You can of course quit with them or any method, but you're just making it harder if you add nicotine or reduce gradually. You have to break the physical addiction first, if not your mind has too many weapons to work against you. You can only do that with 0 drug. I've done it both ways (guess which one stuck!) and it isn't even close.

One of the many great analogies he uses in the book is wearing shoes that are too tight, just so you can take them off. Sure it's nice to take them off, but how about just not wearing them? Smoking (and gum etc) causes you to need to nicotine, the sooner you stop smoking the sooner you won't have the pangs. It also reinforces all the ideas you have - stress/boredom relief, good for a break, after meals,sex . etc - which are not true. These are hard enough to mentally get over without adding in the physical component of the drug.