Thinking of quitting? There’s an app (or well, multiple apps) for that. We will focus on three of the most used apps, Cessation Nation (my personal favorite), Quit Smoking, Quit Now! and try to see how they work to help you quit smoking.
If you are thinking of quitting smoking, downloading an app to help you with that is definitely a great first step. This doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have to put in any effort – it just means that you would be able to track your mission in numbers, charts and interact with other people on the same mission.
Focusing on the Positives
What these and most other quitting apps do is that they summarize information about your act of quitting helping it feel like a mission that is being tracked. The app would usually display the date and time that you quit, how long it has been since your last cigarette, how many cigarettes have you NOT smokes, how much money have you saved as a result and how much time have you saved by not spending it smoking.
For fans of the TV show “House of Cards”, do you remember when Doug Stamper talks about how he hasn’t had alcohol in like thousands of days and the moment he drinks a drop that number would go down to zero? Well, this is just that, but with cigarettes and without having to remember those stats yourself and letting the app do it for you.
Games for Distraction
Cessation Nation has a unique feature – it has easy to play engaging games that you can play if you want to fight off the urge to smoke. Playing these games for a few minutes can really push your mind off to other things.
Milestones
The apps also include achievement/milestones that you can unlock as you stay off smoking – for example the first 5 non-smoked cigarettes, the first hour saved in terms of smoking time and so on. Jumping from one achievement level to the other can keep you motivated and going strong.
Health Goals
You work your way towards health goals – usually depicted by a percentage bar that shows you how close you are to achieving these milestones. It starts off easy with normal carbon monoxide levels in your blood and normal heart rate and blood pressure. The next stage is nicotine removal from your body, elimination of dependence on nicotine and reduction in withdrawal symptoms. Once you are past that stage, you are working towards bigger health goals such as reducing the risk of heart attacks, stroke, lung cancer and tooth loss.
Community
There are different options for sharing your journey with the outside world, depending on your own priorities. You can post your progress on Facebook and other social media websites using these apps. The alternative is interacting with other users of the same app and sharing your experiences as well as getting motivation from others.
The combined achievements of all the users of the app are usually displayed to help with this sense of community and joint push towards a smoke free future.
Gradual Decrease
Instead of going cold turkey, you might want to decrease the level of smoking slowly or just bring it down to a certain level without quitting. Quit Smoking by Azati is the app for you – it helps you keep track of when you smoke your cigarettes, how many you have smoked, how many more can you smoke to keep up with your goal and how your urge/stress is going up and down during the intervals between smoking. For those of you who have tried to go cold turkey but failed, this is a first step – stay conscious of how many cigarettes you are smoking and try to bring that number down.
For more apps and what they do, click here.
Download Links
Cessation Nation (Google Play)
Quit Now! (Google Play) (iTunes)
