How to Quit Smoking #1

 Introduction

We’re Creatures of Habit

“Form good habits…be a good person” is the universal motherly advice every one of us can recall when we scratch the realm of our memories. Tiny tots and youngsters are forever bound, protected and guided by their seniors and elderly to help them to tread the path laid on time tested principles of honesty and good behaviour.  Yet sometimes unknowingly they take the forbidden route just to prove things for the heck of it. 

Due to the extreme stress, strain and stretch of the competitive world around any person today is more susceptible to succumb to pressure and buckle under it. Here’s where the need for addiction in any form arises which however provides only temporary solace rather than erasing the real cause. We sometimes latch on to it and slowly get further and further suck into its false whirlpool leading us to lose our willpower. 

An addiction simply adheres itself to our self-belief eroding it gradually by digging into it. We just remain a shade of our previous selves hereby taking a shortcut to a track that leads us to more acute physical and mental problems. Any addiction can be overcome, any bad patch overrode if only we could endure it by facing it head-on keeping the following lines from Kipling in mind –

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run

Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it

And – which is more – you’ll be a MAN!

The Ugly Truth

 Tobacco usage causes more than 430,000 adult deaths per year in the United States. 

 Around 5 million under 18 years will die prematurely from smoking-related diseases. 

 More than 4,000 chemicals have been identified in tobacco smoke of which at least 43      cause cancer in humans and animals 

 Exposure to passive smoking, 3,000 nonsmokers die of lung cancer every year.

 150,000 to 300,000 infants and children less than 18 months experience lower respiratory tract infections. Asthma and other respiratory conditions often are triggered or worsened by tobacco smoke.

 Smoking among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders varies between 18% to 40% (including 9% to 13% females)

 Tobacco use is linked with numerous adverse health outcomes, disability, and death across a spectrum, including heart disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease.

 

Is it Worth Smoking?

10 Reasons for Picking the Habit Up

 A sudden rise of energy level to combat stress, stretch and strain of our daily schedule

 A concentration pill

 To overcome frustration due to the indomitable desire of achieving the very best even beyond our limits

 To bridge the gap between our desired aspirations and hardcore reality

 Already Addicted and finds no valid reason to quit

 A style in the society

 The additional energy level for repeated sexual interaction in a row

 To avoid boredom

 It's a tradition and doctors advice is a foolish notion

 Just to enjoy

Smoking Ain’t Cool

The following factors induct the youth into tobacco usage in which nicotine is found which results in addiction.  These are responsible for the initiation of the adolescent amongst whom 76% of the daily smokers believe that in 5 years they would not be smoking. However, the trend shows that 5 to 6 years later 73 per cent of these persons continue to smoke having built up yet another make-believe resolution to quit smoking in another 5 years when life would cool down a bit. 46 per cent of the daily smokers however do succeed in having stopped smoking for at least some periods during the first 5-year phase. Yet remarkable there is a less than 3 per cent population though insignificant who stop smoking permanently. Tragically this habit that starts as a style spreads its roots from an age when most people just begin to give shape to their dreams, ambitions and careers. This ‘style becomes killer’ tiptoeing on the sands of time snuffing out lives leaving behind in its trail more than 5 million years of potential life lost every year the world over.

 Socio-demographic factors like coming from a family with low socioeconomic status.

 Environmental factors include easy accessibility and availability of tobacco products, cigarette advertising and promotion by legends and stars and the widespread affordability of tobacco due to its low price.

 Personal factors include borrowed perceptions from peers and siblings that ‘tobacco use is normal’ and lack of parental involvement. 

 Low self-esteem and the lack of ability to refuse offers to use tobacco further fuel the wrong notion that tobacco use benefits.

Facts About Tobacco in America

 Men are more susceptible to smoking than women.

 American Indians or Alaska Natives are more likely to smoke than other ethnic groups.

 Hispanics and Asians or Pacific Islanders are more prone than the rest.

 The highest smoking levels are found amongst the Vietnamese and Korean Asian Americans

 Gay men and lesbians smoke more frequently than heterosexuals.

 While individuals with 16 or more years of education or in middle or high-income groups have the lowest smoking rates

Smoke and Pay the Consequences

 Smoke from ALL CIGARETTES damages the human body, as any amount of it is injurious to health. Surprisingly cigarettes are perhaps the only advertised products whose consumption causes CANCER. 

 It is a completely wrong notion that smoking fewer filtered cigarettes has no negative impact whatsoever. Even a habit of 1 to 4 cigarettes a day has serious consequences making an individual more prone, with a high chance of dying at an earlier age. 

 It is hardly relevant whether one puffs a high-tar, low-tar or high-nicotine, low-nicotine brand, as the risks remain the same. Moreover under the belief of the alternates being safer one ends up smoking more cigarettes than usual. The harm caused remains the same as the individual often ends up taking deeper puffs more frequently to a shorter butt length. Hence the dose of the intoxicating nicotine that is the addictive drug remains unchanged. Studies confirm that chances of lung cancer are in no way lower in low-tar or low-nicotine smokers. Nicotine taken in small amounts attacks the brain and central nervous system giving rise to pleasant sensations affecting the mood of the smoker and enhancing his nature of wanting to smoke more. Thus an individual becomes absolutely dependent resulting in physical withdrawal symptoms when he tries to overcome his near-fatal injurious to health habit. Whenever an individual loses his calm, relaxed self artificially attained through smoking he feels nervous and restless, the direct output of non-smoking.

