Giving Up Smoking Pt.1 – A Major Non-Event

Giving up smoking is one of those things people are doing more and more often and one day I did it too. Once I’d stopped I did some research on the web to see what were considered the biggest barriers to parting company with those pleasing little white cylinders and I was informed that physical addition or dependence were the main issues.

Oddly enough, I didn’t find those to be my problem at all.

I was smoking an average of 50 cigarettes a day, and I had been smoking for about 40 years. According to a few unhappy doctors I’d met over the decades (including one gloomy guy who predicted that I’d die from emphysema by the age of 30) I was failing to destroy my lungs with this habit. Suffice it to say that a health concern was not why I stopped. One night I had just smoked the last cigarette in the packet and was about to trot off to the local tobacconist for a new carton when I paused and wondered if I really wanted to do that.

I have to make it clear right here that I liked smoking. I got great pleasure from it. I liked the taste and smell, the comforting sensation of warmth when I inhaled, I liked blowing the smoke out in clouds, I liked having a cigarette in my hand. So my pause was not occasioned by any dissatisfaction with smoking.

I had also successfully resisted the attempts of my family to coerce me into giving up. Their complaints that I was poisoning them fell on deaf ears. Some years earlier I’d done research on the claims of the ‘dangers of passive smoking’ or SHS (Second Hand Smoke) that were being and still are loudly bruited about and which represent the foundation of anti-smoking legislations across the planet. I found that this alarming and widespread ‘medical fact’ was not based on any scientific or medical fact at all. I learned that in fact the authority for this assertion was a badly conducted study that ignored findings to the contrary, and that no other study since had shown any relationship whatsoever between passive smoking and any illness or disease. Interestingly, many studies refute the argument. Here are some excellent links:

http://davehitt.com (article: Name Three)

A list of the ten most common lies about smoking at: http://www.smokersclubinc.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=518

Now, I am not saying that smoking is healthy because no matter what else is said about tobacco or nicotine they’re definitely not nutritional, and let’s face it the tobacco companies have, in their search for profits, also contributed chemical additives to their product, which additives are again not nutritional and therefore to some degree are toxic to the human body.

On the other hand, if you believe that the anti-smoking lobby is acting out of a compassionate and altruistic desire to save humanity from ill health you need a hefty shot of anti-naivety serum right now. Who or what composes the anti-smoking lobby? If I revealed that some of the most active members were the major pharmaceutical companies, would that give you a clue as to the integrity of the lobby (and prompt the question ‘Why?’)?

But back to my own personal saga. I gave up because I just decided to exert my self-determinism and not buy another carton. I went to bed without another cigarette and awoke the next morning without any inclination to smoke. I was waiting for the physical cravings to kick in but they didn’t. The rest of that day was smoke-free and the following morning I flew overseas for a conference. I didn’t smoke or even feel like smoking over the next week. When I returned home I didn’t even think about having a cigarette. It all seemed like a major non-event… but I was wrong.

Part II – The Ogre Rears It’s Head (And Its Name Wasn’t Nicotine Deprivation)