When he introduced the idea to Chris Cartter, Join Together's director of online services, Cartter saw its potential as an interactive center for tobacco control and smoking cessation and QuitNet was born. What people really need is contact with people going through the same thing. There are now 102,000 registered QuitNet users. While there's no way to track its success rate, those who have used the service often say they could not have quit without it. But its real strength is interaction.
Users can post messages about their withdrawal symptoms, complain about a bad day or plead for help.
If they need more immediate support, there are live chat rooms where others gather to talk about their fears and cravings. Which is why people keep returning, sometimes as long as two years after their original quit date. For many individuals the cravings and the habitual aspects of quitting don't stop after three months or six months or a year. The social dimension of it has become incredibly important for a lot of folks, too. They want to give back - the community helped them get through this and in many instances it was people who had quit for many months and continued to come back to the site and provide support.