Smoking can be an expensive habit, and it can end up costing you literally an arm and a leg! (Or a leg, anyhow). You may have heard of the medical condition popularly known as Smoker’s Leg, which is very serious and often horrifying and is one of the many compelling reasons to quit the habit! You can lose your leg because of it. Read more
“Everyone is addicted to somethin’
Most certainly those who say “To nothin!”
It’s how we were made
So don’t get delayed
Chasin’ after wishful thinkin’!”
What do I mean? Smokers get a bad rap!
I am all for quitting smoking and other bad habits, but I have found that smokers have been targetted by our society as “easy to hate.” Sure, the side-effects of smoking are rotten, even deadly, but no worse than most of the vices our society faces.
If you are reading this blog, you or someone you know is on the road to freedom from an enslaving habit. I applaud you, and I hope I can offer some alternatives as you read a bit further. But I need to start with an important truth: You are not a bad person.
A bad habit does not make a good person bad.
The truth is, I know many wonderful people who smoke. Do I like that they smoke? No. They have good personalities, though, and they are a blessing to other people. They love their families. They try to better the world around them. Unfortunately, their skeleton just will not stay in the closet: smoking is too hard to hide for most people.
Why is a smoking habit worse than over-eating? Or gambling? Or destroying your self-esteem by always putting yourself down? Each of these habits, and so many more, are detrimental to who you are.
You see, we as humans were made to flourish. We were also made to “crave” what is good, which is exactly what opens the door to addiction. Anyone who smokes knows that it is not good. It is marketed as “cool.” It calms your nerves; it becomes a comforting routine . . . but it is not good. It is painted pretty enough to get you to try it until you are hooked, and then you begin to see the lie for what it is. You craved what is good, got fooled by something that wasn’t, and now you are trapped. Worse, you feel foolish.
Here is the problem, and the solution: You made a mistake, and you allowed yourself to get addicted to something that was not good. Everyone makes mistakes, but you keep re-living yours because you hate yourself for making that mistake. Please remember the truth. The truth is that you were made to seek after what is good. Just because you made a mistake once, does not mean you have to remain subjected to it.
Now that you are battling the addiction, arm yourself with the truth. The good is still out there. You are not a bad person. Mistakes are not the end of the world.
So what is the alternative to smoking? Seek and find the good that is worth craving, instead of what seemed good but wasn’t. The good is out there. Good and evil are real, and good triumphs over evil.
In other words, it is time to pick yourself up, brush off the dust of your mistakes, and learn what is worth craving. The good is worth craving!
It is great to crave a good family. It is good to take the money that you would have used on cigarettes and invest it in your children’s health or education. It is good to crave justice. It is good to take the time you would have used smoking to research how you can fight against human-trafficking. It is good to crave wisdom. It is good to take the desire for another “fix” and instead learn helpful knowledge and apply it influencially. It is good to crave what is good.
Cigarettes are not worth our time, nor is most of what the tobacco industry offers. However, the farmers and businessmen in the industry are not bad people, and neither are the smokers, or the non-smokers. Bad people do exist, but the vast majority of folks are good people deceived by lies and trapped by the desires of their flesh.
So I challenge you today: What will you crave?
Are you the type that wants to quit, but you just don’t have that ‘reason’ that gives you the needed push to finally quit? How about this: smoking decreases your desire and ability to perform in the bedroom, especially for men. As a matter of fact, erectile dysfunction can be related to the nasty products in your routine ‘fresh air’ roll-ups. Read more
Vanity is but the wind, so why let your good looks go up in smoke? Let’s face it, along with everything else that smoking does to damage your health, the worst and most obvious thing that it causes premature aging and death. In other words, it will make an otherwise healthy, young person become wrinked and withered and winded. Read more
The electric cigarette was produced in 2003 by a Chinese druggist named Hon Lik. It went on the Chinese market in 2004 and then marketed elsewhere in 2005 by Golden Dragon Holdings. The product is traded through private companies but the base is Electronic Cigarette Association.
No electric cigarette company is endorsed by any healthy organization. They are banned in several countries including Canada.
The product is made up of a battery, a cartridge and a atomizer that vaporizes the liquid. These cigarettes cost less than actual cigarettes. A starter kit can run you $50 and flavor cartridges about $12. They come in several flavors such as chocolate, mint and orange that may even attract children to use these.
Though the e-cigs do not produce the tar and carbon monoxide of regular tobacco cigarettes a user may actually have an even stronger addiction to the nicotine than they may have had before. This is due to the solution of nicotine and propylene glycol used in the electric cigarette. It is basically a battery operated nicotine dispenser. And remember nicotine can cause heart problems. The other ingredient is Diethylene Glycol which is a anti-freeze component and is toxic to humans.
Also contained in these cigarettes is Tetramethylpyrazine. This a Chinese drug used in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in China. Found to induce relaxation in rats.
And if the e-cigarette breaks the user can be exposed to cancer causing compounds.
There is not a lot known about the long term effects of this product. But if you turn to this product to help you in stopping smoking regular cigarettes you may find you have an even stronger addiction to nicotine. So what have you lost and what have you gained?
