The Tao of Quitting Smoking

By Joseph Weaver

April 2004

Many smokers will have no other alternative to quitting, especially those in New York.  New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed raising the cigarette tax to $1.50 as part of a $41.3 billion budget plan, which is about 5 billion short, inherited from his predecessor, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.  This tax hike will increase the cost of cigarettes to about $7.00/ Pack. This increase would give the city an extra $250 million of revenues, which can be used for more to rebuild the city after the tragic September 11. If this tax on cigarette takes in effect, New York City residents would pay a total of $3.39 per pack in U.S., state and local cigarette tax. Worldwide, an estimated 3 million people die from smoking-related diseases each year. It very simple, if you continue to smoke you WILL be a victim of some sort of smoking related illness.

If you quit, The risk of lung cancer drops steadily for people who quit smoking -- after 10 years, it's cut by about half. Quitting reduces the risk of other smoking-related cancers as well, including cancer of the larynx (voice box), oral cavity (mouth and throat), esophagus, pancreas and urinary bladder. Years of research relates smoking was the worst threat to public health since the plague, smoking has the ability to kill more victims in America than Aids, Automobile accidents, heroine, crack, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, murder, and fire combined.  Cigarettes smoking in theory should be illegal. Why is it that so many still smoke and believe that they have a right to smoke?

Smoking is a slow suicide, but many who smoke are in denial and severely addicted to tobacco and will continue to pay the tobacco industry any amount of money to inhale the deadly components within tobacco and its smoke. While there is evidence that the American anti-smoking campaign has resulted in a smoking decline among younger individuals,  research suggest  that it has been less successful among older, established smokers. Most of the current 24 million smokers over age 40 are severely addicted to Nicotine.  Smoker must realize that it is never too late to quit. No matter how much or how long you’ve smoked, when you quit, your risk of heart disease goes down. Three years after quitting, your risk of heart disease is almost the same as if the smoker never smoked.

Nicotine is a drug, but many smokers won’t accept this fact and will instead buy cigarettes from neighboring cities or via the Internet if the proposed tax hike takes affect in New York. Hopefully, other cities will join in the on the war on drugs. ``Smoking cessation programs have been proven to be successful in helping others quit, but  smokers have to want to quit and must pay money to attend the seminars. ... thus an effective plan to force smokers to quit may be  dealt with my adding excessive taxes to cigarettes to deter smokers from using tobacco products.

The key to quitting smoking for many is re-educating smokers about tobacco, nicotine and it poisonous smoke, along with helping them deal with the withdrawal symptoms. No one, who processes positive self-esteem would smoke. Self love is extremely important to keep smokers from going back to Nicotine. Refraining from what is unwholesome and striving toward what is positive and wholesome are key to self-love.  Smokers can’t claim to be in control and not have low self esteem and at the same time continue to smoke.  Smoking causes damage to just about every part of your body.

Tobacco smoke has over 4000 chemicals in which you inhale each time you smoke. Some of these chemicals are cause by chain reactions from the heat of burning cigarettes. Some of the chemicals and toxins, only exist for no longer than a nanosecond, others go directly to your blood stream, tissues, organs, cells and brain. Some chemicals are believed to be added to keep the smoker hooked on a habit and addicted to a substance. Many scientists believe that many smokers can’t quit because smoking acts as an anti-depressant thus masking their depression. Others believe that prolonged cigarette smoking causes depression and schizophrenia by causing havoc to smoker’s nervous system. Nicotine has the ability to elevate neurochemical substances within the brain for prolonged time, thus causing nerve abnormalities. Other scientists believe that there may even be an addictive gene that keeps smokers addictive to Nicotine.

What smokers must know about cigarettes is that smoking is a learnt response. Not only is it an addiction it is also an habit. That means puffing on a cigarette must have been paired thousands of times with some type of satisfaction, peer approval, subconscious belief that smoking gives the illusion of looking cool, more like an adult or sophisticated. We learned these thoughts through media and advertisements.

 

Just think. Why is it such that Blacks, Hispanics, Rap Music listeners and low-income individuals smoke more menthols cigarettes than Whites, Mixed heritages, Rock and Rollers and higher-income individuals. Tobacco industries have targeted groups via their advertisements. There is a predominance of  ads for the menthol brand cigarettes in Black and Hispanic-oriented magazines and or on billboards in lower-income neighborhoods, often using black and Hispanic models. There is growing evidence to state that Menthol cigarettes may even be more dangerous than non-menthol brands. These brands contain enough menthol to produce a cool sensation in the throat when smoke is inhaled. People who smoke menthol cigarettes can inhale more deeply or hold the smoke inside longer than smokers of non-menthol cigarettes. It may also contain more harmful chemicals than other brands.

