This section of Web Remedies is designed to provide you with motivating information. If you are still not sure whether or not you want to stop, the following section should help you make your mind up. If you have made up your mind to stop, the following information should provide you with all the ammunition you need to set off on your journey.

At least 1200 different toxic chemicals have been identified as products of tobacco smoke. Smoke is a mixture of hot air and gases that suspend small particles called tars in cigarette smoke which the smoker breathes in. Many of the particles contain carcinogens, substances which are known to cause cancer. One such chemical, benzopyrene, is among the most potent carcinogens known. Also contained in the particulate matter are chemicals called phenols, which are thought to speed up or activate dormant cancer cells.¹

Because the effects of this poison are not experienced immediately it is easy to forget that tobacco is a killer. In the United States approximately 390,000 premature deaths per year are related to the use of tobacco. "Smoking was identified as the source of 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, 82 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease fatalities, 40 percent of chronic heart disease deaths in individuals under 65 years of age, and a substantial number of other chronic diseases and deaths."² In Australia, smoking is estimated to have caused 18,920 deaths in 1992.³

Smokers frequently hear and see these kinds of facts but denial is a mighty powerful defence. Most smokers have little difficulty dismissing the enormous amount of evidence that smoking is likely to kill them.

In fact, if it wasn't for denial, most people would not be able to smoke. Imagine being able to say to yourself, "I know that this cigarette, the one that I'm about to put in my mouth, is going to give me lung cancer and as a consequence I am going to die a slow, costly, painful, and premature death which is going to cause everyone who cares about me an enormous amount of pain." If you actually believed this, could you light that cigarette?

In order to continue smoking, smokers need to believe that this cigarette isn't the dangerous one.

As an exercise in over-coming this denial, you may wish to contemplate for a few seconds what it would be like to become one of the statistics. Imagine for a moment being told that you had terminal lung cancer? Imagine sitting in the car outside the doctor's office after having received the information. How would you feel? What would you think? It doesn't have to be this way.

One of the ironies of our society is that our two most dangerous drugs, tobacco and alcohol, are legal. In 1992 in Australia, of the number of deaths caused by drugs, tobacco counted for 82% of the deaths, alcohol 16% and other drugs 2%.

The fact that our most dangerous drug is legal is an accident of history. By the time that the harmful effects of tobacco were discovered, tobacco was well established in our society. Had tobacco been discovered today, there is no doubt that it would be an illegal substance.

Although, Tobacco has been used by various cultures for many centuries, it has only been a major problem this century. The manufacture of the cigarette as we know it today only occurred in the late 19th Century. The advent of the cigarette, this handy nicotine carrier, caused a massive increase in tobacco users. At the end of last century only 1% of Americans smoked, by 1950, 50% of the adult population smoked. And as the number of smokers went up so did the incidence of lung cancer. "Over 50 years, lung cancer had gone from a rare disorder to a raging epidemic ... from a handful of deaths at the turn of the century, to more than 18,000 per year in 1950 .... to over 11,000 per year in the following two decades."⁵

It was only by the late 1950s and early 1960s that there was sufficient evidence to show that smoking was a cause of disease and death.⁶ By this time smoking was well established as an acceptable form of drug taking and was being manufactured by large and powerful companies.

Until 1997, the Tobacco Industry has successfully muddied the waters about how addictive tobacco is and the health risks involved. It took almost 50 years for the tobacco industry to acknowledge that tobacco was both harmful and addictive.

In his book, Smoke Screen, Philip Hilts describes the Tobacco Industry's behaviour since 1953.⁷ It's a very readable, shocking tale. It's hard to imagine how anyone could read this book from cover to cover and still be prepared to give money to a tobacco company.

In the book, Hilts describes how in 1953, key stake-holders of the tobacco industry met to form the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, with the aim of spending "large amounts of money every year indefinitely into the future to prevent, not sworn adversaries, but scientists and public health officers, from warning people of a potential hazard in the normal manner. There is no case like it in the annals of business or health."⁸

Over the next 40 years enormous amounts of money were spent in attempts to muddy the waters about the message that went out to people about the harmful effects of tobacco. This strategy was remarkably effective. It was only very recently, in March 1997, that the Liggett group who make Chesterfield, finally acknowledged that cigarettes cause cancer, are addictive and that companies specifically market them to children. It is an indication of just how successful the Tobacco Industries strategy has been, that despite all the evidence, it managed to hold off until 1997 before acknowledging the obvious.

