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I used to teach a 7 day stop smoking program, it was 15 steps a day that if you could do for 7 days straight, you'd be a non-smoker by the end of it. The program was all about turning off mental switches that triggered cravings. I was teaching the program with a new teaching partner to one person who was struggling with the 15 steps, my new partner introduced a drastic 24hr option he knew of, and had apparently had remarkable success with, that he claimed was 100% effective, but came with some amount of risk...

He said that if you were to boil a pack of cigarettes, and drink it like tea, that you would be a non-smoker over night. The rationale was that there is a deadly dose of nicotine in a pack of cigarettes, if you were to extract it and inject it into your blood stream it could kill you, but most of the nicotine in cigarettes gets burnt away while smoking, so by boiling your cigarettes you get as much of the pure nicotine out as possible. After drinking the tobacco sludge, the subject is required to smoke one last cigarette, but because their body is overloaded with nicotine, it responds with violent vomiting (assuming you made it as far as lighting the cigarette before vomiting). From that day after, all the mental switches that used to trigger cravings, instead trigger the memory of that awful mortal illness cause by that nicotine sludge, and you never smoke again.

The guy never went through with the 24hr option, but I know of at least one smoker I worked with at a different job who apparently tried it years later after telling him about it one day. He came back the next morning and said, "That cigarette potion you told me about, it works, I tried it, it make me sicker than a dog, and then I was up all night trying to clean the smoke smell out of my house." He apparently spent the next couple days scrubbing his house down from top to bottom with all sorts of chemicals, and washed all his clothes to try and get the smell out, I think he even said he had to throw some stuff away just because he couldn't get rid of the smell. Months later he said the slightest hint of an ash tray still made him want to gag.

Is this really as effective as it's supposed to be? I can't find anything online that either confirms or busts this as a myth. Seems to me if it is as effective as is claimed, then it'd put nicorette and all those other expensive stop smoking drugs out of business, and free a lot of people from the clutches of nicotine addictions if it became more widely known about.

ShemSeger
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    Please remove any personal experience from your question and add a link of someone online claiming that quitting smoking overnight by drinking a dangerous dose of nicotine is effective. Otherwise, your question is off-topic. – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 18:23
  • @georgechalhoub It may be a notable claim as it is. For example a kid at school is caught smoking, one of the traditional things to do is make them smoke the whole pack: e.g. [Making your kid smoke a carton of cigarettes as punishment for smoking?](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090602220113AAhN3oB) – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 19:42
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    `Seems to me if it is as effective as is claimed, then it'd put nicorette and all those other expensive stop smoking drugs out of business` -- Maybe they chickened out when you wrote, "there is a deadly dose of nicotine in a pack of cigarettes". – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 19:45
  • @ChrisW, but the link you provided is about punishing a kid for smoking (which seem like child abuse to me) whereas the claim is about curing an addiction. – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 19:47
  • @georgechalhoub No, look at the accepted answer: "I think the point of it was to show them how disgusting cigarettes are and make them not want to smoke again." And I (because I was around in the 70s) can confirm that, allegedly, that was the point. – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 19:50
  • @ChrisW, exactly. They want to show them how disgusting cigarettes are so that they won't turn into an addiction (which is a brain disorder). This could work because they're not addicts already. But, real nicotine addicts smoke (1) or (2) packs of cigarettes everyday. – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 19:57
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    If you consume a deadly dose of nicotine, you probably won't smoke again. Because, by definition, you will probably be dead. – KSmarts May 12 '15 at 20:00
  • @georgechalhoub I suppose it could be called an attempt at [aversion therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversion_therapy) regardless of how much they previously smoked. – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 20:01
  • @ShemSeger Do you think you should change the title to ask whether it's "100% effective"? Is that really the claim: that it's "100% effective"? Because of course it's always possible to quit smoking overnight. Anyway who ever eventually/successfully quits smoking, no matter what method they do or don't use to help them, quits overnight (and quits the next day too, and the night after that, etc.). – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 20:05
  • @ChrisW, scientific evidence shows that a nicotine alters brain chemical reactions in the brain, which turns into a brain disorder. There is no cure for this chronic, progressive disease. It requires lifelong treatment, it is beyond a person's decision. The news is a sad since what it means is, once an addict forever an addict. You can replace your addiction with another addiction, or medications. But the damage in the brain is not reversible. Thus, I find the claim ridiculous if you apply it on a real addict; but if you want punish your kid with forcing him to smoke 1 pack it could be helpful – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 20:12
  • @KSmarts - Hence why it's so important to make sure they actually vomit. – ShemSeger May 12 '15 at 20:14
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    @georgechalhoub That's an odd thing to say, isn't it? Lots of people quit smoking without "lifelong treatment". – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 20:14
  • @ChrisW Most of them replace their addiction with sugar (or other) addiction. There is no cure for addiction. – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 20:15
  • @georgechalhoub I am an addict in the sense that I have proven repeatedly that I cannot have just one (if I have one then I have two, and a third, finish the pack, buy another, etc.) ... so I have none (and am therefore no longer addicted). Now that you mention it, I do have 40g sugar/day... which sounds worrying but http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1139.aspx?categoryid=51 recommends "about 70g for men" so maybe that's OK. – ChrisW May 12 '15 at 20:31
  • @ChrisW, It could be a healthy obsession other than sugar (running, creating, working). A 2005 study found that [AA](http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&UID=2005-05880-001) was a successful habit replacement for members, Sobriety could be achieved, but one can't achieve it if the patient sits all day in bed thinking about smoking. I read about addiction years ago, I think alcohol and tobacco should be illegal (not really different than cocaine or heroine) and I would never try them under any circumstances. – George Chalhoub May 12 '15 at 20:42
  • @georgechalhoub - I think any product or industry that makes money off of habitual behaviour should be illegal, but there are a lot of money makers with strong political pull that think otherwise. – ShemSeger May 12 '15 at 20:56
  • Addiction isn't just a mental desire for the substance, it's a physical change in the brain which causes a *need* with physical repercussions if it is not met. You could easily make someone who isn't addicted (like a kid caught smoking) dislike the substance, but an addict will suffer withdrawals regardless of if they despise the substance or not. As such, there shouldn't be any sort of simple one dose solution to treat it, unless it was something directly affecting the brain chemistry, but I can't find any studies to back that. – Plumbing for Ankit May 12 '15 at 21:11
  • Closing it temporarily while we resolve some of the comment issues: Is this notable? What does it mean for it to be considered effective? What if it is too unsafe? Is this equivalent to the traditional parental aversion therapy? – Oddthinking May 13 '15 at 01:09

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