I will not try to frighten you into a decision with stories about smokers who wound up with cancer or other serious problems, but I hope that what I have to say will help you make a decision whether to continue or to stop smoking.
Your reaction to the drug nicotine may be mild. Perhaps you smoke a few cigarettes now and then and have no difficulty stopping for days or weeks when you want to. Or perhaps you may smoke only a cigarette or two a day. And if you decide to stop smoking one of these days for some good reason, you will encounter no real difficulty. If so, this article is not for you.
But if you have read this far, the prob abilities are that you do have a real problem—a situation that needs to be changed or ended because of the cost to you if you continue. If your reaction to the drug nicotine is addictive in nature, you are probably smoking at least a package of cigarettes a day (perhaps a lot more), or the equivalent in other tobacco products. If this is your level, there is no question that you have a problem. In the long run, that level of consumption is going to damage your lungs and finally cause physical difficulties of a severe nature. The best evidence is that it will shorten your life by several years, but I don't want to dwell on that. The short-range costs of smoking are equally real, and the benefits you will realize in quit ting are rapid and dramatic. You will feel better, your sense of taste will improve, your nerves will calm down, your memory will improve, and your thinking will be sharper and more clear.
At this point perhaps you need to do some evaluation. On a sheet of paper draw a line down the middle from top to bottom. On the left side put the costs to you, both short term and long term, in continuing to smoke. On the right side list the benefits you see coming to you if you stop smoking. Be honest with your self. After you have done this, study what you have done, and you will be able to make a tentative decision. You may want to go back and add some things after you have read on.
What smoking does
Your lungs take in air, extract oxygen, and then cause it to get into your blood stream for delivery to the various parts of your body needing oxygen especially the brain. When you smoke, you reduce the amount of oxygen reaching your bloodstream and therefore your brain. Carbon dioxide takes the place of oxygen. That is why you sometimes feel that your brain is functioning slowly and inefficiently. Even worse, the hot gas that reaches your lungs destroys the microscopic air sacs that do the real work of the lungs, systematically damaging them over a period of time. At the very minimum, your lungs are rendered inefficient. This process is involved in emphysema and related to heart disease, and, so far as I know, cancer.
What does smoking do for you?
On the basis of my study, I believe that when you smoke a cigarette, you first get a "lift" of a sort that is then followed by sedation. You seem to feel a relaxing effect. But then sometime later you begin to feel tension, and that is when you start looking around for your pack of cigarettes or getting that lost feeling if you think you have run out especially if it's late at night and you face going out looking for an open store.
You may think that tension is just a natural, normal thing for you. But in reality it is the secondary effect of the drug nicotine you had in the previous cigarette. It is a sort of withdrawal syndrome. The cigarette you reach for "kills" this feeling by starting you again on the experience you had when you smoked the previous cigarette. In a sense the cigarette is putting you through a rather silly up-and-down cycle in which you seem to get a benefit, only to wind up with an adverse result—unneeded tension. I explained this to a friend one time, and he wound up very unhappy at what cigarettes were doing to him rather than for him. With real determination he decided to end this cycle, and so he stopped smoking.
Can you stop smoking?
Multitudes who ought to quit smoking are quick to say that they cannot do it. They have many excuses. I once heard a minister define the difference between an excuse and a reason. He said: "An excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie." Often people say such things as: "I don't have enough willpower." "I'm just hooked." "I tried quitting once and failed, so I just know that I'll fail again if I try." All such ideas are really just excuses. You may need some help in quitting, and a therapy to achieve it, but these are available. If millions of others have succeeded, you can too. But you must embark on an effective program.
I once had a conversation with a young lady who was severely addicted to nicotine and who was smoking two or three packs of cigarettes a day. She was ill, but I managed to talk with her on the phone. She said she did not feel well, was nauseous, tired out, and could not manage to go to work. I told her that since I was neither a psychiatrist nor a medical doctor, it might be presumptuous for me to attempt to define her basic problem. (I knew she had had many tests trying to find what was wrong with her health and had not discovered any real cause.) I told her I knew she was not feeling well, neither was she looking well nor acting well. Then I said, "You will never solve your health problem until and unless you quit smoking. Whether you smoke or not is your business. But you are just not going to solve your health problem as long as you smoke."
Then I told her about a therapy pro gram and that I would make the arrangements for her if she wanted to quit. After a long pause she said, "OK, you make the arrangements, and I'll do it." I quickly replied, "It's a deal. I'll call back." And I hung up. I made the ar rangements, and she wound up quitting.
