Facebook Helps Man Quit Smoking
“If I could take back anything in my life, it would be that. That I never started smoking,” says Michael Cover, who smoked for 33 years. At his worst, he went through two packs a day.
“Physically, I was coughing all the time. I was short of breath sometimes. I just wasn’t feeling very good at all,” he says.
When he decided to quit at age 47, he knew he would need support from his friends—about 500 of them through the social networking website Facebook.
“I’ve got 500 people following me on Facebook. And I’m just gonna put it out there that I’m gonna quit smoking and people have my permission to give me grief if I don’t do it,” he says, explaining that he announced on Facebook that he was quitting smoking.
If he felt the urge for a cigarette, he updated his status, and friends responded by telling him to stay strong. He says it was like being peer pressured to quit.
“I thought, ‘I can’t start smoking now.’ I mean, I can’t go back on what I said I was going to do,” he says.
Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Lieberman, who specializes in treating addictions, says, “It’s different when you just make a promise to yourself. If you break that, you can rationalize it. You can say, ‘Well, this is what I want.’ But if you’ve told many, many people you’re letting them down. You’re viewing yourself differently.”
According to Dr. Lieberman, using Facebook and other social networking tools to conquer dependencies is similar to using support groups.
He says, “One of the theories about drug use is that people use drugs as a replacement for good relationships. And this just takes it in reverse. It gives relationship fulfillment as a replacement for drugs.”
But it might not work for everyone. Lieberman says for some, Facebook and online friendships are too superficial and those words of support won’t have the same meaning.
For Cover, it’s been five weeks since he’s smoked—the longest he’s ever gone without a cigarette. He says he’s feeling better than ever.
“It’s not been easy, but the prospect of going back in front of all those people. I have a 30-year high school reunion next year. I am not going back with a cigarette in my hand,” he says.
