Procrastinating about quitting smoking kills thousands of people

There have been a lot of scare stories written about the use of the smoking cessation medication Champix which need to be put into context. It seems that smokers love to use the excuse of the side effects of smoking cessation medication as the reason they carry on puffing away. For example check out the statistics for Champix in Canada.

There were almost 710,000 prescriptions issued for this quit smoking medication between April 2007 and the end of the year and yet there were only 226 reported cases of psychiatric side effects. The figure of 226 might seem like a lot but it in fact only means around one case every 3,000 prescriptions issued. Out of this number the majority would be anxiety and depression rather than the more serious reported side effect of suicidal thoughts.

One thing is for sure that smoking is much much more likely to do you harm than Champix and if you smoke all your life it will definitely shorten it. Smoking is the cause of over 50% of smokers. You should talk to a doctor about the side effects of smoking cessation medications like Champix but using them as an excuse not to quit smoking is just plain stupid.

Procrastinating about quitting smoking kills thousands of people if not millions every year. Putting off quitting increases both the psychological addiction and the nicotine addiction which therefore reduces the chances of you being able to quit. It could be that that extra year or even few months of smoking ends up killing you.

Just to make sure you got the message you should also know that smoking tends to kill people slowly and painfully. Lung cancer is a particular favourite illness of smokers which is a particularly gruesome way to end your life. Other illnesses that smoking brings on are strokes, heart attacks [admittedly pretty quick], emphysema, all types of cancer and even dementia.

There are loads of things you can do to quit smoking from counseling, hypnotherapy, nicotine replacement therapy and getting a prescription for Champix. There is no excuse, just get on with it and do something before it is too late.