Their strategy didn't stop the amount of evidence that was piling up with regard to the harmful effects of smoking which inevitably would have to be acknowledged some day, but it was able to confuse the issues in the minds of all those who had an investment in being confused, from smokers, to governments, to the tobacco dealers themselves.

Instead of being treated as a poison and as a drug of addiction, politically and legally, tobacco has had special status.

Perhaps the most frightening expose in the book is Hilts' argument that Tobacco Company's must target children. According to Hilts, 90% of people who start smoking after 21 soon stop smoking. It takes over a year to become addicted to nicotine and most adults are not interested in persevering with something that makes them cough and feel bad. For a tobacco addiction to be established, the initial reinforcers need to be something other than the nicotine. For Teenagers, smoking presents them with a number of other reinforcers, such as appearing "cool", rebellious, and grown-up. In the teenage years children struggle to establish an image of themselves and are very vulnerable to peer pressure. "A boy is eight times more likely to smoke if his best friend does, and a girl is six times as likely if her best friend does."⁹ Smoking looks real cool.

Apparently a typical history of a smoker is as follows: "The young smoker experiments early with a few puffs or a few cigarettes very early between ages 5 and 13, then moves on to smoke a few cigarettes daily in the next stage, between 14 and 17. The habit reaches the full usual addiction by 18 to 21 years old, at a little more than a pack a day - the average lifetime level."¹⁰ Hilts shows that, despite frequent denials, many companies have done extensive research on teenagers in order to target their advertising directly at the group. It is essential to attract teenagers, otherwise the whole industry will collapse.

Like opiates, nicotine has special receptors in the brain and muscle tissues through which it acts. "When the receptors detect the presence of nicotine a wide range of physical reactions take place. Changes occur in heart rate, skin temperature drops, the blood pressure rises and peripheral blood circulation slows. Brain waves are altered, a number of endocrine and metabolic effects are triggered, and skeletal muscle relaxation takes place."¹¹

One of the particularly attractive aspects of smoking is that it has biphasic effects, ie. it can make you more alert or make you more relaxed depending on your circumstances.

However, what every addicted smoker knows, is that smoking stops working for you. The 'pleasure' that most cigarettes give, once you've become addicted, is merely that they stop you from going into withdrawals. They provide a negative reinforcement. In fact most smokers do not even enjoy smoking any more. It is one of the tragic facts about any addiction. Once you have become addicted, you continue to use that drug, not because you enjoy the drug, but because when you stop you get uncomfortable, ie., you go into withdrawals and your body cries out for more. In other words what you "enjoy" about the drug is the relief of the pain that the drug is in fact causing. You are using a drug that is costing you a fortune and killing you, not because you enjoy using that drug but because of the way you feel when you stop using that drug.

This negative reinforcement is, however, very powerful. Consider what it means. You experience suffering not when you use the drug but when you stop using the drug. And when you have that next cigarette it takes away that suffering. You are giving yourself a powerful psychological message that the cigarette takes away pain. Intellectually you know that this is not the case. You know that the cigarettes are actually causing the pain, but this is not what you experience. And this is the basis of your ambivalence. Even after you have completed the physical withdrawals from nicotine you still live with the memory that cigarettes take away pain. You can extinguish this memory but it takes time. Every time you don't feed a craving with a cigarette you are retraining yourself, but it takes time for this re-programming to occur.

One other reason that a number of people smoke is that nicotine increases metabolism and has an effect on body weight which many smokers find attractive. However even this effect cannot be counted on. Heavy smokers who smoke more than 40 cigarettes a day are more likely to be moderately or severely overweight than are non-smokers or light-smokers.¹²

-Smokers tend to gain an average of 2.3kg following cessation. If you are careful you don't have to put on weight when you stop smoking. And even if you do put on some weight in the process of giving up smoking, because you find that feeding a craving with food relieves the tension, after you have successfully dealt with your tobacco addiction, say in 12 months time, you won't need to feed cravings any more, and you will be physically much healthier and therefore better able to exercise and get your body back in shape. You can end up a trim, non-smoker, which beats a fat smoker any day.

