and one in five were current smokers.
Doran et al. reported that 92 percent of former and 80 percent of current smokers used only one method in their last quit attempt, ‘cold turkey’ being the most common method used by both former (88 percent) and current (62 percent) smokers.