How to stop smoking in a totally new and different way

How to stop smoking in a totally new and different way

By Clare E. Urwin

This is the first of two articles offering tips on how to quit
smoking. The second will appear on this column next week.

SURABAYA (JP): If the title of my column makes you curious
enough to look at what follows, please do yourself the biggest
favor in your life and continue to read it.

Don't worry, this article is not full of dire warnings about
the evils of tobacco.

Nor does it try to scare you by going on and on about the
terrible health risks involved, how awful and disgusting smoking
is, or how much money you are wasting when you smoke. None of
those things helped me to stop during all the years I smoked and
if you are reading this, they obviously haven't helped you
either!

I want this article to make you think about the subject of
giving up smoking in a totally new and different way. Be prepared
for your own personal wake-up call. No feelings of deprivation
necessary.

By reading this article and seriously considering its
contents, you are going to want to give up smoking and will find
it easy. You are going to enjoy giving up smoking and be so happy
and relieved to be free.

Understanding the real reason people smoke and why they find
it so difficult to give up is the first part of your wake-up
call. Smokers are not stupid or weak. In fact, most smokers are
strong willed people. Often dominant type in responsible and
stressful situations.

They are all well aware of the statistics about lung cancer
and heart disease but continue to smoke because they have been
conned into believing that it relieves stress, helps them
concentrate or relaxes them.

Also, the mere thought of stopping makes the serious long-term
smoker quietly panic. The fear of finally giving up that crutch,
the horror of a continual unsatisfied craving and the lack of
confidence in their own ability to actually quit, keeps them
hooked.

Hooked is the operative word unfortunately. Smoking is not
just an antisocial "habit". Smoking is an addiction to nicotine
and nicotine is a drug. Probably the fastest addictive drug in
the world.

Every puff on every cigarette rapidly delivers a small dose of
nicotine, via the lungs and the blood stream, to the brain. When
the cigarette is finished, the level of nicotine rapidly falls
and within an hour the smoker begins to suffer withdrawal pangs.
He then lights another one and is "rehooked".

Yes, every smoker does initially make the choice about having
his or her first cigarettes. Usually it's for unwise sociable
reasons. Perhaps wanting to appear mature, sophisticated and
grown-up, to help keep weight down or because of peer pressure.

However, no smoker ever chooses to become an addict. None of
us wanted to "need" cigarettes almost desperately and to feel
insecure and anxious without them. We were virtually unaware of
the insidious process of our addiction, thinking we could stop at
any time we wanted.

But how quickly we all became trapped, and like other traps,
the nicotine one is designed to keep us entangled permanently.

It is a fallacy that smoking relieves stress, helps
concentration or aids relaxation. In fact, smoking promotes
stress by causing the addiction in the first place.

The apparent "relief" and "comfort" felt when you light up a
cigarette is only your satisfying some of the withdrawal pangs.
As with other drugs, our bodies tend to become immune to the
influence of nicotine and so the longer we are addicted the more
we have to smoke to obtain the same effect.

Eventually, even smoking the cigarette itself doesn't
completely relieve the longing. You may feel better than before
you lit the cigarette, but in reality you are actually more
nervously stressed, poorly focused and less relaxed than any
nonsmoker will ever be.

The cigarette has made you feel like this and every time you
light another one it doesn't relieve the feeling, it actually
causes and reinforces it.

Concentration is adversely affected by smoking with the
gradual blocking up of the arteries and veins with gunge from
cigarettes that starve the brain of oxygen. How can your full
potential for inspiration and intellectual growth be realized if
this is the case?

Lighting up while you are doing something else or when the
phone rings actually means your priority is relieving the
withdrawal pangs and feeding your habit. When you are a nonsmoker
you can fully concentrate and focus on something worthwhile.

Nicotine doesn't relax you either. It's actually a chemical
stimulant which increases your pulse rate. One of the so-called
"favorite" times for a cigarette is after a meal, but smokers
light up then not to relax, but to satisfy some of those
withdrawal pangs.

While the nonsmoker is fully content after eating and
drinking, the poor smoker can't be at ease and so he has to have
a cigarette. Never completely satisfying his nicotine craving he
needs to smoke more and more.

The longer he is addicted, the worse it gets. Smokers have
forgotten what it feels like to be completely relaxed. That's one
of the many pleasures to come when you stop.

Every smoker wants to quit, even if they won't admit it. Just
ask anyone who smokes if they would like their children to take
it up. Of course they wouldn't.

But at the same time, all smokers have to say that they really
enjoy the habit and want to continue to smoke. I remember, I did
and was adamant about savoring every single cigarette. Let's face
it, nobody wants to appear a total fool!

This is worth a smile. Imagine trying to justify the following
behavior. A so called "grown-up" continually clinging to and
sucking at a thin white dummy filled with dead leaves. You set
fire to it, then deeply inhale the smoky poisonous fumes.

This smoke robs you of your energy; it ages and cripples you,
makes you smell and gives you bad breath while it slowly and
painfully kills you off! But, you insist you enjoy it! No wonder
more and more nonsmokers seem to be laughing at us. Or even
worse, pitying us.

Before giving up cigarettes I was smoking more than 30 a day
and all the health warnings in the world had no effect on my
stopping whatsoever. Incidentally, like all smokers I had every
intention of giving up one day but just not right now!

In the meantime I resented the way society "criminalized"
smokers and made us such easy targets to blame for almost
everything and anything. Public places, offices, restaurants,
trains and even airplanes started to forbid smoking. Nowhere was
safe. Having to listen to "holier-than-thou" ex-smokers was even
worse. I felt like chain smoking two cigarettes at a time when in
their company!

Some nagging doubts were ever present though. Looking around
at nonsmokers, it slowly dawned on me that I was the odd one out
and not them. They seemed to be just fine and very happy without
cigarettes; getting on with their jobs, experiencing full social
lives and enjoying their food and an occasional drink. Why did I
need tobacco to do all those things? Did these people know
something I didn't? Were they in some way cleverer than me?

Another irritation was that smoking was taking up so much of
my time. I had to continually think about whether I had enough
cigarettes left for each evening, or when going out, had I bought
enough with me? Were there any places left open to buy some if I
ran out? Come on; shouldn't my brain be used for something better
than that? Finally was the realization that I no longer
controlled the cigarettes.

The cigarettes were controlling me. Acknowledging that fact
was humiliating.

-- The writer is a nutrition, fitness and health advisor based
in Surabaya.