(Unless otherwise indicated, information for this section is from Winstanley et. al).

One argument that has been used by tobacco companies, is that a causal relationship between smoking and diseases cannot be directly tested in a laboratory setting. Exposing human subjects to cancer in order to establish causality would clearly not be acceptable. However, there are many other ways of establishing causality with a very high degree of scientific probability. Over 57 000 reports have studied the connection between tobacco smoking and disease. In 1964 the U.S. Surgeon General's report declared clearly and officially, that smoking causes cancer and other diseases.

There is an abundance of information about the harmful effects of smoking available. Here, is a quick list of all the diseases which can result from smoking, or are implicated in smoking. These include:

• lung cancer,
• cardiovascular disease,
• coronary heart disease,
• heart attacks,
• strokes,
• atherosclerotic peripheral vascular disease (which may lead to having to have limbs amputated),
• aortic aneurisms,
• chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (these are those diseases which cause difficulty in breathing and severely disable people effected, to say nothing of the yucky sputum that gets coughed up!),
• cancers of the oral cavity, oesophagus and larynx (some people end up with permanent a tracheostomy - a hole in their throat from which they are able to breath talk),
• cancer of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, stomach, uterine cervix and vulvar,
• cancer of the penis,
• cancer of the anus,
• cancers of the blood,
• malignant hypertension,
• crohns's disease, and Graves ophthamopathy (causing protruding eyes), cataracts,
• facial wrinkles, and grey, gaunt and leathery skin, snoring,
• painful and irregular menstrual periods,
• earlier menopause,
• spontaneous abortions,
• ectopic pregnancies, and foetal and infant deaths and impairment of behavioural, intellectual and physical characteristics of infants (the baby smokes when you do!).

The people who got these diseases didn't think it would happen to them either.

What is particular to tobacco as a drug, is that almost all of the people who smoke tobacco become addicted to it. This is not the case with other drugs. Only a small proportion of people who drink alcohol, smoke cannabis, take pills, become addicted. It is also possible that only a small number of people who use cocaine or heroin become addicted. It is not established how many people are able to use these drugs and not become addicted but there are some suggestions that a large number of people are able to use these drugs without becoming addicted.

Although tobacco smoking is highly addictive, there are levels of addiction. Smokers who smoke first thing after waking up are highly dependent. Smokers who wake during the night to have a cigarette are even more highly dependent. This group of people may find giving up tobacco more difficult and may be well advised to use a nicotine substitute to assist them.

A number of factors make tobacco so addictive and so hard to give up, including: (1) the immediate gratification produced by the first puff, (2) the generally long delay in the onset of harmful physical consequences, and (3) the easy availability of tobacco.¹³

According to Winstanley et. al., 80% of Australian smokers have made attempts to quit. However, "only about one in ten quit attempts result in success."¹⁴ The problem is not stopping, or wanting to stop, the problem is staying stopped.

According to studies¹⁵ on smokers who stop and then start again, 40% start smoking again in the first three days. So if you make it to day four, you're already way ahead. A further 34% of those people who stopped, start again within two weeks. Stay stopped for two weeks and your chances of staying stopped have risen enormously. Commit to working this program for 3 weeks and you will be in the top 20 percent. (Didn't you always know you were brilliant!)

As seen above, only about 10% of people successfully stop smoking and yet about 80% are either trying to stop or at least have tried to stop. This indicates that there are a lot of people in the process of stopping. People who stop and then start again. If this has happened to you, you're in good company. According to the Nicotine Replacement Therapy Association, "Data on the natural history of smoking cessation drawn from large national surveys in Australia and the USA show that the process of cessation is most instructively viewed not as a simple dichotomy (smoking/non-smoking) but as a continuum typically characterised by repeated attempts at quitting, relapse and, for many, eventual lasting success."¹⁶

The important thing is to get back on the wagon again. Learn by your mistakes, and beat this thing.