There is no one on earth that when they smoked their first cigarette, can actually say with honesty that they enjoyed smoking.  Everyone who smokes their first cigarette coughs, become light-headed and nausea often follows. Soon after a thousands of more puffs, the heat from inhaling cigarette smoke begins to destroy the smokers taste buds and smoking actually doesn’t taste as bad. Cigarette smoking soon becomes a habit and the smoker is addictive to nicotine.  Nicotine alters biochemical reactions within the body and brain and now smokers use cigarettes to calm down; they become a handy tranquilizer; they become an important part of the smoker's life.  Cigarettes become the smoker’s best friend. They are no longer able to act without cigarettes. Smokers can’t deal with normal stress without nicotine fixes; they can’t socialize without smoking and they fall victim to believing that they enjoy smoking.

The main uses of nicotine in industry besides tobacco include insecticides (now mostly banned) and as tranquilizing darts for wildlife. Free-base nicotine in tobacco smoke is absorbed almost instantly by inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact. nicotine concentrates in the brain, kidney, stomach mucosa, adrenal medulla, nasal mucosa and salivary glands. Studies show that nicotine exposure can result in seizures, vomiting, depressions of the central nervous system, growth retardation, developmental toxicity in fetuses, and preterm birth with reduced body weight and brain development in animals. Mild nicotine poisoning in humans results in the following symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, increase in respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, headache, dizziness, and neurological stimulation.

 

 

How is it then possible to learn how to quit smoking? What options do smokers have to quit? Since smoking is both an addiction and a habit. Smokers often fail at quitting smoking because of ignorance or denial. Typically, between 60% and 90% of smokers will relapse within the first year of quitting. Quitting smoking can be difficult for many.

To be successful at quitting  the smoker must first understand his/her habit and realize why they continued to smoke, even through their first puff tasted so horrible. Every smoker knows that smoking is dangerous and smoking has the power to kill them or cause some damage to their body.  It is very important for smokers to “Question Themselves” about why they started to smoke and why the continue to smoke. There is some data that suggests that if smokers can hold out for 2 years they may have a good chance of never going back to smoking. The bad news is that temptation to light up may linger for up to 10 years--building strong negative emotions towards tobacco and its smoke can reduce this number. If you loath everything about smoking, chances are that you won’t go back is high. Reprogramming and re-educating your thoughts about nicotine, tobacco and the effect it has on you, can help you better than any product on the market. Nicotine is a poison, a nerve toxin. Just about 60mg of Nicotine would actually kill an adult. Because Nicotine is quickly dissolved and short acting in the body, one never achieved this amount.

Going inward is as simply as being honest with oneself and redeveloping their spiritual self to combat their addiction. This can be done analyzing particular times or situations, notice how many puffs they smoke with each cigarette and how many cigarettes they smoke within one day.  This is the first step to understand your patterns. Once the smoker realizes the patterns and situations when they smoke they can better understand and learn how to kick their habit. The smell form the cigarette, the sound of it burning, the taste from cigarettes,  the touch and the sight are all important to take notice when you begin to quit. Mindfulness is essential to understanding your addiction along with your habit when wanting to quit.

Second is realizing that smoking is not your friend, but instead your worst enemy. Smoking is a self-destructing act. You can’t truly love yourself and continue to smoke.  Smokers also must analyze their attempts to quit  and how they relapsed and went back to smoking. This is extremely important.   Was it the withdrawal symptoms? Was it the stress in their lives? Knowing what makes the smoker return to the self injurious behavior is essential to helping the smoker better understand how to deal with remaining a non-smoker. Smokers who want to quit MUST have a strategy when attempting to quit. Not having a plan is one of the reasons why most who attempt to quit, fail.

Smokers must retrain their psyche from all the messages and brainwashing received from media, advertisements, peer family members and ignorance about the workings of the universe, the Tao of smoking coined by a Buddhist follower of my book Nic-the Habit .

Most smokers will quit smoking for a year or more, but still has the old programming that smoking is cool, relieves stress and helps them deal with anxiety. So, they are easily venerable to fail again and revert back to smoking when things in their life does not go as planned.

