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Three Tips to Remain Smoke Free: Tip #2

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In continuation of three tips that helped me remain smoke free and might work for any of you trying to kick the habit but struggling to figure out a way to do it once and for all, I give you tip number two, replace your smoking habit with a healthy habit.

 

This was one of the best things I did to remain smoke free.  By replacing my smoking with a healthy habit I was able to reverse the damage to my body sooner and get into the best shape of my life.  I took up hiking and jogging to substitute my smoking.  I since have hiked all over the country and have also run in many local 5k and 10k races, and even half marathons!

 

Now of course your healthy habit doesn’t have to be running or hiking distances, it can be anything you feel like.  Instead of lighting up that first cig when you wake up go for a short walk in the morning or hit the gym.  You could join a club sport like basketball or play softball on the weekends.  The options are countless and can easily be made to fit your lifestyle and your interests.  But by choosing some kind of healthy habit to replace your old smoking habit it can provide a great distraction from trying to quit smoking and also give you some motivation.

 

This tip can be difficult to follow but if you set goals for yourself you will remain smoke free.  When I quit, I set a goal of running a 7 mile race in my hometown in under one hour.  I was able to accomplish this by setting aside an hour three to five days a week after work to go for a jog.  Three months later the thought of smoking never really crossed my mind as I was purely focused on achieving my goal, and in the process I lost 25 pounds and felt a lot healthier overall.

 

This tip of picking up a healthy habit worked out great for me and it could likely help many of you out there who are pondering quitting.  It keeps your mind focused away from smoking and allows you to get healthier faster as well.  So if you are still thinking about quitting smoking and you want to use that gym membership you got on New Year’s for this year’s resolution, I say go for it and don’t look back.

Dealing with Shame: No Excuses

"If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear or be ashamed of."

That is a principle I've always kept close to my heart. In the last few days, there are a lot of things that have happened that just made me feel constricted and stressed out. Therefore, I was not able to control my smoking. In fact, it has gotten worst. I am back to smoking 1 pack a day and I'm not making this an excuse. I'm writing this because, I feel weak at having broken my goal.

It all started when a man tresspassed in our fenced and gated land. I have had to confront him. He was carrying a jungle bolo (a small sword), he walked about like it was his property, took a look left and right, thereaways and sideaways then that's the time he went to me to ask for some bamboo.

I was seething with anger even though I know this man, because he was not really a friend, just a neighbor. A neighbor who walked inside our fenced and gated property, without declaring his intentions first and who was carrying a bolo.

When I was face to face with him, I first took a look at the bolo, sheethed at his side. I glanced at his hands whether its movements or intentions were directed at reaching out for it. I stared at him for a whole 5 minutes, mustering up all my strength to control my anger and you know what I did?

Nothing. I said nothing and did nothing. I just stared at him so he knows that I'm angry at what he had just done. 

If this was in another place, maybe in the cities, I would have acted differently. But this was a unique place. I am surrounded by a clan with a history of violence.

I have daughters of my own. 

To top it all off, he seemed unaware of his transgression. He feels that he has done nothing wrong and it was his right to just barge in, walk about and count the things that he would like to get.

He said to me,

"Danny are you angry?"

I stared at him.

"Danny, why are you angry? I've done nothing wrong."

I let out a deep breath. 

2 minutes passed and I was still staring at him. 

He was a big man, about 40 to 50 years old, taller than me and I've heard stories about him. They said that he was the "Barako" or bull of this small town back during the times when here was still wild. That if his brothers were still alive, he would have been the "King" of this place way back when.

Finally he said,

"Danny, I am weak and old."

Something in my adrenaline infused mind, clicked. Just like that, my anger meter suddenly went down to about 10%. 

I let out a deep breath and sighed.

With a harried and annoyed tone I gave way, "Ok, ok, what do you need?"

The story ended with me hauling 8 bamboo poles to this man's house and me buying him 4 cans of corned beef. I am still angry and indignant, but I believe that I have done the right thing.

Other people would just have brought a gun to the equation. Simple solution, though it has its own demerits.

Make him feel that what he did was wrong and at the same time, send a message to the overall community that I don't mean harm.

I'm just demanding a little respect. 

Since then, there has been another instant of tresspassing. This was last week.

I know that we need to have the fence fixed. They've created holes in it.

So, what do I do after an adrenaline infused situation?

I smoked more since then.

What else could I have done to calm myself? 

Image credit: Flickr cod_gabriel

Smoke Free Life Step Program Step 4

In this step we start to explore the brainwashing, why you are smoking, and changing the habit. You have decided to quit smoking and have come to the realization that smoking is just a habit. If someone asked you why do you smoke you might tell them that it relaxes you and gives you confidence. This is not true society has brainwashed us into thinking that smoking is a habit. People will tell you habits are hard to break so you go on smoking believing what they say. Are habits hard to break? No this is a lie that habits are hard to break. The simple facts each day we break bad habits in our lives.