The physical withdrawals from tobacco occur in the first three or four days. This is the time when your body has a tantrum. It wants a cigarette and it wants it now! While most people only have mild withdrawal symptoms, this period is also often coupled with intense cravings and is therefore the most difficult to get through in terms of intensity. When the withdrawals are over, though, the intensity of the problem will suddenly lift and it is likely that you will feel much better. You will have broken the physical addiction, a major achievement. What remains ahead of you is breaking the habit you have formed and learning to deal with life without having a cigarette. However daunting that may seem, it will never be as intense as these first few days.

Withdrawal symptoms can start an hour after the last cigarette and include:

• Cravings
• Irritability
• Anxiety
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Restlessness
• Headaches
• Drowsiness
• Gastrointestinal disturbance

One of the most exciting breakthroughs in the treatment of tobacco addiction was the finding that nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco, can be used to help people stop smoking. Perhaps even more exciting is that Nicotine Replacement Therapy (gum or patches) is most effective on people most heavily addicted to nicotine.

The way NRT works is that you break the habits you have formed around smoking before you give up the drug making it considerably easier to give up the drug in the end. You therefore learn to go to parties, drink coffee, and feel various emotions etc., without physically reaching for a cigarette. One of the reasons that it is so easy to give up NRT in the end is that NRT has been stopping you from going into withdrawals but it has not been providing you with the pleasures of smoking that you got from a cigarette. Most particularly, NRT doesnt give you the pleasure of that sudden high you got when you have a smoke when you nicotine levels have dropped. NRT keeps your blood levels of nicotine at a fairly even level. You dont go into withdrawals, you dont get that anxiety that can be so difficult to deal with but you do break the habit and stop being reinforced for smoking. In the end the withdrawals from nicotine may be scarcely noticeable.

Several studies have demonstrated that the chances of succeeding in your efforts to stop smoking are more than doubled. According to the Nicotine Replacement Therapy Association, "the benefit is two or three fold from using NRT"¹⁷. Combining this program with NRT should render you bullet proof. This program can help you break the habits, and NRT can help you over the physical addiction.

There is not enough evidence to demonstrate whether the gum or the patch is more effective. Although, using both the gum and patches is more effective than just using the patches. And, in smokers with a high dependence the 4mg gum is more effective than the 2mg gum. Many smokers don't like the taste of the gum and therefore prefer the patches.

You are particularly advised to consider using NRT if you fall into either of the following categories:

• If you are a person with a heavy addiction to tobacco, ie. you smoke first thing in the morning or you awake during the night to have a cigarette;
• If you have significant problems dealing with depression, anxiety or anger

While there can be little harm in getting either hypnosis or acupuncture to help you stay stopped, there is currently not enough information to be able to say whether or not either hypnosis or acupuncture are effective in helping people quit smoking.¹⁸

Meditation can be very useful in over-coming an addiction, both because it can help in keeping people grounded and therefore more in touch with their goals, and because it can help in mood management.

The major difficulty with using meditation to assist giving up smoking is that many people find it difficult to concentrate when they first stop smoking. For this reason, the following simple meditations may be of value.

Firstly, set an alarm clock for ten minutes (when you have become comfortable with ten minutes you can increase the time to 15 minutes and later to 20 minutes which would seem an optimum time to do these exercises). Now choose one of these two meditations.

The first involves breath counting. Sit or lie somewhere where you feel comfortable. Now simply count silently each time you breathe out, up to four, and then start again. If other thoughts come in, as they will, simply bring yourself back to focus on the counting. The aim is to focus entirely on the counting and think of nothing else. If you haven't tried meditation before, you may be surprised at how difficult it is to shut your head up!

The second method involves mantras. The mantra you choose can be either meaningful or meaningless depending on what makes you feel comfortable. Here are some suggestions: Hare Krishna, Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy), Love one another, Help me, Heave-ho, Ulla-dulla, I can do it, God is good, or whatever! Sit somewhere comfortably, and start chanting the phrase. It is preferable to do this aloud but not too loudly. Keep trying to chant and nothing else. Whenever you find yourself wondering off, bring yourself back to focussing on the chant.

