Reply #49: 40 Years, 2 Packs of Camels a day, quitting was easy and I got paid $500 for doing it. [View All]

No shit.

To be honest I did not smoke Camels for 40 years, I started with Raleigh's.

It was time to quit, that was clear. My heart raced when I climbed stairs, I was out of breath far to easily too. Morning coughs were getting worse and any dam fool knew the reason. I had to quit.

There is a teaching hospital (West Virginia University) about 20 miles from here and they have a "Cancer Center" so I stopped by one day and asked if they had or were aware of any smoking cessation programs that I could sign on to. They had one going on that was sponsored by a drug company (great surprise there) that I could sign up for. I do not recall all the details now but as it worked out I was to take a pill every day and then take a short survey every evening. The survey was done on a Palm Pilot that they provided and sent to them via the phone line. I think the whole thing was to last 6 months, maybe it was less. Every week I had to report in and they took a cotton swab saliva test and gave me the next week's bottle of pills - it took about 15 minutes. The pill, it was explained, was one that was already on the market and being proscribed for something or another and they were testing it to see if it could be marketed to people trying to quit. I was paid for participating in the program and the total ($500) was dependent on staying in the program for the full time. If you dropped out you got paid for the time you were in it. Strangely enough they didn't seem to care if you started smoking again, only that you took the pill and reported in every night.

They gave me a short physical first and then gave me a date on which I would quit. It was about 3 weeks in the future. They said don't bother to try to taper off or quit before hand, just go ahead and smoke to my heart's content until my date came. On that morning I was to have no cigarettes or lighters available. I think I had to start taking the pills a couple of days earlier.

Anyway I never got to the end. I quit without any great difficulty. I wanted a cigarette badly at first and then it got easier as time went by. It didn't take long before most of the urge was gone, surprisingly little time, maybe 5 or 6 days. After about 2 months I went in for my weekly report-in and they told me the program had been canceled. They gave no reason. I didn't care much because I had, by that time, successfully quit. I hadn't give any thought to the money and promptly forgot it altogether. Then about 2 months later I got a check in the mail for the full amount as if the program has gone on to its end, as well as a thank you note.

That was about it other than that I suspect I got the placebo. I only say that because I never felt any effect from taking the pills. Even an aspirin does something noticeable, if not to me then at least some different behavior that my wife would be quick to spot - and mention - but I saw no effect. So from my point of view if you are serious about quitting you might want to check with local hospitals, particularly one that was associated with a med school, and see if they have anything to help. I suspect many do - if not paid pharmaceutical tests like I did at least you should be able to find good information on aids in quitting. Nice folks too. The final payoff of course is that you quit. It is so much better not to smoke. I can not immagine why I ever started.