The Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health. Quit Smoking!
The Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health. Quit Smoking!
Knowledge Does Not Require Action. Kick the Habit or Kick the Bucket?
5,000 people in the US quit smoking in the US a day. 1,000 people every single day die from cigarette smoking related disease. Tobacco’s association with cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and chronic lung disease account for over half of the deaths in the Us annually
What Can You Expect When You Quit?
Money in your pocket. Days added to your life Decrease medical cost/insurance cost Strengthened character Influence for good on others
Step 1 How Are Your Self Denial Muscles?
Are you able to park your car at the end of the parking lot at the mall and then walk to the mall’s entrance? How about on a rainy day? Are you able to have supper without meat? Are you able to pack a lunch for work instead of buying it at a fast food place? Are you able to keep away from other smokers for one week? Only a baby gets to relieve itself whenever it feels like it. Adults know how to delay gratification. Start practicing small denials.
Addiction temporarily gets your mind off your pain, anger, loneliness, sadness. Maybe you had unmet childhood needs like an absent father or an abusive mother. Sometimes life is painful. It’s supposed to be that way. All of us are faced with grief, loss, and struggle. Stay with your pain, don’t avoid the painful feelings and don’t numb them out with addiction. When you’re ready you can take a step to solve the problem. And it’s with struggle that we define and strengthen our character.
Addiction is half mental (Cigarettes give pleasure.), half physical (Give me a cigarette now!) A big part of the mental picture is created by cigarette companies who spend billions to keep their unwitting customers buying their lethal wares. For example the beautiful scenes in magazines, the glamour, macho, and even athletic suggestions to the subconscious mind are not what the end results of cigarette smoking prove to be. The end result is oxygen masks, intravenous medication and literally hours of pain, misery, and gasping for breath. Smoking does not make one glamorous, macho, or athletic. It does make one sick, poor, and dead. The use of hard drugs begins first with alcohol or tobacco.
Admit you have an addiction. Get out of denial. Knowledge does not require action. You don’t need to pretend that smoking isn’t enjoyable – it is enjoyable to watch the smoke curl as it comes out of your mouth. The tobacco companies with their mammoth advertising budget have promoted the idea that smoking is a matter of personal choice. Ask yourself: “Am I addicted to tobacco?” “Am I truly making a freely made choice when I smoke?” You might consider that you need to have a cigarette. Nicotine addiction is as hard to break as heroin or cocaine.
It might make you mad about all the unreliable scientific studies and we need to be careful about accepting evidence uncritically. Those reports which are supported by a government agency, a scientific journal, or scientists known to be reputable are generally reliable. Reports in newspapers and popular magazines seldom discriminate between good and bad results, laymen easily exaggerate the reliability and significance of what they read.
Start saving old magazines and stuffed animals. The reason for saving these materials will be discussed later.
When you’re ready to admit that you have an addiction you may have the desire to quit. You need to find your reason. Maybe you want to be a better example to your children, maybe you want better health, maybe you want to participate in sports, maybe you have watched a loved one die from a smoke related disease. But if you don’t quit and “grieve now” this great friend of yours (the cigarette) will probably turn on you and kill you one day. It’s statiscally equivalent to playing Russian roulette with two bullets in the gun. Functional compromise begins to be evidenced by such benign signs as chronic cough, hoarseness, wrinkling, and lowered immunity.
Faith starts with desire. Faith moves people to action. It takes faith to say I can do it. I can quit. I am willing to do the work. I say you can do it with a plan.
Step 2. Make a Written Plan Make it a Reality
Quit date on the calendar (if you wait for everything to be perfect you will never quit) Christmas, New Year, and birthday parties are harder to quit. Need to go shopping (cinnamon gum, cinnamon sticks, straws, mint tea, mint candy) Hide the alcohol, sugar and coffee the first week. Change your routine (take a different road to work, make your bed in the morning, make homemade juice, go on a vegetarian diet for 1 week etc) Write a daily journal, blog (write me a comment) Decide on medication plan (See your doctor) Decide on support system (You are not alone) Rewards at each milestone (1 week, 1 month, 3 months,
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