When the time has expired after either of these exercises, you may find it useful to sit for a few minutes, with your eyes shut, making every effort to think of absolutely nothing. And then open your eyes, take a few deep breaths and you'll probably be amazed at how much better you feel, and much readier you feel to deal with life's trials and tribulations.

For meditation to be effective it needs to be done regularly. Like physical exercise, exercising the mind needs to be part of a regular program.

There is evidence that clonidine is effective in helping people stay stopped but the adverse effects of the medication may make its use inadvisable.¹⁹ See your doctor if you are interested in using Clonidine to help you manage the withdrawals from nicotine.

Giving up nicotine is a combination of:

a) withdrawing from the drug,
b) breaking habits,
c) and forgetting.

Giving up nicotine is largely a function of time. The time it takes to break the habits you have formed around smoking, and the time it takes to forget what it was that you used to like so much about it. Generally, as each day goes by the hold nicotine used to have over you gets weaker and weaker until such time as you won't be able to remember what all the fuss was about. In periods of abnormal stress, or when suddenly faced with a situation which you used to associate with smoking, a craving may suddenly get strong again, but once the situation has passed, the frequency and intensity of cravings will return to that more in line with the time that has passed since your last cigarette.

Withdrawing from nicotine is the first part of quitting smoking. Usually this first stage of over-coming an nicotine addiction lasts about four days. It can be a pretty awful four days but after that, it is over. Your physical addiction to nicotine is over.

Breaking habits is the next part of the journey. You will have formed all sorts of habits around smoking. For example you may not be able to remember when you last had a cup of coffee without a cigarette. If you start having coffee without a smoke it is likely that initially you will feel on edge, not enjoy your coffee very much, and have cravings. It may feel as if you have to force yourself to have a cup of coffee. Keep drinking coffee without having a smoke and within about a week or so, you will find that you have a cuppa without even thinking about smoking. What has happened is that you have retrained your nervous system, breaking the association between coffee and cigarettes.

Habits are not only associated with external stimuli. It is likely that you have also associated all sorts of different emotions with smoking. These stimuli can also elicit cravings. For example, if you have associated anxiety with smoking, every time you become anxious you may have the added disadvantage of also triggering a craving. At times like this it can feel that you absolutely have to have a smoke. This is not the case, the craving will pass, you will retrain your nervous system and eventually you will be able to experience the full range of emotions without associating the feeling with a desire to smoke.

Breaking habits involves not responding to the stimulus with a smoke. Each time you fail to respond with a drink you are rewiring your body with different information until such time as the stimuli that used to elicit cravings fails to trigger cravings.

The length of time it takes to break habits varies according to strength of the habit and to the frequency with which the stimulus is denied the conditioned response, ie. nicotine. Consider the following two examples: If for five years, you have been in the habit of going out with a smoking buddy every Friday night, it will take a long time for Friday night to come around and for you not to even think about smoking. However, you may have been smoking every time you have a coffee for an even longer period and yet this habit is likely to extinguish faster than the Friday night habit because, as you continue to drink coffee every day, you will be confronting the old learning more often and therefore might surprise yourself to find that after 4 or 5 days you've had a coffee without even thinking about smoking. On the other hand, the habit you have formed around that particular friend of yours that you only see once a week may be harder to extinguish because you are not confronting it as often. Furthermore this habit may have a number of other habits associated with it. For example, you may usually have some social anxiety when you are with this person, and therefore have two stimulii demanding a smoke. You may also be used to drinking in certain environments, eg. a pub where most of the people smoke, and therefore have a whole heap of other stimulii also associated with this friend and smoking. As you can see this friend is someone you may decide to avoid for a while. Or you could decide to only meet that friend in situations that do not involve smoking eg. going to the gym. Even then, you need to be super aware when you are around this person and also have back up supports, eg. an escape excuse, and limited time with the person.

Be warned though. Habits are very rapidly relearned. If after 2 weeks of having coffee without a smoke, you then have a smoke with your coffee, it will feel like you have to start all over again in breaking that association.

