Quit Smoking

Public Tobacco Cessation Community Groups
Quitting smoking is more successful with support. Public tobacco cessation support groups are offered at the People’s Place Community Center in Gardner, MA and in the Briggs Conference Room in Athol, MA.

On-site Tobacco Cessation Classes
Professionally facilitated classes at your location bring a high-value and life-changing resource to the people you care about. Workbooks and interactive teaching materials give every smoker a chance to develop their unique Quit Plan.

Groups are always offered without cost to participants – no cost, no co-pay, no insurance requirements.
QuittersWin Core Beliefs and Group Guidelines:

    • Everyone in the community has something to learn from everyone on the community and everyone in the community has something to teach to everyone in the community.
    • No one in the community is as strong, wise, brave, or capable as everyone in the community.
    • Out of respect for all speakers and all listeners we limit talking to one member at a time.
    • Because we understand that our human condition can lead us to hold untruths and cause our perceptions to be skewed, we make every effort to keep our minds open and honestly consider other explanations for things we think we “know.”
    • Out of this diversity of understanding, we hope to discern ultimate truth for the good of all, without need to hold unhelpful or unhealthy beliefs out of some motive of ego.
    • As each of us attains our noble goals, all of us grow stronger, wiser, and more capable.
    • In spite of our individual imperfections, diverse experiences, and past failures, as a community we hold confidently to the certainty that freedom from addiction is possible and is, in fact, close at hand!

Compared to illicit drugs or excessive alcohol use, tobacco tends to be more…

Accessible – It’s legal and available in LOTS of forms in LOTS of stores.
Acceptable – Tobacco’s stigma (while considerable) isn’t as great as the stigma of staggering down Main Street or being found in a gutter with a needle in one’s arm.
Affordable – As expensive as tobacco is, if we consider the cost of “a day’s worth,” tobacco is often cheaper.
Addictable – Because nicotine can be delivered very quickly to the brain, each puff may make a tiny ‘impression’ on the smoker’s brain. A smoker may puff hundreds of times in a single day and make hundreds of tiny impressions! Furthermore, those impressions get associated with the coffee cup, steering wheel, telephone, familiar face, or familiar place in ways that make those triggers really ‘stick’ in a smoker’s brain. Subsequently those behaviors, faces, and places become cues, telling  the smoker to want a cigarette.
Absolutely more LETHAL! -Tobacco kills more Americans each year than homicide, suicide, drugs (legal and illegal), alcohol, motor vehicle accidents, and HIV/AIDS combined!

Quitting smoking or other unhealthy relationships with a substance is more successful with support.