If you’re a smoker, you’re probably sick to death of the anti-cigarette lobby spinning out the same old lines about how you’re damaging your body and health. You’re not an idiot, you know all these facts. Heck, you’d be hard-pressed not to know the facts given that you have a big warning sign blasted in your face every time you look at a packet of cigarettes. You know that smoking can cause infertility, lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
So why do the anti-smoking lobby continue to throw out the same warnings? I suppose their theory is that if you hear the facts enough times, then eventually it will profoundly hit home. But if you’re still smoking, then obviously their tactics are failing. As a former cigarette addict myself, I can completely empathise with the smoker’s frustration. How can these people, who in all likelihood have never experienced the addiction of tobacco, see fit to lecture them? “Why stop smoking” is a question which is almost always met with the health answer, but for reasons I will shortly expand on, this is entirely the wrong question to present the smoker with.
Every smoker knows that the tobacco habit is disastrous for their health. That’s a given, but obviously they continue to smoke. This is where anti-smokers run out of ideas and become dumbfounded, because they cannot see past the health issue. However, all smokers and former smokers know that the humble cigarette provides a hundred daily uses. We feel that smoking alleviates anxiety, tastes good after meals, acts as a time-passer during conversations and nights out, a trigger for creativity or meditation. There truly is an abundance of reasons why smokers continue what they do.
It is these “reasons” that compel the smoker to continue the habit, and this is what health campaigners fail to comprehend. The secret is this: smokers do not need reasons to stop, they need fewer reasons to continue.
If the smoker can debunk the reasons they use to persist with cigarettes, then they will have increasingly less desire to actually smoke. “Why stop smoking” is not the question the smoker should be asking themselves, but rather “Why continue smoking?”. The smoker needs to make a list of the reasons why they feel smoking is an essential part of their daily lives, and then carefully assess - and debunk - each reason one at a time.
It is absolutely imperative to understand this crucial difference. The smoker will never be pushed into backing down, and nor should they have to be. Smokers are human, yet are treated and made to feel like second-class citizens. The health argument simply isn’t a heavy enough weight to tip the scales against all the other reasons the smoker has to continue the habit. If the smoker wishes to quit, they must work backwards, asking themselves how they have changed since they first started the habit and questioning what smoking has really done for them. If the smoker can do this, their chances of finally beating the habit are likely to increase tenfold.
Let’s assess some of the reasons why we choose to continue to smoke, and what a cessation can do for us. Firstly, there is the issue of procrastination. Many smokers believe that cigarettes provide bursts of creativity, or even act as a mild sedative during times of anxiety. The truth is that smoking clogs up the cardiovascular system and, consequently, smokers finds themselves constantly short of breath and sapped of all energy. This lack of energy in turn is precisely what can encourage procrastination.
Secondly, there is the belief we need cigarettes as a social prop. This argument is one of the hardest to debunk, but there are a few good reasons we can look at. For starters, we all have our male role models, and it’s very unlikely they smoke. Does their lack of smoking status make them any less cool, appealing or aspirational? Hardly. If anything, it strengthens their status as a role model. Then we can simply look about us and see the vast majority of people enjoying their socialising without the need to smoke; if they can do it, then surely the smoker can too.
Finally, we can look at the wind of change blowing through our society - public smoking bans are being applied all over the west, and it’s just a matter of time before smoking officially becomes an anti-smoking habit. Whereas smoking may have looked trendy a few decades ago, it will simply look like the resort of the weak-willed in a few months when smokers are huddled outside bars and pubs in all weather having a smoke.
Those are just two “smoking reasons” which have been un-winded with a few minutes of thought. If the smoker can spend several hours assessing their apparent need to smoke, then they will probably come up with dozens more legitimate questions as to why they should stop smoking. Quitting smoking is such a wonderful gift for the individual - one can re-claim health, fitness, taste, money and pride in a very short period of time. No firm resolutions have to be made, but smokers should allow themselves to investigate what life would be like on the other side
Jonty Smith is a former smoker based in the U.K.
After 10 years of smoking two packs a day, Jonty finally managed to quit in 2006. His story of how he managed to beat the habit is available for free reading at http://www.how-i-stopped-smoking.com
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