We find it hard to break the habit of smoking even though it tastes awful, will kill us, and cost us a fortune. Consider why you keep this filthy and disgusting habit knowing you want to break it anyway. You can break this habit all you have to do is stop doing it. The truth is that smoking is not a habit but a nicotine addiction. That is why it is difficult to give up smoking. Smokers do not consider they are drug addicts or understand drug addiction. Society brainwashing has convinced smokers they receive genuine pleasures from smoking. If you try to give up smoking the brainwashing says to you this is a genuine sacrifice and you do not need to stop.

To give up smoking you have to understand the beautiful truth that smoking is a nicotine addiction. You need to understand the true reasons you smoke and then you can stop smoking just like that. Within a few weeks the mystery of smoking has left your life and the only mystery now is why you found it necessary to smoke the first time. You start to realize that smoking is not a habit but the cigarette companies brainwashed you to smoke. It is time to look closely at the world around you and what influences you to continue smoking. To give up smoking each day you have to reprogram your subconscious mind to see cigarette smoking for what it is. The cigarette is not a habit but a drug addiction, it is a filthy habit, costs money, and in the end will kill you.

In this step it is time to realize that smoking is the sinister trap and cigarette companies have brainwashed you. What makes anyone smoke the first time? Anyone who smokes warns you that smoking is filthy, disgusting, costs a fortune and you should never start smoking. We hear this advice and cannot believe they are not enjoying smoking. One pathetic issue of smoking is how hard you worked to smoke. Cigarettes are the only trap which has no lures it is the advertising that brainwashing you. The only reason you smoke a second cigarette is not the marvelous taste but how awful it taste. If the first cigarette tasted marvelous we would not go back and try it again. Then we could understand why half the adult population was paying to poison themselves. The awful taste of the first cigarette tells our mind we will never become hooked. Our minds play a trick on us saying they taste so bad we can stop at any time.

Cigarettes are the only drug in nature that prevents you from stopping. When young boys start smoking they have an image of being tough. When you smoked your first cigarette you did not feel tough. Instead you felt dizzy, sick and afraid to inhale. All you wanted to do was get away from the other boys and throw the filthy cigarette away. Cigarette companies have portrayed the image of men being tough when they smoke. Women are portrayed as being sophisticated. When boys learn to be tough and women learned to be sophisticated they wish they had never smoked the first cigarette. Women never look sophisticated when they smoke this are figments of our imaginations created by cigarette advertisements.

After becoming hooked we spend the rest of our lives trying to explain to our self why we smoke. We tell our children their friends that smoke will try to get you to smoke with them. We spend the rest of our lives trying to escape the trap we are in. When inside this trap the only time we try to stop is when we have stress in our lives. We have to stop only for health, money shortage or societies making us feel like a leper. As soon as we stop our lives fill with more stress thinking about the withdrawal pangs of nicotine. Once a smoker the only object to help stress is your cigarette and now you must do without.

Once you start smoking your life enters a giant maze. Once inside the maze your mind becomes misted and clouded. You spend the rest of your life trying to escape the maze. Many smokers have escaped the maze only to be drawn back inside again. Stopping smoking is not the problem you have to understand the maze that traps you. The maze is a complicated puzzle and once you understand the solution it is easy to solve.

Anybody can find it easy to stop smoking only after understanding the facts. The scare facts do not work and if they did you would have given up smoking a long time ago. On the market today there is plenty of information about the evils of smoking. What we need to do is find out why it is difficult to stop. To find the answer to this question we need to know why we are still smoking. Once we find this answer we can solve the complicated puzzle and stop smoking.

In step 4 we have explored the brainwashing, why we started to smoke, and why it is hard to stop. Each step is altering our way of thinking and the brainwashing by cigarette companies. Taking a look into ourselves and asking ourselves why we smoked is the beginning. We do not have an answer to this question so why do it? That one is simple you are a drug addict. You have to understand the addiction to break the trap of smoking cigarettes. We have to understand the trap we are in and how the maze works to give up cigarettes in our lives. In the next few steps we will explore all the techniques of brainwashing and how to break the cycle. To stop smoking we have to understand the cycle and how easy it is to break it.

Hookah Smoking ~ An Unexpected Epidemic?

