Dozens of paths to quitting smoking
By MARSHA ZEITZ June 10, 2010
Smokers often start young, many times when they are not yet out of their teens. What begins as a peer group pastime develops into a chemical dependence that can eventually come to dominate their lives.
“I was 15 when I started smoking. I smoked because I thought it would make me more manly and because everyone else I knew was smoking,” says Peter Merritt, 64, of Centerville.
Many longtime smokers continue to smoke because they think the damage is already done. Not so, says the American Cancer Society:
- Twenty minutes after quitting: Heart rate and blood pressure drop to more normal levels.
- Eight hours after quitting: Carbon monoxide level in blood drops to normal.
- Twenty-four hours after quitting: Chance of a heart attack decreases.
- Two weeks to three months after quitting: Circulation improves and lung function increases.
- One to nine months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
- One year after quitting: Excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.
- Five years after quitting: Stroke risk is reduced.
- Ten years after quitting: Lung cancer death rate is reduced dramatically. Cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix and pancreas decrease, too.
- Fifteen years after quitting: Risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a nonsmoker’s.
Strategies to help you quit, courtesy Mayo Clinic:
- Put it on paper. make a list of the reasons you want to quit. Read it when you want to pick up a cigarette.
- Enlist support from family, friends and co-workers.
- Contact a tobacco treatment specialist, a local smoking cessation program or telephone-based hot line.
- Stop smoking slowly. Build on each success. Then reward your successes. Treat yourself to something special.
- Avoid smoking triggers: situations and places that make you want to smoke.
- Try nicotine replacement therapy which includes patches, gum, nasal sprays, inhalers and lozenges.
- Investigate prescription medications with your physician such as Wellbutrin, Zyban and Chantix.
- Try to keep stress and anxiety under control. Prioritize your tasks. Take a break when you need it. Practice relaxation exercises such as deep breathing and meditation. Exercise.
- Take quitting one day at a time. Don’t worry about next week or next month. Keep trying if you relapse. Don’t give up.
For more information:
- American Lung Association, lungusa.org, 1-800-548-8252
- Nicotine Anonymous, nicotine-anonymous.org, 877-879-6422
- Massachusetts Quit Smoking Line, trytostop.org, 1-800-879-8678
- Seven Hills Behavioral Health Program, Judith Coykendall, 508-995-3026, ext 231
- Cape Stress Reduction & Optimal Health, Adam Liss, 508-420-3300
Smoking may start out innocently enough, but it can turn deadly. Next year alone, tobacco use will kill 6 million people worldwide from heart disease, cancer, emphysema and a range of other illnesses, and it will eventually kill 250 million of today’s teenagers and children. if there is any good news here, it is that the recent studies confirming the health risks associated with tobacco use have spurred a major effort by many health care professionals to curb nicotine abuse and to help people quit smoking.
Through the years, Merritt had made several unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking. “Smoking was dominating my life,” he says. “I went outside to smoke. I was chewing gum, cleaning my teeth, avoiding contact with nonsmokers because I knew there was a foul odor on my clothes and on me. My son and wife really wanted me to stop smoking. I wanted to stop, but I just couldn’t. Finally, on Oct. 2, 2004, I picked up a pack of cigarettes and decided I would be much happier and healthier without them. all the years I had tried to quit smoking contributed to that one moment. I was ready to quit, and I haven’t smoked since.”
Merritt’s story is not unusual. “The average is five to eight quit attempts to achieve success,” says Adam Liss, a tobacco treatment specialist with Cape Stress Reduction & Optimal Health in Marstons Mills. “Each time we try to quit, we learn more about what our personal obstacles are and have a better chance of succeeding in our next attempt. What is important is that we make the next quit attempt as quickly as possible.”
Although nicotine can cause a pleasant, relaxed feeling for smokers, it is not an innocuous drug.
“Nicotine is a drug found naturally in tobacco,” says the American Cancer Society. “It is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Over time a person becomes physically and emotionally addicted to (dependent upon) nicotine.”
