Tell the tobacco companies to take you off their mailing list

These are techniques for handling urges and cravings, **shown to help with or
without medicines**. The free and confidential quitline is
1-800-QUIT-NOW.

Adjust your medicine

If urges are hard to resist and you are using nicotine replacement therapy,
you may be able to use more — moving from a lower-dose patch to a higher one,
or adding a nicotine mini-lozenge or gum. On varenicline or bupropion,
talk to your doctor about the urges.

Under-dosing NRT is one of the commonest reasons a quit attempt fails, and it
is fixable.

Make your environment work for you

• Get rid of all cigarettes — home, car, work — before you quit
• Get rid of lighters, matches and ashtrays
• Wash clothes and anything that smells of smoke

Tell people, and manage the ones who smoke

• Avoid situations where you will be tempted in the first few weeks
• Tell the people you spend time with who smoke — ask them not to smoke
  around you and not to offer you cigarettes
• Call a friend when an urge hits; go for a walk, go to a film, just talk
• Tell your doctor, dentist, counsellor, pharmacist and nurses — they can
  encourage you and may have further suggestions

The temptations nobody warns you about

• Shopping, especially a convenience store. **For the first month, be
  careful where you shop**, and decide before you go in that you will not buy
  cigarettes.
• Places that still allow smoking — secondhand smoke and seeing people
  smoke trigger cravings. Avoid them for the first couple of months.
• Marketing. **Contact any tobacco company that sends you promotions or
  mailings and tell them to take you off their list. Opt out of their texts
  and emails.**

That last one is the tip that is easy to miss and hard to argue with. Tobacco
companies hold mailing lists of their customers and send coupons and offers,
and they arrive without being asked for — at home, on the day you have
resolved not to smoke. Every other item on this page is about removing
triggers from your environment; this removes one that comes looking for you.

*Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tips From Former
Smokers® campaign.*