Spontaneous vs. planned attempts to quit

Robert West, the editor of Addiction and critic of the stages of change, has published another study finding that the stages of change are not a prerequisite for change. One of the important implications of this is dinging the predictive value of the the stages of change.

I view this as important because faith in the predictive value of the stages of change has become a post hoc way to blame the client for failure or blame the system for not guarding the gate well enough and create justifications for new barriers to anything more intensive that traditional outpatient care.

. . . the odds of a "spontaneous" quit attempt lasting for 6 months or longer were twice that of preplanned attempts.