Smoking and stress relief

Today I wanted to take a look at an article about smokers from the Chicago Tribune. I'm happy that the media covers this important topic, but the fact that they just trot out the same illusions about smoking and quitting is a bit depressing...

In particular, the article focuses on smoking as a stress reliever.

Smoker Keith Shannon says that a break-in scuppered his most recent attempt to quit. "After getting hit over the head with a gun, I needed a cigarette." This is presumably based on the well known fact that smoking a cigarette is an excellent cure for being hit over the head with a gun.

"It helps calm my nerves" Mr. Shannon says of the drug that elevates heart rate and blood pressure and causes the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline (the 'fight or flight' chemical). Does that sound like 'calming the nerves' to you? Some stress relief! More like a recipe for a heart attack.

Three pack-a-day smoker Deborah Israel says "Cigarettes are just adult pacifiers, you stick 'em in your mouth when you get stressed." Three packs a day is a lot of stress relief isn't it? If the cigarette worked to relieve stress, then why is the chain-smoking Ms. Israel stressed at all? Ironically, she says that quitting smoking would be too expensive as her company plan does not cover quit smoking programs. This is somewhat ironic coming from someone who spends over $7,500 a year on buying smokes.

Smoking to relieve stress is like drinking alcohol to get sober. The problem is that the illusion of smoking and stress relief is a subtle one. When a smoker puts out a cigarette, they go into physical withdrawal from nicotine. This is a barely noticeable feeling, a bit like hunger or very mild anxiety. The longer the smoker goes without smoking, the more pronounced the feeling becomes. When the smoker lights up, this slightly anxious edgy feeling disappears - leading the smoker to think that smoking relieves stress, when in fact withdrawal from the previous cigarette created that additional stress in the first place.

Until smokers can see through that illusion, they will have a desire or perceived need to smoke whenever they are in a stressful situation. They will need to use willpower to overcome that desire. This creates a conflict: part of them wants to smoke, but part wants to quit and it is this mental conflict (not physical withdrawal) that makes quitting challenging for those using willpower.

Allen Carr's Easyway method removes the need for willpower by enabling smokers to change their belief that smoking releives stress. Eliminating this belief eliminates the desire to smoke in stressful situations and with no desire to smoke, it really doesn't take willpower not to.

To find out more about this simple, drug-free approach to quitting, visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

Eight questions every smoker should ask themselves

When I was a smoker I tried not to think about smoking because when I did, I ended up feeling stupid and frightened. When I eventually plucked up the courage to confront my smoking, here are some of the questions I began to ask myself as a smoker and they put me on the road to freedom.


1. When did you decide to become a smoker for life? When you lit those first few experimental cigarettes as a child or young adult, were you really deciding to be a smoker for life? Did you really think that those first cigarettes would put you in this situation today?

2. If smoking is so great, why does everyone want to quit? Over 70% of adult smokers want to quit. If smokers genuinely enjoyed smoking, they wouldn't want to quit.

3. Have you ever met a smoker who would encourage their kids to start smoking? Why are smokers always so happy when their kids grow up to be non-smokers? Is it because we don't want them to make the same mistake as we did? If smokers enjoyed smoking, they wouldn't perceive smoking as a mistake -they would want to share this pleasure with their children and the fact that they don't raises a big red flag for me: Why not?

4. If smoking relieves stress, why aren't smokers less stressed than non-smokers? Research shows that smokers are far more stressed than non-smokers. If smoking genuinely relieved stress, then the opposite would be true. Smokers are also much more likely than non-smokers to suffer from anxiety disorders and depression.

5. If physical withdrawal from nicotine is so bad, then why can chain-smokers sleep through the night? Most smokers think they only go into withdrawal when they try to stop smoking but the reality is that withdrawal starts the second a smoker puts out a cigarette. If withdrawal is so bad, then why can smokers sleep through every night when they go to bed? Do you think a heroin addict could sleep through heroin withdrawal?

6. What is the true cost of smoking? We think in terms of the cost of smoking as being the cost of smokes (which is bad enough these days), but this isn't really the case. If each cigarette takes ten minutes out of our day, then a pack-a-day smoker spends 200 minutes a day smoking - or three hours and twenty minutes. Over a year, this amounts to over 1200 hours or 152 working days spent smoking. At $20 per hour, this amounts to $24,320 in time lost due to smoking. This is time you could have spent working, or relaxing, or with your family, or studying.

Then there is the biggest cost of all - losing between 8-24 years of your one and only life. And what of those who are left behind. What is the cost they pay?

7. Why doesn't it take you willpower not to take cyanide? Even if you were totally immune to the effects of cyanide, would you take it? Of course not. It's not knowing that cyanide is bad for you that makes it easy to turn down, it's knowing that there is no upside to taking it. Same with smoking. It isn't knowing that smoking is bad for you that makes it easy to quit, it's knowing that there are no benefits to smoking.


8. If smoking helps to control weight, why do we see so many overweight smokers? I told myself that I smoked to keep thin, ignoring the inconvenient fact that as a smoker I was 60lbs overweight. When I quit smoking I started exercising, eating properly and cut back dramatically on my drinking (most of which was consumed so that I could be somewhere I could smoke). The weight fell off me.