Some months later I asked whether she remembered what went through her mind during the long pause on the phone. She answered, "I can remember very well. Two questions came to my mind. The first was: 'What do I want to do?' And I had to admit, 'I want to keep on smoking.' Then the second question came to my mind: 'What should I do?' And the obvious answer was: 'I should quit smoking.' So I quickly agreed, and you hung up so fast that I didn't have a chance to reconsider."
"Then," she went on, "I lighted a cigarette and said to myself, 'What have I done?'" But she had discovered the right question and provided the right answer.
Stop smoking mentally
A friend told me that he had stopped using tobacco because he became frightened of the dangers, but that he did not stop "smoking" in his mind. Although not actually smoking, he was craving a cigarette every day. He admitted he had a problem in his mind.
A psychologist presented him with some thoughts to ponder. The psychologist was religiously oriented, but he did not lecture my friend about religion. He simply called attention to the command ment "Thou shalt not kill." They agreed that murder was against the basic teachings of all faiths. My friend agreed that it is wrong to kill oneself. The advisor re minded him that one could kill oneself quickly with a pistol or some other means, but that it could also be done slowly, such as by smoking. At this point, my friend later confided to me, he lost his desire for smoking permanently.
The tobacco industry cleverly presents all kinds of pleasant situations in its advertising to imply that smoking is a part of good living and happiness. It is actively trying to condition your mind and to keep it conditioned. Those ads constitute "triggers" to reach for a cigarette. You should not only try to break those old pleasant mental associations with smoking that you have embedded deep in your memory but also see to it that they are not stimulated by tobacco ads. Refuse to look at tobacco ads turn the page quickly and turn off the stimuli. Recognize that the tobacco industry and those who promote it are your enemies—not your friends—and that they are using you. When your mind turns to cigarettes, never dwell on past experiences that might have been pleasant. Think of those mornings when you felt all smoked out, when you had a bad taste in your mouth—those times you burned a hole in your suit or dress, or dropped a cigarette on a rug. Think of all the money you have wasted on cigarettes that each year cost more, and what you can do with the money saved. Think how much better you will feel when you kill that old dependency.
Emotional equanimity
Many people find themselves "pushed" toward cigarettes because of their inability to cope with human problems. The ultimate solution to the craving for tobacco—or any other—drug re sides in achieving "emotional equanimity." After some decades of experience, I have concluded that life seems to present a series of problems, and real satisfaction in living comes from the efficiency and speed with which we can solve them.
I knew one man whose strong craving for a cigarette was based on his extreme nervousness, which was due, in turn, to an inferiority complex. He felt he just had to have some sort of crutch because he couldn't seem to handle his job. The pressures of his job and his boss were severe. The man needed to get himself psychologically adjusted so he wouldn't feel that way.
I think there is value in going back into your memory to the day you started smoking, and trying to remember why you started. One woman had a conflict with her strict father, who thought of himself as the sole judge of everything she considered doing. He hated smoking and told her that if she smoked, she would be no better than a prostitute. She developed a strong resentment of her father and retaliated by smoking. When she realized how silly such a motive was, and that she was really only hurting her self, she stopped smoking. What were your motives in starting? What are they now for continuing? Explore these.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
One of my psychiatrist friends, Dr. Jerome Frank, of Johns Hopkins University, pointed out to me that a paranoid mental patient is a person who says, "I am persecuted." Because he believes he is persecuted, he behaves in a surly, disgruntled manner and is suspicious and unfriendly. Then people begin to maltreat him, and he says, "See, didn't I tell you I'm persecuted?" Thus he fulfills his own prophecy.
Dr. Frank told me that in days gone by, doctors had their own prophecies about how mental patients were going to perform. They locked them up and predicted that they would become violent. And the patients fulfilled their prophecy. One day the doctors woke up and changed their prophecy. They treated the patients kindly, and prophesied that they would not become violent, but would get well. And the patients fulfilled their prophecy and got well.
Now, of course, you are not a mental patient. At most, you are simply a per son addicted to a drug. But your own personal prophecy of what you are going to do about it is vital. If your prophecy is a bad one, you will fail. If it is a good one, you can succeed. If you have reached a tentative decision to stop smoking, you can make it permanent right now. Embrace strongly the prophecy that you will stop and stay stopped, no matter what difficulties you may experience, and my personal prophecy is that you will stop smoking and stay stopped. If you need help in doing it, you will find it. All that remains is for you to reach for the help.