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Are we ignoring a resurgence in tobacco use in our youth and college age students? A study published in the January, 2013 issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research (first published online in 2012) reports on the emerging increase in waterpipe (or hookah) usage among college students. In this study, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine assessed over 100,000 students from 152 colleges and universities and found almost one-third (30.5%) of the study participants reported smoking tobacco through a hookah.¹

I was surprised to read this, as I knew that cigarette use is declining. A tobacco trend report published by the American Lung Association states "current smoking prevalence among young adults was 52.0% lower in 2009 (21.8%) than in 1965 (45.4%)."²  

Why do we see this increasing trend? Is it due to the social nature of hookah lounges? Or, is it due to the commonly held misperception that waterpipe tobacco is safer than cigarette smoking? Perhaps it is a mix of both of these two reasons. Regardless, if steps aren’t taken to educate our youth, we may be facing an increase in future tobacco-related illnesses, cancer, heart disease, and subsequent an increase in early, preventable deaths.

References

1. Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Kim, K. H., Carroll, M. V., Hoban, M. T., Leino, E. V., … & Fine, M. J. (2013). Waterpipe smoking among US university students. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 15(1), 29-35.

2. American Lung Association. (2011). Trends in tobacco use. American Lung Association Epidemiology and Statistics Unit, Research and Program Services.

Smokers – Watch Your Butts!

Your cigarette butts, that is! (Don't get the wrong idea from this title!) Yes, this is another angle to quitting smoking that you may not have considered, as I imagine most people don't, i.e. what happens to cigarettes once you have smoked them. Apparently the butts from used cigarettes are the number 1 source of litter and environmental pollution around the world, as they are found everywhere and leak a lot of toxic waste. They are still generally considered to be one of the most “acceptable” forms of litter, the last line of defence, as it were, in the battle against littering and pollution.

Most smokers don't think twice about smoking a cigarette, then throwing the stub in the street, or out of a car window. I freely admit, I didn't think about it myself when I was a smoker – I didn't consider the environmental damage I was inadvertently causing. So now it makes me even more glad that I no longer smoke, the fact that I am not polluting the world in this way. The problem with cigarette butts is, that not only are they unsightly and an eyesore, but they contain a lot of toxic chemicals which leach out into the environment. The tobacco trash contains a plastic filter which only biodegrades under extreme conditions and endangers wildlife, besides being expensive to clean up on roads, beaches, parks, etc. Not only do the butts contain chemicals which are poisonous to wildlife, but they are carcinogenic and these toxic chemicals can sink into the soil and contaminate water sources.

I am sure you will all agree that this environmental pollution problem with the butts is yet another excellent reason to quit smoking (as if there were not enough already! I think it is worth considering this angle as well though – I am sure that the more reasons people find to quit this habit, the more it will strengthen their resolve and the more success they will have).. The health organisation Legacy is trying to raise awareness of this concern at present. You can read more at this section of their website, RethinkButts.org, which gives detailed information on this subject. Now I know all about the concern with butts, I am 100% behind them (pun intended!)

Hope you got something out of this blog, and your votes and comments are much appreciated.

Picture courtesy of www.flickr.com

Three Tips to Remain Smoke Free: Tip #3

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We have all been there.  “I know I should quit but maybe I’ll cut down first” or “I know it is terrible for me but I don’t think I am ready”.  These are phrases that smokers who have thought about quitting repeat to themselves over and over again.   However, unfortunately, these phrases almost never seem to make us actually quit.  Like many have said before the first thing you need to realize is that you want to give up the habit and remain smoke free.

 

This short series of blogs will give you three tips to remain smoke free and quit the habit for good.  Tip number three is to remain smoke free is to surround yourself with non smokers at first.  Yes, this may seem kind of rude but by hanging out with friends and family who are still smoking while you are just starting to kick the habit can prove to be quite difficult.  There were many times where I tried to quit and would be doing pretty well for a few days or even a couple of weeks then hang out with friends who smoked and wanted one right away.  Ultimately I would have one or two and then probably want to buy a pack the next day.

 

One day there finally came a point where I was tired of it and I thought one of the best ways to stop smoking was to limit my contact with my smoking friends.  Now of course I didn’t just blow them off for a whole month, but what I did do was avoid them when they were actually smoking.  For example, if we were at the pub and they went for a smoke outside I would simply just stay in and wait for them to return. It was really that simple.  Sometimes I still wanted to join them for the social aspect but I kept telling myself that I don’t need to smoke with them to remain social; the conversation can always wait a few minutes.  It can be tough at times but you just have to stick with it for this tip to work.

 

I continued this practice for about a month and eventually since I had avoided all contact with smoking, my urge for a smoke went away.  Of course the first few days and up to a week are the hardest but once the nicotine leaves your system it becomes less of a physical challenge and more of a mental test, and trying to avoid smoking situations is a good tip to remain smoke free once and for all. 