 How to Quit Smoking

The big billboard of Los Angeles displays to the passers-by the casualty caused due to smoking has not drawn your attention then perhaps you have been influenced by some very sensational relationship or your house physician or maybe even some ghastly advertisement has triggered you to quit smoking. Experts find some sudden incidental outcome or emotional outburst to be the key-triggering event for quitting smoking.

The smokerfree.gov (http://www.smokefree.gov/guide/basic_steps.html) has nicely translated the steps for Quit Smoking as START

S = Set a quit date.

T = Tell family, friends, and co-workers that you plan to quit.

A = Anticipate and plan for the challenges you'll face while quitting.

R = Remove cigarettes and other tobacco products from your home, car, and work.

T = Talk to your doctor about getting help to quit.

Now let us define the steps in our own way.

First of all, you must be aware of the triggering event of your life, which has propelled you to take a decision to quit smoking. You must be sensitive to this as this will change your life in the long run like being reborn yet again. What we suggest is you only announce your plan to a specific near or dear person. Again we suggest that there is no alternative to a sudden outburst. So, maybe due to a very close and emotional ambience you have decided to throw the cigarette from the grip of the fingers, maybe half-finished or maybe the after the last puff. Please for God's sake, don’t worry about wasting the rest of the packet. The money you are losing for the leftover cigarette is really negligible to the amount you are going to save in the forthcoming days because of your revolutionary decision.

The coolest way of making a decision and announcing it to the public involves the risk of postponing the date even for trifle incidents. Remember many people will advise you NOT to leave smoking, might be because of jealousy or even for fear of isolation due to losing a smoking partner. The only positive side of such an announcement is that it may build up additional pressure on you for keeping up commitments. In an ambience, where the majority are smokers, who will remind you about your commitments - and your chance of being ashamed due to the failure of commitment goes mostly unnoticed. So, we advise you to make random decisions.

The online edition of BBC News reports that “researchers at University College London interviewed more than 1,900 smokers and ex-smokers about their attempts to quit and found that two-thirds of smokers who stopped suddenly succeeded for at least six months, compared to under half of those who planned it in detail.” (http://www.medindia.net/)

Another very important issue is the solace that the smoker derives from the people at large. They become more interested to justify, why they had started smoking as if this is the key answer to the burning question of why they are continuing to smoke. Here we want to state very clearly that smoking is a bad habit and at times one smokes just for the sake of the habit even without enjoying it. We have even encountered people, who had come up with very generic replies like “Just like that” to the daunting question “why do you smoke”?

However, you may have thrown the unfinished cigarette or the half-filled packet in a most romantic manner. What happens after that? Your companion for so long named nicotine will never leave you so easily because Nicotine spreads its cast on the central nervous system upsetting the entire body system. You will undergo psychological effects becoming restless to get back at it again. 

If you go to a doctor or to a counsellor immediately after quitting smoking, he will not only help you but also guide you for the future course of action as well as apply for the right medicine, if required. If you can pass a couple of hours without being lured to the cigarette corner shop, we feel, you have won the game. 

Why don’t you attempt to visit a recreation hall or a movie while your immediate resolution bears fruit? You may also like to go to a non-smoking restaurant with your dear one to pass some time. Once the evening comes, you go back home without buying a cigarette and try to take control over your restless mindset, rather than jump onto the bed. Please try to avoid roaming around on the balcony, where even yesterday you had been with a cigarette.

Some people have got the habit of keeping a good stock of cigarettes even at home or office, thinking of rainy days! If you fall in a group of such pragmatic people, please do NOT forget to throw away all the stock to the dustbin immediately after entering your bedroom. Get convinced that creating a stock tomorrow again will hardly take any time, but let me give it a try at least till tomorrow morning!

It has been noticed that smokers love to see the smoke better than the flame. "They will not smoke inside a completely dark room because they just want to see the rings of smoke going up." As per Vasudevan Nampoothiri, Vice-Principal of the Government Ayurveda College, Thiruvananthapuram, reported on The Hindu on May 31, 2004. You need to decide, which one you like, the flame or the fumes. If the cigarette burns, you only can see the rings of the smoke, but if the flame burns in your inner world, then everybody can watch the rings because the stored energy will come out and is sure to be reflected around you.

Let the morning bring fresh air into your life, and you find your new life with the sunshine at dawn. We guarantee the dizzy feeling will go away and you will get inspiration from the Sun, who ultimately energizes your body and mind. Take a deep breath. Remember the morning Sun is treated as an amazing system of cure in energy therapy like Ayurveda, Qigong etc. Heliotherapy and Chromopathy are the two very prevailing curing systems in Rome, which has witnessed one of the oldest civilizations when most of the top-notch countries of today’s world were in their infancy. Taste the natural energy level maybe even after 20 long years!