SMOKING

WHY DO YOU SMOKE?

Why do people smoke? Because others were doing it and so they got started—
and later couldn't stop. And that's about it.

Years ago a friend told me that he started smoking because a girl on a date
dared him to do it. A man who wishes he had never started, said that he got
started so he could prove to himself he was "a man." Since then he has
decided that the real men never start. They are the ones who have the
courage to say No to social pressure.

"I had a girl friend who always asked me for a smoke," one man said, "so I
began carrying them around with me, so I would have one when she asked.
Then I started for no particular reason. Now I can't stop."

"My parents did it, so I thought I should too," is the comment of another.

When asked whether he got a lift out of smok­ing, one person replied, "No, the
only effect I notice from smoking is that it makes me want more cigar­ettes. It is
a vicious cycle; something like a drug. I get so I don't know when I light up
another one."

Another comment: "I started smoking to be like other people, but it grew on me
and now I can't seem to taper off."

Someone else says, "Oh, I smoke because it's good for my nerves." If someone
stuck a gun in your back, or if a bull began chasing you across a field, you
would be quite nervous. If you lit up a cigarette just then it would calm you
down—for about one-and-a-half minutes, to be exact. But after that, for about
twenty minutes, you would be more nervous than a man who never smokes.

Actually, if you only took a smoke when a real crisis occurred—you would rarely
take a smoke. The truth is that you smoke not to meet the problems of life, —
but because the cigarette you finished smoking awhile back left you nervous
for another one.

What has happened is that you have let yourself get into a habit. Your body
has come to expect feeling its depressant, "soothing" effect every so often.
And if the nicotine flow down your throat does not begin again soon enough,
you become even more edgy and nervous till you get it.

It's not that you enjoy it. Who enjoys smoking rope and breathing in hot air?
Yet it's not that you are really unhappy with life. The truth is that using nicotine
is a way of life all its own. But before long, the tobacco user begins excusing
the addiction by telling himself that he needs it to meet the "nervous
situations" he meets every day.

But nervous crises every fifteen to thirty min­utes? If you smoke a pack-and-a-
half a day, you smoke one cigarette every thirty-two minutes, on the average
(assuming you sleep eight hours a night). If you are a two-pack smoker, it's one
cigarette every twenty-four minutes. That many crises do not arise every day!
And you don't need that much assurance that you are now grown-up or
sophisticated. And you don't need that many "pleasures" to make life more
bearable.

You smoke because you have become addicted to it. And you can only stop the
addiction by stop­ping the smoking.

Well, then, why not just "taper off"—lessen the amount smoked each day—until
you finally stop en­tirely? Some people do begin smoking less, and this is
always good. But lessening your smoking will not result in stopping your
smoking.

There is one other reason why people keep smoking: They do it in order to
continue the habit of fingering the cigarette pack, lighting the match, and
holding the cigarette. A study by three staff mem­bers of the Department of
Pharmacology of the Medical College of Virginia, in Richmond, made an
interesting study. As published in "Science," for July 27, 1945, it told about
twenty-four habitual smokers who underwent the test. First, each continued to
smoke for a month, while keeping a careful record of exactly how many he
smoked each day. Then for the next month, they were all given special
cigarettes. Un­known to them, some of these cigarettes had very little nicotine
in them. Yet most of them continued to be quite satisfied.

The mechanical "carry around, light up and smoke" procedure is a definite
aspect in the problem. People begin feeling assured just because they have
cigarettes with them.

Seeing what we are faced with helps us realize that smoking can be
conquered. There is nothing as successful as success. And looking over the
large num­bers of individuals who have successfully stopped smoking, we find
that quitting was the only way they were able to. The addiction to the drug
effects of ni­cotine and the habit of "having something in your hands"—both
are conquered in the very same way and at the same time—by touching
something else be­side a pack of cigarettes, and by tasting something else
beside cigarettes.

Something was said above about the "pleasure" of smoking. Veteran smokers
have little to say about the "pleasures of smoking." They will honestly tell you
that they do it not because of pleasure.

Burning tobacco is not much different than is other burning vegetation—wood,
leaves, or weeds. Yet there is not much that is pleasant about sticking your
head just above a burning pile of it—and breathing in the smoke. Yet that is
what many manage to do all through the day with tobacco.

Yet people will continue to keep their heads in the smoke. Roger Riis in his
book, "The Truth About Smoking," tells of a man with Buerger's Disease (a
peculiar problem nearly always confined to smokers, and which can be cured
alone by quitting it), who was told by a physician at the Ochsner Clinic in New
Orleans that he must discontinue smoking or it would it would be necessary to
amputate his leg.

