How to stop smoking videos celebrate 3 million views
John R. Polito January 22, 2011
Who is the most popular stop smoking counselor, at least here in the United States? His free e-book "Never Take Another Puff" nearing three million downloads and his 64 free video and audio quitting lessons now there, a serious nominee for the title is Chicago's Joel Spitzer.
WhyQuit.com recorded 2,965,929 wmv or mp3 downloads since 2006, plus another 8,804 zipped mp3 downloads of the entire collection. Three videos uploaded to YouTube by a fan have received 26,430 plays, while Joel's YouTube Channel has had 16,471 viewings. The grand total, 3,017,634!
No marketing, entirely free, no commercials, cold turkey, nothing to buy, nothing being sold and he declines all donations. So who is Joel, why so popular and what's the catch? There is no catch. Word continues to spread that his quitting insights are empowering and that cold turkey is free, fast, safe and effective.
Joel Spitzer presented more than 325 six-session, thirteen-day live stop smoking clinics to over 4,500 participants between 1976 to 2007, and another 690 single-session prevention seminars to nearly 100,000 attendees. He arrived online in January 2000 where he immediately commenced sharing his life's work. Affectionately dubbed "Joel's Library," this still growing collection has allowed WhyQuit to maintain the #2 Google "quit smoking" ranking for most of the past decade.
Today, the Internet allows Joel and his work to connect with as many quitters in a single day as the total who attended his live clinics. For example, Freedom, WhyQuit's stop smoking support group, has averaged 4,092 unique visitors each day during the past three months, while WhyQuit has served 47,507 distinct hosts over the past 7 days.
"This is so pleasing to me," says Joel. "I could never have dreamt this. I had always basically tried to stay low key. I knew that the stand I was taking was kind of unpopular. When I first started out I was told, 'you can't do a cold turkey program because no one will show up!'"
But one fact has remained constant and undeniable since Joel's first clinic in 1976. Each year, more successful long-term ex-smokers quit smoking cold turkey than by all other quitting methods combined. And Joel has never shied from saying so.
"The vast majority of people who quit smoking have done so without ever hearing of me, without ever hearing of my program," says Joel. "The vast majority have done it on their own."
"We have more former smokers alive today than current smokers," he asserts. "Over half the people who used to smoke have quit. And this just cannot be said enough. One of my biggest complaints about experts in this particular field is that they try to downplay that at every level."
"It's almost like they're trying to say how important it is to come to their program because 'your chance of succeeding and quitting smoking are just so dismal, they're just so remote, and, gosh, if you meet someone who quit smoking on their own, that's just the exception to the rule,' and it's not," says Joel!
"It's the other way around. I just never want to be a person who helps perpetuate the idea that people have to go to programs to quit smoking."
It's that kind of straight talk that leaves smokers wondering how many other lies they've been sold, and what else Joel has to say about quitting.
How to Quit Smoking
Yes, since January 22, 2011, the date the above article was written, Joel's collection of free videos has grown from 64 to more than 400!
