SMOKING DISEASES: PRACTICAL TIPS ON HOW TO STOP SMOKING

• Find other things to do with your hands that will help you cope with tension. Knitting, ‘worry beads’, playing with a bunch of keys, or whatever, all work.

• Get your family and friends to sponsor you to stop smoking.

• Have a bet with someone as to how long they think you will give up for.

• In the early days of giving up, change your routine so that old trigger-points and situations don’t get at you while your urge to smoke is great.

• Keep busy. Sitting around thinking about smoking and how much you miss it will soon have you longing to go back to it.

• Be prepared for the mood swings as your body gets used to doing without the 100-400 puffs a day it has been accustomed to.

• Don’t kid yourself about how strong-willed you are-keep away from people and situations where you could be put to the test. One small slip and you will have undone all your previous efforts. One day in the distant future you might be able to enjoy the odd cigarette or cigar after a meal but in the early days this is too much to hope for. Complete abstinence is the only way.

• Give yourself a treat every day. Make sure that not all of them are in the form of foods, or you will soon get fat.

Obviously it is best never to start smoking in the first place. Here are some tips on ‘primary’ prevention:

• Breastfeed your children exclusively for at least six months and offer the breast after that whenever they need comforting. Psychiatrists and analysts have found that many smokers are ‘frozen’ at the oral stage of life during which a baby’s main pleasure comes from his or her mouth. If breastfeeding (or bottle-feeding even) goes badly and the baby is left to cry, its oral needs unfulfilled, it is thought that later in life he or she will turn to other forms of oral gratification. Undoubtedly, smoking is the most common of these, though earlier on in life dummy- and thumb-sucking are also widespread. Most normally developed adults don’t seek oral pleasure in this way and don’t respond to stress and anxiety by putting something in their mouths. Some, of course, do and these can be found at any slimming clinic or club.

• Perhaps the best preventive measure adults can take for their children is to ensure that they themselves don’t smoke. This will greatly reduce the likelihood that the children around them will want to smoke.

• Next, it’s worth trying to bring up our children to be able to resist peer pressures to take up the habit. Most young children say they don’t ever want to smoke yet obviously a percentage will be smoking by the age of 15. We should teach children that to take up smoking only because of pressure from their peers is to show that they cannot hold their own against their peers by doing only what they really want to do. They should be encouraged to think of smoking not as tough or glamorous but as an attempt to appear tough or glamorous by those who lack confidence. Such thinking has been shown in tests in California to protect children against drugs and alcohol too.

Another successful ruse is to use older young people to deliver the anti-smoking message in their own style. Play-acting helps in group work and can be fun too. Parents can also get across the message that:

1. You don’t have to be conned by smoking advertising.

2. They wish they had never taken it up because they can’t afford it.

3. They are glad they gave it up and how much better they feel.

4. It is possible to resist smoking just to go along with the crowd.

5. Smoking doesn’t make you ‘cool’.

6. By resisting smoking you will also be able to resist drugs and alcohol.

A study of 526 Californian students, who were encouraged in this way, found that those who were trained to be able to resist the pressures to start the habit began smoking at less than half the rate of those who did not have the training.

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