Just remember, breaking the habit is about failing to respond to the trigger with a smoke. If you don't feed cravings they do go away. However, if you do give in and have a smoke the association between that trigger and nicotine will have become even more entrenched.

The final part of your journey is forgetting. While most habits are broken within a month, and only the stubborn ones persist after 6 months, forgetting takes much longer. You have a memory imprinted in your brain that nicotine gives you that fabulous buzz, that sudden rush that feels sooo good. It is probably a long time since nicotine actually made you feel that good. Nowadays it probably only helps you stave of the withdrawals, but this memory deceives you into believing that nicotine will still do what it used to do, for you. It is likely that this memory will remain with you all your life. What happens is not that you will actually forget what nicotine used to do for you , it is more likely that you will build competing memories that, over time, force the memory of what nicotine used to do back into the background. One competing memory that you need to actively keep with you is how much your smoking cost you, both in terms of money and fitness. It's not that you need to walk around all day in pain, just that you actively retain the memory of what nicotine cost you. One way of doing this is to write down what your smoking cost you and then get something that symbolises that cost, it can either symbolise a specific incident or the general cost, and keep it with you always. A 'photo of someone, a ring, or a letter will do. Hang on to the why you want to stop smoking.

Other competing memories that you build over time are the happy times you have when you are not smoking. Right now, it may seem that being happy and not smoking are inconceivable. However, as each occasion happens where you are happy and not smoking, you begin to confront that belief until such a time when you won't be able to believe how insane you were to believe that your happiness was dependent on smoking, when in reality, the opposite was true, your unhappiness has been caused by smoking..

One of the reasons you have been smoking is the effect that nicotine has on masking anxiety and making you feel more relaxed and less depressed. Consequently, when you stop smoking you may have trouble with depression, anxiety and/or anger. In this section some options are presented for managing these emotions.

Nicotine is a powerful anti-depressant. You may find that you become depressed when you give up smoking. In this case you would be well advised to use Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT). Nicorette will stop you from going into withdrawals and prevent depression. Remember that NRT works best for people who were heavily dependent on nicotine. Therefore if you were heavily dependent on nicotine, and you become depressed give nicorette a go, it might make all the difference. If you remain depressed consult your G.P. who may consider alternative medication.

An important tool when managing anxiety or anger is to understand that these feelings will pass. When you are feeling very anxious or angry, it can feel that these uncomfortable feelings are base emotions that you will have to endure forever if you don't have a cigarette. This is not the case at all. In fact, cigarettes are probably the root cause of the intensity of this problem. The intensity with which you feel these emotions is likely to be linked directly to the effects of giving up cigarettes. The physical withdrawal symptoms of nicotine include anxiety. In other words, the nicotine causes the anxiety you are smoking to alleviate! For a while, if you experience anxiety and don't have a cigarette, the anxiety will be experienced as more intense. And, the same can be said for other negative emotions that you have learned to associate with smoking. For example, you may have come to associate anger with smoking and therefore if you don't smoke when you are angry you may experience the feeling more intensely. It is important to understand that these feelings do pass. The intensity with which you may experience these feelings are part of the process of giving up cigarettes and will end if you do not have a cigarette. If, on the other hand, you feed the anxiety or anger with a cigarette, what you have done is strengthen that association and made it harder for yourself.

A very simple technique to deal with these emotions is deep breathing. Take ten very deep breaths before you do or say anything and you may find that the feelings start to abate.

In the first few months of quitting smoking, try to avoid stressful people and situations. Remember, you are doing something very difficult, something for yourself, but also something for everyone who cares about you. So, by taking care of yourself, even if at times it looks as if you are being selfish or foolish, you are in fact decreasing the chances of relapsing and ultimately increasing the chances of building your self esteem and self respect by proving to be a person in charge of your life.

