Breaking the Smoking habit

The key to breaking any habit is to first determine why you do it. So you have to understand why you smoke. Once you're done that, you can then see why almost every other method of breaking the 'cigarette habit' has the possibility of failure; and then you can learn the right approach, and you'll will finally succeed in 'kicking the habit'.

Let's start by facing what seems to be the overwhelming facts. Smoking must be something you enjoy doing.. If it wasn't enjoyable, why would at least 6 out of every 10 adults smoke either occasionally or regularly? If people didn't enjoy it, why would they spend a portion of their paychecks, every week, for tobacco products? So let's agree, then, that for most people smoking is a habit they enjoy. And let's not pretend that either of us would sacrifice this apparently delightful habit for minor reasons.

While It's true most of us don't like to find bits of tobacco in our pockets or purses, and it is annoying and expensive when you occasionally burn a hole in your clothes, car upholstery, carpet, or furniture, and some of us are truly disgusted by "tobacco breath" or "nicotine stains". There are even quite a few of you are even more dismayed by the amount of money you "burn up" each year. Yet you all have other expensive or potentially annoying habits or interests, but you are not equally concerned about them. No, those of us who have at one time or another made the attempt to give up cigarettes have invariably been impelled by what I used to call "that health propaganda."

Sporadically you'd come upon reports blaming the smoking habit for everything from athlete's foot to yellow fever. But other studies, prepared by researchers and physicians whose names are followed by suitably impressive degrees and abbreviations, absolved cigarettes of all guilt. Us layman had trouble deciding who was speaking against what, and why, and to whom and for whom (and for how much).

YOU ENJOYED THE UNCERTAINTY

Although while you suspected that where there's smoke there's fire, you weren't quite ready to believe that where there's smoke there's also likely to be heart disease and lung cancer. Some of the evidence was contradictory. Some was fragmentary. Much of it left aside such other possible factors in disease as polluted air, industrial poisoning, food additives, widespread use of insecticides, increased tensions of Cold War living, and over employment of "miracle drugs." Almost all the reports youre based on studies involving animals, not humans.

One impulse was to quit. The other was to wait for something "definite."

After all, why go through so much pain and so much frustration if later it might turn out that there hadn't been any real need to do so? While, the period of uncertainty is over in the minds not only of most experts, but even for most smokers. Vast numbers of people who smoke now readily grant that there's no longer any question but that this is a dangerous habit.

This is a unique situation, isn't it? Suppose, to put it in perspective, that 70 million Americans regularly drink a beverage named "Wcaacae" (a name my attorney insists I use in order to protect the innocent). And suppose that an eminent medical group suddenly declared: "The moderate drinker of 'Wcaacae' who drinks 10-5 swallows a day-showed to be 5 times more likely to be a cancer victim than the non-drinker."

How long do you think good old "Wcaacae" would remain on the market? Even if the government didn't ban it, how long would Mom buy it at the supermarket? Indeed, how many supermarkets would even stock it?

youll-surprise!-there is no such statistic about "Wcaacae." My figures are borrowed from a report on the effects of cigarette smoking. In 1960 the American Medical Association summarized a 5-year study of the death rate among men from lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking:

1. The moderate smoker (10 to 15 cigarettes daily) showed up 5 times more often as a victim of fatal lung cancer than did the non-smoker.

2. The heavy smoker (15 to 25 cigarettes daily) showed up 15 times more often in lung cancer deaths than the non-smoker.

3. Excessively heavy smokers (25 to 50 cigarettes daily) showed up 25 times as often in lung cancer deaths as non-smokers.

The smoker winces when he reads this kind of look into his future-but yet it doesn't stop him from smoking. It didn't stop you, did it? And do you want to know why? well, for one thing, a part of you doesn't believe it. Part of your mind thinks that smoking will affect the 'other guy' but not you. You tell yourself that it makes you happier and healthier and nicer-looking and maybe even richer,stronger and maybe even more glamorous. This part of your mind flatly refuses to pay attention to anything that conflicts with its beliefs.

Obviously I can't cover all the various ways you can stop smoking in one page, so to learn more about how to finally quit smoking once and for all be sure to visit all the pages on this site.

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