Suffering, loss, dissatisfaction and disappointment is part of life, NO ONE is free from escaping these elements in life. One must therefore learn to deal with stress, anxiety and disappointments.  Smoking, Alcohol and using drugs are one way, but not the smart and intelligent way.  Using meditation, exercising, relaxation techniques, traveling, socializing, talking with peers or professionals is the more logical way to deal with the stuff that life throws at us every so often. 

Dealing with Cravings is also another reasons why smokers continue to smoke.  To deal with the craving, one must first have mindfulness of the craving and habit and then one can begin to develop the strength to deal with the additions. This is possible by inner strength, concentration and will. If  one is truly interested in their own welfare and wellness, one simply can’t opt to smoke, being that smoking kills. It robs you of your youth and second-hand smokes also kills and harms your love ones.

Combating cravings is practiced from being strong willed, focused, using prayer, meditations, hypnosis and autosuggestions. Fear and the unwillingness to change is another reasons why smoking remain hooked to Nicotine. Most realize that change produces  anxiety and often suffering of some sort, thus most will continue to smoke even through they know it is bad for them in order to delay the withdrawal symptoms or because fear of failure.  Each time a smoker quits and goes back to smoking the brain associates this with failure and failure brings feelings of inadequacies and disappointments. Thus it is easier to remain a smoker than quit.  This is a weak approach.

We as humans have the power to change and go against our nature or genetic deposition by our will.  Abstinence and learning how to control one’s cravings is the essential being human and what separates us from animals. We as humans have the ability to go against our desires unlike other animals. Realizing both ends of the spectrum of stress and happiness in life is not permanent nor  everlasting. Time through time one will experience happiness and that will fade to disappointment and or suffering. This is life. So quitting smoking will cause a great amount of difficulty pain and some suffering for sometimes months, but suffering and  pain is normal. Accepting this helps one remained focused on denying the cravings and habits that once lead you to go back smoking after several attempts at quitting. Once smokers realize that the withdrawal symptoms are just another parts of life’s discomforts then the smoker can concentrate on dealing with the emotions attached to smoking. Once the smoker understand the patterns along his or her addictions and habit, s(he) is better able to overcome past mistakes that lead the smoker to go back to smoking or to never quit. 

Realizing that Nicotine is nothing more than a drug that causes havoc on your body and at the same time cause some stress relief and weight control is not a good choice to remain addictive to the substance.  The thirst  of your addiction is from the drug, Nicotine. Ignorance is not seeing things as they really are.  It is the failing to admit or understand the truths about your addiction to  tobacco and how dangerous it is to your health, along with continuing to smoke after knowing all these facts, is what is keeping you becoming successful when attempting to quit. Out of Ignorance comes craving, attachments, false notions, greed,  denial to what is real. Thus the most important factor to help smokers quit is gain knowledge. Unconsciously, the smoker pairs smoking with relaxation: after a meal, while on the telephone or at the bar or club, or when stressed. The results is a relaxed response is conditioned to cigarettes. This learned response is natural when smokers feel uptight or uncomfortable.

Gaining knowledge about your addiction and the addiction of others is knowledge and knowledge is your key to successfully quitting smoking and remaining a non smoker for the rest of your life. This can be done with reading Smoking Cessation books, going within, joining Internet support groups, Internet searching and via any means to learn more about the deadly nerve poison nicotine and the 2000 chemicals or more within tobacco smoke.

Nicotine is just one of those chemicals which has the ability to acts on your mind, body and spirit.  Nicotine binds with specific protein within the brain, called receptors, where are found on the surface of nerve cells. The actions of Nicotine on the brain are very similar to the actions of cocaine and crack on the brain.  Nicotine’s interaction on nerve cells and the brains causes it to release chemicals into the brain which act on receptors to activates them and enhances release of specific neurotransmitters and hormones, including dopamine, norepinephrine, acetycholine, vasopressin, serotonin and beta-endorphine which can produce feelings of pleasure, appetite suppression, improved memory and performance, and reduced tension, similar to the “runner’s high”, Shopping, eating chocolate and having sex. Smoking for many makes them feel better. Nerve cells release the brain chemical dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, in the brain area known as the nucleus accumbens. Researchers hope that new therapies that target only certain nicotine receptor subtypes will bypass this undesirable effect of nicotine.