Just as you suspected, nicotine gum and nicotine patches are a crock, a sham, a mockery, a sucker's bet, a shuck and jive, a switcheroo, and a false hope. They do not work. A new study confirms that they are for shit, unless your goal is to make the inside of your lip taste like a Kool soaked in Listerine. Want to really stop smoking? We have done it. More or less. Here's how.

When to Stop?

Arbitrary deadlines won't do anything to help you quit. Wait until you're ready, such as when you're in jail.

Are You Motivated?

Cigarettes are expensive these days. Think about all the money you would save by not smoking. Yeah, think about that while you smoke. Cigarettes are terrible for your health. Think about that while you smoke. Each cigarette shaves a few minutes off your life. Think about that as you light up the next refreshing, alluring cigarette, which you enjoy immensely.

Cigarettes smell terrible and nobody will want to be around you when you stink like that. Think about that as you have hot sex with your girlfriend, also a smoker.

The point is, no matter how many good and rational reasons there are to stop smoking, you'll never be successful unless you are motivated in your heart. By the threat of your heart blowing up. Which brings us to...

S.W.A.T.: Smoking, (the) War Against: Tactics (Is What It Stands For)

So, you're ready. You're motivated. How do you actually stop? The reason many people cannot stop smoking is this: when you stop smoking, you don't get to smoke any more. Sucks, right? The key is to make the suffering of continuing to smoke worse than the suffering that goes along with quitting smoking. And how to do that?

Take up an extremely strenuous physical exercise program at the same time that you decide to quit smoking. This might include, but is not limited to: marathon running, triathlons, full contact fighting sports, or one of those super-competitive Crossfit gyms where people who are like, IT workers by day channel their frustrations into timed overhead squat contests, unto the point of vomit. This, my friends, is the actual, no joke, key to quitting smoking. Because in order to survive the death-defying physical demands of your new sport of choice, you will be forced to quit. It's either quit, or collapse on the side of the roadway with an aneurysm; quit, or drown during a miles-long ocean swim; quit, or be physically beaten to jelly by a fighter with better endurance; quit, or let Bob from accounting beat you in the handstand pushup contest. All are fates more painful than nicotine withdrawal.

After a few months, the very thought of a cigarette will trigger a sharp psychosomatic pain tied to the gross physical suffering you endured while "getting into" your fun new exercise program. And now you've conquered smoking—the Pavlovian way.

*Exceptions

One cigarette is one too many. Except at parties, on holidays, at holiday parties, when trying to impress a certain type of girl, or when you feel weird because you don't know what to do with your hands.

Just remember that you will pay.

[Photo: AP]