Tobacco Cessation

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.

Truth unleashes the power to change everything

The Power of Truth

We have probably all heard some variant of the expression “you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” As a facilitator of groups I have countless times witnessed how one person’s truth can also set other people free. That’s why I am such a proponent of gathering in groups. Sharing one’s …

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besochemps

BESOCHEMPS

BESOCHEMPS If you haven’t yet heard of the 5-Headed Dragon, BESOCHEMPS, you’re either new here, or I haven’t been doing my job. (Please don’t scroll away yet – we aren’t a cult and this discussion about a 5-Headed Dragon is neither frivolous nor foolish.) Over twenty years ago I began serving brave folks intent upon …

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Yes or No?

Yes or no? Oh, if only it was that simple! A few months ago I noticed a billboard on my drive to one of my consulting gigs. It was sponsored by an organization that serves addicted individuals. The sign said, “Addiction is not a choice. It’s a disease.” Upon reading it my first response was …

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Massachusetts Temporarily Bans All Vaping Products

Yesterday afternoon the Governor of Massachusetts, Charles D. Baker, declared a state of emergency and announced at a press conference that the state will ban the sale of all vaping products. While precise details are not available at this time (exact starting date of the ban, duration, etc.,) comments made during the presser make it …

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A friend texted me his favorite JFK quote last night. It’s from a speech Kennedy gave in the stadium at Rice University in Houston on September 12, 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that …

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About QuittersWin

About 20 years ago I observed a way to look at addiction that seemed like it might be helpful. People I served in my tobacco cessation practice often seemed overwhelmed by the idea of quitting smoking. I felt that way myself every time I tried to quit smoking. Logic led me to look at ways …

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