As far as I understand it is vary hard to quit smoking for two reasons. There is the physical addiction to the drug nicotine but also the psychological addiction to the habits associated with smoking itself. The latter is harder to detach from because there are currently no credible substitutes. This is why nicotine patches can only help with quitting smoking and never offer the full solution.

Here’s the idea then. You have a web page where you can smoke virtual cigarettes. Everything you need is there at the click of a mouse. You choose what you are going to smoke, you light it, you suck it, you twiddle it around in the ash tray, you tap the packet, all the little habits are there. You can even empty the ashtray or go out and buy more cigarettes.

At first glance this seems somewhat pointless and people probably wouldn’t find it useful. Until you combine it with the users virtual nicotine level and this becomes tamagotchi like. Once the user registers, giving all their information age sex etc. Then you keep a record of their nicotine consumption and level by time. The purpose therefore becomes keeping your nicotine above a certain threshold and craving levels to a minimum. If your level drops too low then the server will start sending annoying emails that its time to return to the site for a smoke.

So far so good. Apply this now to mobile devices and PDAs. The virtual smoker can now have a fag whenever and wherever they like. You can even replace their screen saver with a picture of a packet of Silk Cut. So they now carry their virtual cigarettes with them everywhere.

Smokers are naturally compulsive people, they are now compelled to visit your website. Plus their employers will even allow them their ten-minute fag breaks during the day to do this because this is after all a tool to assist with quitting smoking. The site will obviously need a chat function, because the smoking room is usually where all the company secrets get shared.

Finally all the demographic information collected can be sold to tobacco companies so they can target their marketing at stopping these people from stopping smoking. And it can be sold to stopping smoking companies so they can target their products at helping these people to stop. It’s win win.

And of course this idea can be applied to other obsessive behaviours like eating, drinking beer etc

If your server has a few free database records spare and you know someone who writes a cunning flash application we could be sitting back and smoking Cuban cigars in no time.

As an iphone application the would really rock, you can shake the virtual packet and everything.

Perhaps you might enjoy my more frivolous idea?

http://healthmad.com/addiction/cure-the-world-of-smoking/