My Guide to the Stop Smoking Injection
Brace yourself guys because I’m going to wheel out another horrible statistic in an attempt to shock you into quitting, then I promise I’ll tell you all I know about these newfangled stop smoking injections.
So here goes…
credit: Every year over five million people die of smoking related diseases. Yes you heard me right FIVE MILLION!
So there is no hiding in the closet anymore thinking that you need to smoke until you’re too old to really do any damage. Young folks are also dying every year and it could be you if you don’t make a real effort to quit the cancer sticks once and for all.
Sorry to sound preachy but that stat’s left me in tears 
Another thing I used to kid myself about smoking was that all my friends smoked and none of them were ill, but I now realize that we were all around 17 at the time and I hate to think of the horrible effects that all that puffing is having on my old school friends now.
What about that injection to stop smoking?
So here we go on another mission to find the magic pill to make giving up easy.
But today the pill comes in the form of an injection…
As many of you know I gave up myself going cold turkey after a few different tries but I have been doing a bit of digging and I want to give you an overview of these stop smoking injections in the hope that if you’ve tried everything else this might be what you’re looking for.
Rather than “injection” some clever marketing person decided to call this treatment a ‘vaccine’ to make it sound more official and from what I can gather the success rate is a whopping 70/80 percent! The treatment is given in conjunction with group therapy which has also been shown to be a great help when giving up.
You can either ask for Scopolamine or Atropine and the stop smoking shot will be given in the following location to block the nicotine receptors in the brain.
- Behind the ears
- On the hip or arms
- And behind the brain (Scary!!!)
But don’t worry if you are a little squeamish because you will be in safe hands with a set of highly trained medical professionals who have administered the injections to many former smokers before you.
The injections work by fooling your brain into thinking it does not crave cigarettes for long enough to kill the daily addition.
You may also be given a patch or some pills which will help boost your willpower.
The cost
This is a biggy for most of us and these quit smoking injections are not cheap coming in at around $500 per session which is about the same as laser therapy to stop smoking.
Top tip - Why not speak to your medical insurance company and see if they can cover the cost?
The drugs you will be given are not some new fangled thing that may go wrong in a few years time leaving you with a medical problem, but have been used for a long time to help with all kinds of ailments such as Parkinson’s disease.
As with any drug you may notice a few side effects such as:
- Dizziness
- Dry mouth
- Headaches
- Problems in urinating
Although many patients do not report any of the above symptoms or problems.
With that said there are a number of long term potential side effects that look a little more worrying including:
- Hallucination
- Strokes
- Heart attacks
These are of course very extreme cases and a full check up from your doctor will show up any problems before you begin treatment.
Final thoughts
If you have tried everything else and still have problems giving up then you might want to give the injections a go, but for me the downsides far outweigh the idea of just going cold turkey so try that first.
Keep up the good work, if your looking for a quit smoking support group I’m here for you.
Quit smoking today,
