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Smoking - the Myth of Addiction
The
Myth of Addiction is the reason many smokers don't attempt
to give up, or give up giving up at the first twinge of a
thought about smoking. The most popular aspect of this Myth
is that nicotine is more addictive than heroine. Smokers love
this one. It gives them permission to just carry on killing
themselves.
What
we are talking about here is a physiological addiction - a
need by the body itself. When a heroine addict's body needs
a fix, it needs a fix. It doesn't matter whether the body
is asleep or awake, and the need, the physical suffering,
gets worse the longer the body has to wait. It doesn't matter
that it's inconvenient right now, as long as the drug is withheld,
the suffering intensifies.
I
live in the UK and a great many of my customers holiday in
US and Caribbean resorts - this entails 10 or 12-hour transatlantic
non-smoking flights. I've never once had anyone who couldn't
manage that flight without a cigarette, or who chooses holiday
destinations based on flight length.. Oh! Yes as soon as they
get into a space where they're allowed to smoke they light
up, but it isn't a problem during the flight because they've
told their body it just isn't allowed so forget it. And their
body forgets it for the duration of the flight.
I've
treated smokers who smoke 40 a day. Not one of them is woken
from their 8 hour sleep by a body craving for nicotine. Yes
they light up almost as soon as they get out of bed, but they
weren't woken up by a need.
Heroine
addicts are driven by their pain to commit crimes like robbery
in order to satisfy their craving. It's unheard for an otherwise
law-abiding smoker to rob because they haven't got the cash
right now for a packet of cigarettes.
There
is another aspect of clinical addiction that is conveniently
ignored by those with a vested interested in smoking i.e.
tobacco companies, and drug companies peddling drug-based
solutions that require you to continue to purchase their product.
This aspect is habituation. When you introduce a drug into
a body and continue to put that drug into a body the body
habituates. That is the body gets used to the drug and so
the effect of the drug lessens. This causes a physiological
need for an increase in dose in order to maintain the effects
of the drug. This is why addictive substances are addictive
because you need more and more.
Cigarette
smokers tend to smoke the same number of cigarettes per day
for decades!!!!
What
cigarette smoking is is a habit.
That's
all, just a habit.
That
doesn't mean it's easy to break. Nail biters know this only
too well. But it does mean that the problem is only a problem
of the mind, not a problem of the body. If a smoker can tell
his or her body not to have any need for a cigarette while
they sit in a plane for half a day, why can't they give their
body that same message about sitting at home, or driving or
having a meal or socialising?
This
is because a habit has a trigger. The trigger is usually environmental.
Picking up the phone, getting in the car, finishing a meal,
getting up, having tea or coffee, sitting in the pub, commercial
breaks during tv programs, boredom, being with other smokers…
these are all environmental triggers.
If
you're a driver you've probably experienced the effect of
these environmental habit triggers. A driver who is a front
seat passenger will often discover their foot pressing the
brake when someone cuts in front of the car they are not driving.
Or if you've got in a car where the controls are reversed
you might have found yourself turning on headlights instead
of wipers. Non-drivers don't need to feel left out, just think
about those times you were watching action films, fast cars,
fight sequences and so on and realising that you were tensing
muscles as if you were part of the action.
The
real problem is that smokers don't want to give up because
they believe it gives them pleasure, and the addiction myth
is the defence against those who would have them give up something
pleasurable that makes their life tolerable.
Breaking
the habit is easy:
A
meta-analysis of 600 studies of around 72,000 smokers who
used different methods to quit found that hypnotherapy is
consistently the most successful way to become a non-smoker.
(New Scientist, 1992)
Hypnotherapy
is the most effective means by which people quit the smoking
habit
(Iowa University study)
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