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.