Inhaled nicotine is carried deep into the lungs, where it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and carried throughout the body, adversely affecting the lungs, heart, brain, blood vessels and many other areas along its route. Smokers tend to increase the number of cigarettes they smoke as the nervous system adapts to nicotine. That, in turn, increases the amount of nicotine in
the smoker’s blood. after a while, a smoker develops a tolerance for the drug, reaches a nicotine level and keeps smoking to maintain that level. Once begun, smoking can be a difficult addiction to break.
When a smoker contemplates the idea of quitting, it often takes time or a profound life experience for them to accept that they really do want to stop.
“Quitting smoking was a long journey for me,” says Joyce Brennan, 40, Southcoast Hospitals Group spokeswoman and public information officer. “I had been smoking since I was 13. I had tried to quit several times throughout the years until, in 2001, I decided that I just didn’t want to be dependent on cigarettes anymore.”
“I took quitting day by day,” Brennan adds. “I didn’t pressure myself with long-term goals. I told myself that if I wanted a cigarette badly enough I could have one. I just couldn’t have two. In 2002, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. from that moment on, I never looked back. I was through with cigarettes.”
For Charlie Burke, 62, of North Dartmouth, a diagnosis of cancer in 1999 was the catalyst. “I had tried to quit smoking five or six times during the years, but I always relapsed. when I was diagnosed with cancer, I was so shaken I stopped smoking cold. But I had been leading up to that, and I couldn’t have done it without all the previous attempts to stop.”
Because it can be a challenge for smokers to successfully quit, many seek the support and guidance of smoking cessation programs.
Ron Lynds, 56, of North Falmouth began smoking at 15 and says he tried 10 to 12 times to quit but was not successful. “I am a firefighter. Smoking was such a powerful addiction for me that even seeing the people we transported to the hospital with respiratory problems didn’t deter me from smoking.
“Smoking was like a monkey on my back,” says Lynds. “My life revolved around it. Finally, in 2008, I decided to try quitting again and joined a cessation program. I had tried to quit by myself, but this time, with the support of the program and medications, I successfully stopped smoking.”
Treatment specialist Liss says, “It is absolutely essential that we understand that failure only occurs when we stop trying to quit. the people who succeed are those who try over and over again. we need to prove to ourselves that we want to quit smoking. And people need to stop feeling ashamed and blaming themselves for being addicted to nicotine.”
Cigarettes are often an integral part of smokers’ daily routines, part of the fabric of their lives.
“Stopping cigarettes means breaking your routine. That was the hardest part for me when I quit,” says Robin Alves, 49, of Freetown.
Liss emphasizes that smoking “is an addiction, a dual addiction. one part is the substance addiction. the other part is a behavioral addiction. Smokers have a muscle memory of putting a cigarette to their lips thousands, maybe millions, of times over the course of their smoking lives. most successful quit attempts consist of minimizing the nicotine withdrawal symptoms while getting used to the behavioral changes.”
There are a wide range of professional counseling services, self-help materials, medications and nicotine replacement therapies to help smokers prepare to quit.
Judith Coykendall at Partners for Clean Air, a Seven Hills Behavioral Health program in new Bedford, says that when smokers are ready to commit to the process of quitting, they pick a not-too-distant quit date and often seek professional counseling to help prepare for it. She suggests smokers begin to prepare by “reducing the number of cigarettes they smoke daily and increasing their daily exercise. Physical activity can become a substitute for smoking. Delaying the craving for a while is part of the process of weaning oneself away from cigarettes.”
When the urge to smoke is strong, Coykendall recommends “taking a pen or a coffee stirrer in your cigarette hand and fiddling with it, or taking a cinnamon stick, sucking a sugar-free lollipop or chewing sugar-free gum. Drinking lots of water will also help.”
Giving up smoking is not just about living a longer life. It’s about feeling better along the way.
“I can exercise longer, walk faster, climb stairs easier. I just feel a lot better since I stopped smoking,” says Alves, “and my clothes don’t smell like an ashtray anymore.”
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