Smoking cessation through cigarette-fading, self-recording, and contracting: treatment, maintenance and long-term followup.

Seven adult subjects, all with extensive smoking histories, participated in a smoking cessation program. Intervention procedures included cigarette-fading, self-recording, and contracting. A changing-criterion analysis showed that six of the seven subjects were able to abstain from smoking within two months of intervention. The seventh subject was able to meet two changes in criterion, but dropped out of the treatment programme during the third. Of the sex remaining subjects, five were able to abstain from smoking during the six-month maintenance period. The sixth subject resumed smoking in the fourth month of maintenance and preferred to continue smoking thereafter. Followup data, collected every three months for two years, showed that the five remaining subjects were able to abstain from smoking for two years following the cessation of the maintenance programme.