1 in 5 U.S. Deaths are smoking related. This includes second hand smoke and infant death due to smoking during pregnancy.
According to the center for Desease Control in an average year Americans lose 5.5 million years of expected life. This works out to more than 12 years per person.
Secondhand smoke kills approximately 600,000 people world wide each year.
In 2007 lung cancer killed 158, 683 people–88,243 men and 70,354 women. Smoking is responsible for 85% of Lung cancers in the U.S.
It takes 10 days for all the toxins to leave a persons body after quitting smoking. Only about 7% of smokers succeed at quitting smoking on their first try. And 3.5% of people quit smoking cold turkey. 50% of people intoxicated with alcohol will relapse into smoking. There is a 90% reducd rate of dying if a person smoking quits before age 30. There is a 50% reducd rate of dying if a person smoking quits before age 50.
Triggers are those things that make you crave a cigarette. It might be when you get in the car, on breaks at work, or after you eat. If you have been smoking awhile your day is probably filled with triggers. Learn to recognize these triggers. They can come at cetain places, certain times or even after eating certain foods.
For smokers a cigarette is the solution to any problem. You know that certain situations are likely to give you the urge to smoke. Doctors refer to this as HALT or Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Even boredom works into this. So if you recognize that these times weaken us and make us vulnerable we are more able to change this behavior.
Keeping a log of when you find your worst cravings come can be alot of help in the process of quitting the habit. Keeping note of when, whats going on, where and how you feel.
Look back over your log after afew days(best to have atleast a week day and a week-end day)and see when your most extreme triggers occur.
The trick is to see these and then change your routine. Practice eating the meal without the cigarette at the end. Or if it is while you are driving practice not smoking during the drive.
If you associate certain things with smoking change those things. For instance if you smoke while watching a certain show on tv in the evening change and go for a walk instead. If you usually go outside to have the cigarette then go for the walk instead. Adding some exercise to your routine will help you feeling better as you are going through the quitting process.
With your committment to working on changing your routine you are ready to set a date for quitting this habit that has plagued you for so long.
We all know how bad smoking is for the health, but who knew that the average cigarette contains around 4000 chemicals? I thought I would find out about them and list them, in the hope that once smokers see this, it will shock them so much, that it will help them quit!
A cigarette is a made from dried and fermented tobacco tightly rolled in a bundle and covered in a paper case. They are also given many additives designed to make cigarettes taste nicer and keep smokers hooked.
First off, as everyone knows, cigarettes contain nicotine, a highly addictive drug, which occurs naturally in the tobacco. Nicotine of itself is not all that harmful, which is why quitting-smoking aids like nicotine patches can be safely used. Here is the rundown of just some of the other additives (brace yourselves!!):
Tar: a mixture of solid chemicals, which when inhaled, form a sticky brown carcinogenic residue which collects in the airways and lungs
Arsenic: used in wood preservatives and also a deadly poison!
Benzene: an industrial solvent, refined from crude oil
Cadmium: a metal used in batteries
Formaldehyde: used in paint manufacturing, in mortuaries (how appropriate!) and for preserving organic specimens
Polonium-210: a highly radioactive element
Chromium: a metal used in the manufacture of dyes, paints and alloys
1,3-Butadiene: used in rubber manufacturing
Acrolein: formerly used as a chemical weapon
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: a dangerous group of chemicals which damage DNA
Nitrosamines – ditto
Hydrazine: a very toxic chemical used mainly in rocket fuel!
Carbon monoxide: a colourless and dangerous gas, found in car engines, which has a very adverse effect on the lungs
Hydrogen cyanide: used as an industrial pesticide
Ammonia: used to make fertilisers and explosives
Hydrogen cyanide: a poisonous gas
…….And a few thousand more!
As if that list isn't enough to put you off, a lot of brands also contain pig's blood in the filters! Apparently the haemoglobin in the blood helps to trap a lot of the harmful substances before they are inhaled (only clearly, they don't trap enough of them, do they? Considering smoking causes so much illness and death!) They also contain other animal-derived products, like glycerine, so if you are a vegetarian or vegan, like me, that is another great reason to stop smoking!
Hope you got something out of reading this blog, and I appreciate your votes and comments.
Picture courtesy of www.biocaretherapy.com
Finding something to do with your hands takes creativity and added confidence for the new non-smoker. At first it is probably the second hardest thing to adjust to not smoking. With some creativity and keen observation of your own habits, your fingers will find many wonderful things to do other than light up a cigarette.
One activity I realized that I missed was the rythmic ritual of finding my smokes (perhaps by patting my shirt pocket or rummaging through my pack) and digging out a tar, a lighter or matches…packing the tobacco and relaxing with the first drag.
You could just relpace the cigarette box with a box of mints and miss out on seeing your progress on paper. Consider keeping a small note pad with a pen handy to log your thoughts and progress. if you're really hard up for handling something like a smoke- you could fill an empty package with small pencils, like the ones used at golf courses. Then when the urge hits you to light up, enjoy the routine of patting your pocket for the pad of papper and pen and jot your victory down in your journal.
Reward yourself with three deep cleansing breathes and maybe that fresh mint to savor.