Medical and Prescription Drug Plan (Pension, Hospitalization, and Benefit Plan of the Electrical Industry) (PHBP)
How to Become a Non-Smoker—Again
Again? Of course ‘again’—no one starts life as a smoker.
No baby is born with a cigarette dangling from its lips.
Smoking is a habit that is learned, usually in the teen years.
Then it becomes an addiction, causing changes in the brain.
It can be difficult to stop smoking but millions of people have.
Once nearly 70% of adults smoked. Now it is fewer than 21%.
Smokers know how bad it is –Why do they continue smoking?
Every smoker can become a non-smoker again.
How can you do it? Keep reading.
Reasons people do not stop:
- You have a desperate need due to habit and addiction to nicotine.
- Nicotine can both boost and sedate, so it helps you in various states of emotion.
- It gives you a social lubricant.
- It makes you feel independent and defiant.
- It provides activities when you need something to handle nervousness.
- You might like the taste and effect, though most stop liking it after a while but the addiction keeps them smoking.
- It can take several years until the habit wears off and ex-smokers then realize how awful it really was.
Becoming a non-smoker again means you gain:
- Freedom from guilt and anxiety.
- Freedom from being forced outside to satisfy your addiction.
- Health.
- A better, much longer future.
- Money—one pack a day now costs up to $4,000 per year or more!
- Time that used to be spent servicing the habit.
- Energy and feeling much better.
- Clean mouth and teeth.
- Greater social and work acceptance.
- Freedom from the constant and mounting damage to your health that each and every puff brings.
- Freedom from exposing your family and friends to toxic second-hand smoke and the risk of fire.
- Smoking is one of the leading causes of all domestic fires.
- Pride and a sense of accomplishment.
- Most smokers get hooked in their teens under social pressures. When you stop, it is important to recognize that you just did something difficult and very important and that is a good reason to be proud of yourself.
How to do it:
The most important step: Deciding it is passionately important to you to become a non-smoker again.Not that you ought to, should, have to wish to, or will try to—only that you passionately want this goal for yourself.
Only you can or should decide what is right for you.
- Should, ought, have, wish, try—they last five minutes.
- Think carefully about all the advantages of being a non-smoker and which are most important for you.
- Prepare yourself that important things take time and adjustment.
- Decide if you want this so much for yourself that you are committed to keep on going no matter how hard it might seem at some points.
If you are not sure you are really sure, then read that list of benefits from being a non-smoker over and over until it really sinks in. Maybe go hug your child or other loved one and think how important it is to that person, not just yourself. If you are single with no kids, then you are the most important person in your life and you certainly owe yourself to give yourself the best you can do.
- Do not assume that it will be hard! If you are sure it will be, then it will—it is your mind and you just told yourself how to feel.
- Do the opposite—tell your mind that it will not be so bad.
- If you convince yourself that becoming a non-smoker is extremely important to you, then your passion to succeed will make it much easier than you think.
- Learn about your addiction—read up on what nicotine does to your brain, read what methods are recommended. (See the list of stop smoking resources below.)
Every puff of smoke contains 7,000 poisons—it is not surprising that smoking causes more disease than any other agent. It damages every single part of the body and causes a very, very long list of devastating diseases. Tobacco in all forms—cigarettes, cigars, pipes, chewing tobacco, snuff—all are dangerous.
- Lung cancer is the most common cancer killer (but it is a very rare disease in people never exposed to smoke or second-hand smoke, even with asbestos in their lungs).
- What is surprising is that smokers live as long as they do—it is testimony to the body’s remarkable powers of healing—but those powers can protect you for only so long. As soon as you stop, the risk begins to diminish, more so with every year free.
- Part of the problem is that the body’s skills in hiding damage fools you into thinking you are all right—like a house with termites hidden in the foundation—all seems fine until one day the house collapses.
Smoking exposes you to huge amounts of poison:
1 puff of smoke |
= |
7,000 doses of poison |
1 cigarette (10 puffs) |
= |
70,000 doses of poison |
1 pack (20 cigarettes) |
= |
1,400,000 doses of poison |
1 pack a day for 1 year |
= |
511, 000,000 doses of poison |
20 years, 1 pack per day |
= |
10,220,000,000 (10.22 billion) doses |
The risk of smoking is enormous, but, bad as it is, asbestos magnifies the risk of lung cancer by 95 times more!
Most people smoke primarily to get nicotine, one of the most powerful addictive drugs known.
- Nicotine can be both calming and stimulating, which makes it hard to give up, but, even worse, it changes the chemicals in your brain that help nerve cells to signal each other.
- It does that especially in areas of pleasure, just like heroin and cocaine.
- People also smoke for all the other reasons above, but nicotine is the prime mover.
- When you try to stop, your brain takes time to adjust back to normal. In the meantime, you feel like you are missing something; cravings set in and you feel compelled to take another puff.
Well, think about what the sellers of tobacco want—they hook kids and then have them until their product kills off their customers.
- They don’t mind—there are always more kids to hook.
- Would you want a drug dealer to come to your child’s playground, give him or her some cocaine or heroin made to look like candy, just to get them hooked, and then, when the addiction sets in, take advantage?
- Just because tobacco is legal, just because movie and television people, many themselves smokers, use their shows to push tobacco, none of that means they are any better than the drug dealers.
- Maybe if you get angry at being played and preyed upon it will help you defend against the addiction. You certainly have every right to feel that way.
The first step to stopping is passionately wanting to become a non-smoker again.
The next step is to deal with the changes smoking caused. Some don’t need to—their passion to stop is so great that nothing else matters, but many smokers find it too hard to go cold turkey.
That is what NRT is for—Nicotine Replacement Therapy.
- Nicotine is not a drug any doctor would ordinarily prescribe, but they do when it is a better choice.
- Which is better? Nicotine plus 7,000 poisons and smoke … or… nicotine alone? Obviously: Nicotine alone
- Even if you never got off nicotine, you would still be tremendously better off, but most smokers find that eventually they can get off the NRT as well.
- You can get nicotine any way you want it—as patches, lozenges to suck on, Nicorette gum to chew, Nicotrol gadgets to inhale and have the feel of a cigarette in your hand, nicotine to spray in your nose.
- The patches give ongoing baseline nicotine and the others can be taken for a ‘hit’ when needed.
- No way is right for all—each smoker will find the best one or combo that works for him or her.
- These are not inexpensive, but they are cheaper than smoking!
Some find medications helpful:
- Varenicline (Chantix)
- Bupropion (Zyban or Wellbutrin XL)
- These are by prescription only.
- They work for some, but not others, and can have side effects.
- You need to discuss with your doctor the pros and cons for you and what options may be right for you.
- Other methods help some people.
- Some work initially for about 25%, but are not as lasting, such as:
- These, if done correctly, are more lasting:
- Group sessions
- Personal counseling
- Relapse rates can be high if the smoker approaches it incorrectly:
- Very likely to fail: Stopping because you ought to (have to, should) give up smoking. Ought-to lasts five minutes, and who wants to give up anything?
- Very likely to succeed and stay smoke-free: Passionately wanting to become a non-smoker!
Smoking Cessation Resources
December 2011
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