When you think about it, rolling up dried plant leaves and sticking them in your
mouth and setting fire to the end of it sounds like a pretty silly proposal,
particularly when you know it is dangerous. Honestly, you may as well stick
lighted firecrackers up your fundamentum. At least you’ll get a bang out of it!
I was actually recording some radio spots for the hospital,
and when I listened to them, one fact came out loud and strong. When listing
‘risk factors’ for conditions such as heart attacks, cancer, strokes, blood
clots, diabetes, and the list goes on, “smoking” was coming up every time.
Unfortunately, when you start smoking, it becomes very
difficult to stop smoking. This is because smoking is not just a habit like
chewing on a pencil when concentrating. Smoking is an addiction. What you have
to realize is that Nicotine is more addictive than heroin. I know that’s
probably hard to believe, but that really is the crux of the matter. You take
Nicotine into all of your metabolic pathways until you “need” to have Nicotine
to be able to function. Nicotine becomes part of your metabolic chemical chains,
and they don’t work properly without it. Now you can see just why you feel so
dreadful when you go without cigarettes (nicotine) for any period of time.
To give up cigarettes there are many, many ways, ranging from
acupuncture, hypnosis, the I Ching, acupressure, Nicotine Replacement Therapies
(NRT), chewing gum, patches, nasal spray and many others all the way through to
Cold Turkey. Hop onto the internet and you are besieged with offers, all of
which will make it ‘easy’ for you to stop smoking, and all of which will cost
you money!
Interestingly, all of the above methods need the smoker to
become committed to ceasing cigarettes. The success rate really hangs on that
commitment. Leaving aside hypnosis and acupuncture, about which I know very
little, but the good books tell me do not enjoy high success rates, let’s look
at the other methods. The majority rely on Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT).
All the gums and sprays do is to make Nicotine available for you in measured
doses - much like cigarettes do. You get the craving, you chew the gum. You get
the craving, you squirt the spray.
Patches are slightly different. They deliver the Nicotine
slowly over a 12 or 24 hour period and are supposed to stop the craving before
it happens. But often do not.
After stabilizing on the NRT it is time to bring the dosage
down, which is the next hurdle at which many fall. The end result can be
cigarette smoking plus NRT - a potentially fatal combination. In fact, I
strongly believe that NRT should only be done under close medical supervision.
Too much nicotine can kill too!
So what is the best way? It’s called Cold Turkey. The proof
is in the numbers. There has been enough research done and the prime factor is
that the quitter has to be committed to the concept of becoming a non-smoker.
Doing it (quitting) for somebody else, because you lost a bet, because you are
being nagged into it by your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend is doomed to failure, I
am afraid. This is something which requires your total commitment. 100 percent
all the way. When I gave up smoking (yes, in my teenage years nobody thought
that smoking was bad for you. Smoking was being cool and ‘adult’) I thought it
would be a bad scene for a couple of days, but then found that it was a couple
of weeks of torture. Here I am almost five decades later and I could begin
smoking again tomorrow. It requires dedication and commitment. Yours! No one
else’s!
So, I admit that those who go Cold Turkey may go through a
rough time with withdrawals initially, but the majority are still non-smokers
after one year. The same cannot be said for the others. The “hard” way is
ultimately the best way.
You have to make the decision to quit. You set the day. You
tell all your friends that you are now a non-smoker - and you stick to it!
It’s the best decision you can make today!