For My Sister

This post is for my sister, Meghan. She has been smoking since she was just a teenager. There are some things that I want her to know. Things that I have trouble saying out loud. Every time I try and express how I feel verbally, I seem to mess it up. Everything comes out how I didn't want it to sound. So, instead, I'm going to write this here and post it online. My sister is 22 years old. She already has one beautiful three year old child and is now expecting another child around Christmas time. It's sad that she's pregnant and smoking, but she's addicted now and doesn't know how to stop. She is a great mother! Believe me, she is. She's just made the stupid decision to smoke. I hear her say all the time that she will always be there for her children. I wonder if that's really going to happen with the amount that she smokes. I don't mean to sound like a pessimist, but I've seen the effects that smoking has on a person.

My father smokes and my mother used to smoke. My mother got very sick a few years ago and was in the hospital with pneumonia and was diagnosed with C.O.P.D. I wish that had been enough to make my sister stop smoking. Afterall, she saw our own mother almost die. It wasn't enough though. I'll tell her sometimes that smoking is horrible for your body. I tell her about the chemicals. I tell her about the effects. She only gets angry at me for saying anything though. It's like she doesn't understand that I'm not trying to attack her but instead trying to help her. I know my sister has said that she wants to quit smoking. I've heard it several times.

My sister is a courageous person. She has been through a lot in her life that a lot of people haven't had to go through but she still wakes up every day and does what she can to keep going. She works hard every day taking care of her daughter and she's going to have to work even harder now that she's expecting a second. I want her to know how strong I think she is. I could only wish that I was half as strong as she is. I know that she can do this. I know she can quit! Nobody says it will be easy. She needs to do it though. If not for herself, for her kids. They deserve to grow up and have her in their lives. My sister is an amazing woman. I look up to her so much. She is my not just my sister, but my friend, and she is someone that I want to be around for as long as possible. I hope so much that she is able to break her addiction. She deserves so much more than what a cigarette has to offer.

Vice and Leadership
I’ve done some research on world leaders that have and used to have vices, particularly smoking. One trend I’ve seen is that, most of them are quitting or trying to quit.
  • September 27, 2008 – Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, admits trying Marijuana during her College years (Source: The Australian)
  • November 6, 2009 – Prime Minister David Cameron, on God and quitting smoking. He reportedly quit (Source: Wall Street Journal)
  • April 21, 2010 – President Bashar al-Assad, a qualified medical doctor decrees ban on smoking. His regime is now embroiled in a civil war (Source: BBC)
  • February 9, 2011 – The Telegraph reports that Barack Obama has quit smoking after 30 years. (Source: Telegraph) *Here’s a fake video of him buying cigarettes (lol)
  • November 24, 2012 – President Aquino of the Philippines ignores call to quit smoking. *Tsk tsk. Our president.. (Source: Inquirer.net)
  • December 14, 2012 – Kim Jong Un, celebrates North Korean rocket launch with a cigarette (Source: Telegraph). *Typical.
  • February 25, 2013 – Vladimir Putin, signs law banning smoking in Public in Russia (Source: BBC) *I have not seen a single picture of him on Google, smoking.
  • May 18, 2013 – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, gets caught on camera using crack cocaine. (Source: Gawker)

“Mr. President, North Korea just launched a nuclear missile from its East coast.” The President nods, and for a split second, thoughts of smoking enter his head like a wispy ghost.

Of course, we all know that smoking for many is a coping mechanism. Stress, is one of its causes.

At this stage in history, we are way past debates on whether world leaders should smoke cigarettes or not. While their personal opinions on smoking, habits or preferences are solely theirs to have and make, their personal health is a public matter.

Their ability to lead is a public matter.

A sound body, makes for a sound mind, and a sound mind makes for sound decisions.

Leaders are accountable to us, the citizenry who voted for them.

Our leaders, owe it to us to ensure that they are healthy. To end this post, I’d like to quote Barack Obama – right after smoking legislation was passed when queried about his personal habits.

“OBAMA: Well, first of all the new law that was put in place is not about me, it’s about the next generation of kids coming up. So I think it’s fair, Margaret, to just say that you just think it’s neat to ask me about my smoking as opposed to if — being relevant to my new law. But that’s fine. I understand. It’s an interesting human interest story. Look. I’ve said before that as a former smoker, I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No. I don’t do it in front of my kids. I don’t do it in front of my family. You know, I would say that I am 95 percent cured, but there are times where — there are times when I mess up. And I’ve said this before. I get this question about once every month or so. And I don’t know what to tell you other than the fact that, you know, like folks who go to AA, you know, once you’ve gone down this path, then it’s something you continually struggle with. Which is precisely why the legislation we signed was so important. Because what we don’t want is kids going down that path in the first place.”

(Source: Huffington Post July 24, 2009)

 

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Creative Commons Image on Flickr via Stevendepolo

When Beautiful Beaches Become Public Ashtrays

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I cannot think of a better way and reason to quit smoking than to study the GOOD that even one cigarette-quitter can create for the environment, nature, and mother earth. Perhaps that could be a more meaningful sacrifice and greater motivation to look beyond self for those who are really having a hard time quitting. Read more