Featured
Musings and Articles We Love
Do you have some articles from the old or even older Quitnet to share with everyone?
NICODEMON’S LIES Part Four
REPOST from ClearColors (Nancy) Date Unknown
This article helped me from WhyQuit.com… Some numbers may be off - outdated - but the info is spot on. Nancy
Nicodemon's Lies? (Continued) By John R. Polito, Nicotine Cessation Educator
Our Lie: Lots of smokers live until ripe old age.
The Truth: They are much rarer than you think. Look around. If you do find old nicotine smokers almost all are in poor health, or in advanced stages of smoking related diseases, many with oxygen. Laboring for every breath with lungs on their last leg, is that ripe enough for us?
Nicotine smokers tend to think only in terms of dying from lung cancer. Tobacco kills in many ways. For example, circulatory disease caused by smoking kills more smokers each year than lung cancer. How long would George Burns have lived to be, if he hadn't smoked cigars, 115, 125? What's wrong with dying healthy from natural causes!
Our Lie: I get bored. It helps pass the time.
The Truth: Tobacco does not control any clock on earth, but it does control you . For the pack a day nicotine smoker, it takes about 30 minutes before their blood serum nicotine level drops to the point where their mind sends them an "urge" of discomfort to remind you that it's time for a feeding. It doesn't matter where they are or what they're doing. Depending upon your daily nicotine requirements, the voice inside your head will let you know when it's time. All you're doing when bored is being alert to what lies ahead, so that you keep topping off your nicotine tank, before the next urge arrives.
Boredom is supposed to be a positive form of anxiety that motivates us to accomplish a task, that hopefully helps preserve life, not destroy it.
Our Lie: It's my choice and I choose to smoke!
The Truth: It's a lie and you know it! We lost all "choice" and the ability to simply walk away the day that nicotine feedings became mandatory. The only choices now are to either arrest our dependency, or to decide how early and often we'll feed it. As harsh as this sounds, nicotine dependency is a brain wanting disorder, a true mental illness. But, the ignorant nicotine addict still believes the "choice" myth pounded into their brain by an endless stream of highly effective tobacco company marketing.
All the pretty colored boxes, the displays, the sea of store ads, they make it seem like we can't wait to wake-up each day and run down to the store and try a new brand. Although a well set trap for gullible children and teens, who can't wait to become adults, it also makes quitting more challenging than need be.
The uneducated smoker likely associates smoking with reading the newspaper, coffee, travel, stress, other smokers, telephone calls, meals, celebrations, romance, or even as a necessary step, prior to walking into a store. The educated nicotine addict sees all nicotine fixes as either mandatory, or an early feeding, in order to avoid the onset and discomfort of chemical withdrawal.
We smoked after a meal because it was once again time for a nicotine feeding. We smoked before the meal because we didn't know how long eating would last, and it isn't polite to eat and smoke at the same time. If your regular feedings are spaced thirty minutes apart, at least every thirty minutes you're going to start sensing a growing want for more nicotine, regardless of the activity.
Our Lie: I'm only hurting me.
The Truth: Have you stopped for even one moment to reflect upon the financial, physical or emotional pain that your needless dying and death will bring your loved ones? Do we care that the deadly byproducts of our addiction have the potential to harm or kill family members, whose only crime was loving us?
According to the World Health Organization secondhand smoke contributes to causing lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis, colds, coughing, wheezing, worsening of asthma, middle ear disease, cardiovascular disease, and even neuro-behavioral impairment (especially in young children). It also found that maternal smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke during pregnancy is a major cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), reduced birth weight and decreased lung function.
How much does it cost to attempt to cure mouth, throat or lung cancer? $100,000? $200,000? $300,000?
What's the cost of a funeral today, and which loved one have you designated to pay the emotional price of making arrangements for your early departure? What about the loss to loved ones of our guidance, our help around the house, or any income we contribute? Where will they turn? A cure for cancer is coming soon. Between Europe and North America tobacco will kill over one million this year. How many of them thought that a cure was on the way? Sadly, it was false hope. As hopeless drug addicts they waited, and waited and waited. What type of lung cancer are you hoping they'll cure - squamous cell, oat cell, adenocarcinoma, or one of the less common forms of lung cancer?
Even if a cure is coming for all forms and types of cancer caused by tobacco (and there are many), what will be left of your lungs by the time it arrives? If you're gambling on "how" tobacco will kill you, don't forget to consider heart attacks, strokes, and emphysema. Which cure are you betting on?
Our Lie: I smoke lights and they're not as bad.
The Truth: Lights, ultra-lights and milds are often capable of delivering the same amount of tar and nicotine as regular brands, depending on how they're smoked. It's why use of those terms are being banned by governments. They do not reduce most health risks, including the risk of heart disease, or the risk of cancer. In fact, their smokers often take longer drags which means more tar and more nicotine than advertised. Others simply smoke a greater number of lights because they feel short changed.
Our Lie: It's my right to blow smoke!
The Truth: And it's the right of non-smokers and ex-smokers to be free from your smoke too. Social controls to protect the rights of non-smokers are now sweeping the globe. Can a dog's life-span be cut in half by a smoking master? Would you intentionally double the risk of heart attack or triple the risk of lung cancer for a spouse or family member? Why kill the innocent too? Are non-smokers, who get extremely upset at having to breathe side-stream smoke simply being obnoxious, or are they fighting to protect themselves and those they love from the known harms generated from burning a plant that contains 44 known cancer causing agents and releases 4,000+ chemical compounds when burned? Do you know a child, whose mother smoked while pregnant, who does not suffer from some form of impairment today? Look closely.
Our Lie: Quitting causes weight gain and it's just as dangerous.
The Truth: This intellectual denial pre-assumes a large weight gain and then makes an erroneous judgment regarding relative risks. Quitting does not increase our weight, eating does. Some assert that metabolic changes associated primarily with the heart not having to work as hard, could account for a pound or two, but as far as being " dangerous," you'd have to gain at least 75 additional pounds in order to equal the health risks associated with smoking one pack a day.
Keep in mind that your general health, physical abilities and lung capacity will all improve dramatically. If patient, you will soon regain the ability to build cardiovascular endurance, and experience up to a 30% increase in overall lung function, within 90 days. You'll be able to apply the same mental recovery tools needed to take control of your addiction, in shedding any extra pounds, just one pound at a time.
Remember, smoking was your cue that a meal had ended. Unless you develop a new healthy cue there may be fewer leftovers. Also keep in mind how easy it would be for a drug addict to use intentional weight gain to a ploy to sabotage recovery. Additionally, nicotine stimulated brain dopamine pathways, and so does food. Be careful not to use food as a destructive dopamine replacement crutch. If at all concerned, consider having a supply of fresh fruits and veggies cut up, handy, and ready to eat during the 2-3 weeks it takes the brain to restore natural dopamine pathway sensitivities.