About Me

I'm a research psychologist by training, and a behavioral research scientist in the field of Public Health by vocation. My avocation, and real love, however, is combining my expertise in psychology and in public health to help individuals accomplish personal health goals that have been elusive for them.

About My Work

My current focus is on helping people who want to quit smoking. If you've ever been a smoker (as I was) or are currently a smoker who has ever tried to quit, you know how challenging it can be. As it turns out, the biggest problem for a lot of people is not the physical addiction to nicotine, it's the psychological addiction to smoking. That's why you see a lot of quit smoking aids (like nicotine patches or prescription meds) that recommend a 'behavioral' program to go with them.

From my perspective, going beyond a 'behavioral' approach to one that that deals explicitly with the psychology of smoking makes a lot of sense. Of course, such an approach involves significant behavioral components, but each behavioral component is designed to affect one or more specific aspects of the psychological addiction that prevents people from quitting easily and staying quit comfortably.

 

My Websites

To help people quit smoking, I have developed a handful of websites that focus on different information or services that may be useful. A couple of them are strictly free, information-based sites, and a couple offer products for sale - specifically, versions of the quit smoking program that I developed to help people address the psychological aspects of quitting successfully. More about the sites themselves below.

Quit Smoking AdvisoR (www.QuitSmokingAdvisor.com)

This site is essentially a review of the different methods and tools out there for quitting, from "Acupuncture to Zyban." I try to review the scientific evidence of effectiveness where it's available, and offer some perspective where it's not. (If you've done any research yourself, you probably already know that there is a bias in the scientific literature towards drugs or products that are profitable, because, well, someone has to fund the research, right?)

Ask The Advisor Blog (www.ask.quit-smoking-advisor.com)

The Ask the Advisor blog is a companion site to the Quit Smoking Advisor. On this site, I try to answer questions that people write in about quitting. I tend to focus on areas related to the psychological aspects of smoking, since that's my area of expertise, and also I think the biggest obstacle for most people, but I'll try to research and answer whatever questions come up. Posting here is a little sporadic, depending on how many questions I get, and how busy I am with other projects.

Complete Quit System (www.completeQuitSystem.com)

This site is devoted to the system I developed for quitting. It's a step-by-step program that addresses both the physical and psychological addiction to smoking. It's not free (because I've put my heart and soul into creating it, and it actually works) but besides the downloadable step-by-step program guide, it comes with e-mail support, a phone consultation, and a money-back guarantee. And for the record, people almost never ask for their money back once they've tried it.