I was in the hospital for an outpatient procedure last week and when the anesthesiologist came into the room to talk to me about medicines he noted on my chart that I was an ex-smoker of 4 years after over 30 years of smoking. He seemed impressed enough that he asked me how I did it and if I had advice to give him to share with his others patients. He said he has heard that it is super hard to quit. The first thing I did was tell him about www.BecomeanEx.org. I told him to read over the info on this site and refer patients here. I also told him what he would learn here is that smoking is not a habit so much as an addiction to nicotine. I said that is the approach doctors need to take when talking to their patients about quitting. I told him to treat smoking just like you would alcoholism or drug addiciton (hence our motto of NOPE, right?). He seemed fairly shocked at this nugget of information so hopefully it helps him to understand this issue enough to better help his patients. I hope we see some newbies in here as a result.