After a few minutes of painful silence during which he thought over the
alternatives open to him, he finally spoke up and asked pathetically, "Above
the knee, or below?"

Do you smoke because you are comfortable with tobacco? As you smoke a
cigarette, think to yourself: does it really satisfy in the way that good food does
when you're hungry? or a warm coat when you’re cold? Of course it doesn't.
Light it, breathe it in, taste what you're getting, put it out. Even as you do, you
know that you'll soon want another and be lighting it. Not because you enjoy it.
You simply want it.

Divorced from all the glamour and excitement of your first smoke years ago,
just what is it worth? Nothing. How did that first smoke taste? Gaseous, strong,
bitter. Has it really gotten any better as the years went by? Not a bit.

You've become a smoking habit, putting up day after day with the harsh taste,
the hot dryness, the mouth bite, and the after let-down—and all for a reason
you don't really know.

Life is full of habits. Eating, dressing, thinking, working, and even attitudes,
are the result of habits. Habits make it easier to get things done. But habits are
not our masters. We change the habit simply by consciously changing our
actions. Do it differently for awhile and soon you have veered away from an old
habit into a new one.

With habits functioning automatically, that which you do proceeds more
smoothly. The skilled musician who tries to think through the next portion of a
difficult number is sure to make a mistake. But if he instead trusts to his habit
patterns of fingering, timing, and following of musical notations, will pro­bably
do just fine.

And so with the cigarette habit: taking it out of the pack, tapping it on the
thumb nail, using a match or lighter, keeping it burning even on a windy day,
puffing away. And then other habits form: taking a smoke upon arising, and
then right after breakfast, and on and on through the day. It becomes your
buddy that you carry around with you.

So in order to stop, you keep a careful watch over your habits and the new
ones you are substitut­ing for the old ones. Not only what you do in place of
lighting up, but what you do after those regular events of the day when you
would normally light an­other one. In this way you safeguard that you will not
unthinkingly begin again.

"I have discontinued my use of cigarettes on more than one occasion. Twice I
have gone as long as three months without smoking. But then I would go to a
party and take a few drinks. After the party was over, I would find myself
smoking again." That is why one man kept going back to something he didn't
want to do: He did not remain on the alert.

There is embodied in the above story a powerful truth: The person who allows
himself to indulge one bad habit weakens his will so that it becomes easier to
indulge another. And there need not be a chemical re­lationship between hot
spices, coffee, nicotine, alco­hol, marijuana, cocaine, or heroin. But it is a
known fact that building a desire for unnatural cravings, uppers and downers,
starts one on an uncertain road. It is a matter of personal mastery. Indulgence
in one habit that is harmful to the body will condition the mind to accept other
harmful habits.

The individual who refuses to be dominated by any habit is the individual who
can the most easily say No, when invited by people or circumstances to light
up. In contrast, the person who becomes in­volved in tobacco may find it hard
to maintain his independence of decision in the face of other habits that
confront him.

The Keeley Institute for the Cure of Alcoholism requires all patients to abstain
from tobacco. When asked why they have this requirement, they indicated that
the cure of alcoholism requires a restructuring of the personality. A
strengthening of the will is needed in order to resist alcohol when friends and
associates offer it to graduates of the Keeley Institute. The pro­fessionals at
Keeley have concluded that the conquest of tobacco is equally important.

A man must be able to assert his will and say to tobacco as well as alcohol, "No,
I am the boss here; out with you both."

The cigarette smoker finally recognizes that he really has not enjoyed smoking;
he was in a habit. He sees that it really is injuring his body, his family, and his
work. He admits that it will lay him in an earlier grave if he does not quit. And,
last but not least, he decides that he has to do it now and not later.

A typist can not type without certain typing habits and nearby physical
accessories, such as a type­writer, copy, paper and ribbons. A violinist cannot
play without certain note-reading, fingering, and bowing habits, and also a
violin, and bow.

So with the smoker: it takes just the right combination of habits and
circumstances—in order for smoking to occur. To break with the nuisance of
smoking, first the packs need to be thrown out, then the ex-smoker must keep
his fingers busy doing some­thing else. And it may mean avoiding some
associates.

We're getting closer to Quit Day. Take courage in the fact that thousands of
others have successfully quit the habit. Just as surely as they did it, you can
too.

The following two chapters outline reasons, non-­medical and medical, why you
should stop using tobacco.

You may wish to read them next—or you may wish to skip over them and begin
the chapters on how to quit. (Some folk may want to save the next two
chapters for encouraging reading after Quit Day:­ after they have made the
break with tobacco.)

CONTINUE PART 2   
SMOKING
SMOKING