A funny thing about humans and feelings, is that talking about the feeling has the effect of releasing the pressure. In our society we have a tendency to be strong, to try and do life without letting people see our fears. The effects of being strong include isolation, anger, fear of cracking, self righteousness, stress, tension, bitterness and loneliness. The irony is that it is a strength to be vulnerable. It is difficult to talk honestly about what you are feeling, especially in the beginning, but the effects are fabulous, you become part of the human race, you stop having to pretend all the time, you give permission to other people to be honest with you, and your relationships become deeper, and you become able to give and receive love. Talking about your feelings isn't about being sorry for yourself, or ending up a boring, self centred person, and talking about your feelings isn't about expecting people to rescue you, talking about your feelings is just about being honest about what's going on for you and by doing that you will decrease the intensity of anger and/or anxiety, and increase your chances of staying stopped.

Watch out for negative thoughts. Anxiety and/or anger is often preceded by negative thoughts. If you allow yourself to believe dreadful things about yourself, you are going to feel pretty bad and that's going to make it hard to keep faith in your ability to succeed. If this is a particular problem for you, if you have a really low self esteem and are in the habit of putting yourself down, you may consider getting counselling. This way you can kill two birds with one stone - quit smoking and fix that destructive thinking. Transactional Analysis, or Cognitive Restructuring are two of many useful therapies for dealing with this problem.

And, finally, remember that feelings are not real things. In our society we seem to have got pretty muddled about the power of feelings. If somebody does something wrong, we often hear the excuse, well he was feeling bad. Feelings are motivators, they may make us want to do something, but they can't make us do anything. This is an important distinction that every successful person knows. A successful person does not say, I'm feeling bad so I'll miss that very important appointment. A successful person does what they have to do regardless of what they are feeling. A successful person may repress their feelings, in which case, they may end up successful and bitter and twisted. Or a successful person may learn to express their feelings in appropriate ways, but not allow their feelings to determine their life, in which case they end up successful and healthy. By giving up cigarettes, you may end up feeling angry and/or anxious. If you give in to these feelings and have a cigarette, you will feel worse about yourself. If, on the other hand, you deal effectively with the anxiety and/or anger, and the feeling passes without having been fed a cigarette, at the end of the day, you will have achieved something very important for yourself.

Within the first few hours, nicotine and carbon monoxide leave the body. After about two days, nicotine by-products have gone. "Within a month the blood pressure returns to a normal level, and lung function has improved. After around three months, the lungs may have regained the capacity to clean themselves properly, depending on whether irreparable lung damage has occurred, and blood flow to the limbs will have improved."²¹

According to the 1990 Report of the US Surgeon General, there are major and immediate health benefits for men and women of all ages who stop smoking, and these benefits apply to persons with and without smoking related disease.

Regardless of age, life expectancy goes up, and the risk of lung cancer comes down if quitting takes place prior to the development of cancer or other serious disease.

Your bank balance increases, you stop financing the Tobacco Industry, and you get to breathe easy.

1. Girdano, D., and Girdano D., Drug Education, Content and MethoDNS, Addison and Wesley Publishing Company, 1976, U.S.A. p.137.
2. Rabin, L, and Sugarman, S., (ed) Smoking Policy: Law, Politics, & Culture, Oxford University Press, 1993, U.S.A., p. 3.
3. Winstanley, M., Woodward, S., Waker N., Tobacco in Australia: Facts and Issues. 1995, Australia, p.1
4. Ibid., p.188.
5. Hilts, P., Smokeskreen, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1996., U.S.A., p. 3.
6. Winstanley et al., op.cit., p. 2.
7. Hilts, op.cit.,
8. Hilts, op.cit., p. 7.
9. Ibid., p. 77.
10. Ibid., p.76
11. Winstanley et al., op. cit., p.186.
12. Ibid., p. 186.
13. Cox T., Jacobs, M., LeBlanc, A., Marshman, J., and revised by Jacobs, M., and Fehr, K. Drugs and Drug Abuse, A reference Text. Addiction Research Foundations, 1987, Canada, p.425
14. Winstanley et al., op. cit., p. 192.
15. Ibid., p. 196.
16. Nicotine Replacement Therapy Association, Nicotine Replacement Therapy: The Evidence. Fast Books, Australia, 1996, p.14.
17. Ibid., p. 9.
18. Ibid., p. 21.
19. Ibid., p.22.
20. Cox et al., op.cit., p. 424.
21. Winstanley et al., op.cit., p.204