This morning was the first day in this current remission that I haven't felt much better for quitting. It's hard to say whether this is as a result of being tired, in the fifth week of an eight week term, or perhaps slightly under the weather from too late a night and interrupted sleep, or a slight decline in the euphoria experienced by any smoker who has broken the gravity of its grip over one's physiology, however temporarily. The illusion is similar in some respects to those astronauts seen training in aeroplanes which create the momentary weightlessness experienced when after a steep climb they turn to dive leaving the occupants floating around for a few seconds. After the delirium of breathing fresh air for the first time in years now the disappointment of not having yet entirely expelled the detritus of smoking in just over a week. The dawning realisation that it will take hard work, persistence and resolution to build on the initial launch into the clearer atmosphere.
Temptation remains everywhere. Perhaps the route I chose, or should I say which chose me with the incorrect prescription, has too many reminders to entirely break the spell. By accident I was issued with a nicotine replacement inhalator - a plastic cigarette-holder looking device into which nicotine capsules are fitted and which, on sucking, gives one a hit of old nicotine. Not only does it calm the craving, it gives one something to do with ones hands and is a most satisfactory oral substitute, which as a non-breast fed baby may be at the root of my habitual desire if psychologists are to be believed at all. They work quite effectively given their maximum allowed dosage of 12 a-day, a number I have yet to reach or exceed. I have already tried to alter my timetable of smoking, by avoiding my first pseudo fag-of-the-day and eating breakfast only after 20-30 minutes exercise. I allow myself a false snout with coffee and then almost chew the end off one on the drive to work.
This morning I didn't allow myself one - or the time in which to do so - until I was driving along the heath road. I had a full day which turned out to be full of incidences of truculence with adolescents and wondered whether I had temporarily fallen off my pedestal and was allowing my fall from reformed smoking grace to affect my response to provocation. Maybe not only I but the kids are tired from the efforts demanded by the longest term of the year. Maybe I am making excuses. Maybe they really were horrors. Would it have been easier with a real cigarette or did it just seem so? Is this the insidious nature of the weed rearing its sneaky and very attractive head (at least to a smoker)? Therein lies the nature of addiction. As I puffed and panted my way, or as I found myself telling two of the miscreants "huffing and puffing"through a very testing day I examined myself for signs of both weakness and resolve. Tomorrow it is two weeks since I last smoked. Perhaps I have reached a critical moment when I am truly about to escape the pull of gravity and move into a higher orbit. Or perhaps an early night is in order!
Or maybe I need to check out this site which claims that 'Smoking will be sexy again'. It features a blonde, fag between fingers, stocking top showing and is for a new product, SNT. See http://www.smokenotar.com/ or 08000845001 (24/7). Is there no end to this delusion? This product even gets round the smoking ban! Maybe I'll get one to try out... It's a long and slippery slope, I know!
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Monday, 29 September 2008
The Grave That I Crave
Mum came home from hospital on Saturday which seemed unlikely only the day before. I had waited with mounting anxiety whilst my siblings parleyed their perceptions of her declining health as her circulatory and respiratory system appeared to fail before our watching eyes - and in my case ears - as she appeared to be wheezing her last breaths on this earth.
As I have previously averred, she hadn't been a smoker since her early 50s, a fact she would deny but for recently rediscovered photographic evidence. But she had insisted on sharing a small room with my father whilst he belched out great clouds of smoke that made the Bhopal Union Carbide disaster look like a pleasant interlude, which of course it wasn't. Dad had even complained when she introduced a small air-conditioning device in order to assist her breathing when she was latterly diagnosed with rhinitis, and in spite of my remonstrations about Roy Castle's fate as a passive smoker, she laboured on in the only room in the house (other than my father's office) in which smoking was in any way tolerated.
Tiresome though her lectures could prove given their frequency and predictable content, it's worth considering the possibility that their cumulative effect has hastened the end of my own love affair with tobacco.
Smoking relies heavily on our ability to deny the damage that we are inflicting upon ourselves both physically and mentally. It is, there can be no doubt, a profound form of self harm; a drug abuse for which society has less tolerance now than at any time in my life. Those who complain that recent legislation to prevent its occurrence in public places in some way infringes their civil rights remain either blissfully unaware or profoundly ignorant of the ambiguity this suggests with other forms of self-harm or drug abuse. Should we stand idly by whilst teenagers mutilate themselves with razors? Do we agree that any and everyone has the right to drink, smoke, snort or mainline themselves into a premature death and early grave without some societal intervention? Smoking sucks in every way and is predicated on the insane notion that because it can be legally purchased and is a legitimate source of revenue to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there should therefore be some individual choice regarding its consumption.
Here's a little reminder of the consequences of such a delusion:-
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that there were 4.83m premature deaths from smoking in 2000 - 2.41m in developing countries and 2.4m in industrialised countries. Over three-quarters of deaths among smokers worldwide - and in developing countries, 84% of deaths - were among men.
Cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of death, killing 1.69m people, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (970,000) and lung cancer (850,000).
But surely the tide has now turned with smokers in the west now feeling increasingly marginalised, victimised even, by the pressure to quit which now includes graphic images of the morbid consequences, printed on the packaging. Don't you believe it! The same researchers found that "Mortality as a result of smoking will rise substantially unless effective interventions and policies that curb and reduce smoking among men and prevent increases among women in these [developing] countries are implemented. Partly it's because they live in a growing population , so more people are smoking. But it also stems back to the actions of the tobacco companies, they are aggressively marketing their products to developing countries."
There's no doubt that where tobacco is cheap, so is life. Rehabilitation however is at hand - at least in 'developed' nations such as the UK - and in my next blog I will concern myself with the assistance available to the tobacco addict and move the discourse beyond the theoretical into the practical application and, it is to be hoped, toward recovery!
As I have previously averred, she hadn't been a smoker since her early 50s, a fact she would deny but for recently rediscovered photographic evidence. But she had insisted on sharing a small room with my father whilst he belched out great clouds of smoke that made the Bhopal Union Carbide disaster look like a pleasant interlude, which of course it wasn't. Dad had even complained when she introduced a small air-conditioning device in order to assist her breathing when she was latterly diagnosed with rhinitis, and in spite of my remonstrations about Roy Castle's fate as a passive smoker, she laboured on in the only room in the house (other than my father's office) in which smoking was in any way tolerated.
Mum's anti-smoking stance grew into an article of faith and my several slithers back into smoking met with her severe disapproval and frequent repetitive lectures. The months after my father's death were spent in the furious and frantic cleaning of nicotine covered walls curtains, upholstery and ceilings, as she tried to erase the stains of decades and the cause of his extinction.
Tiresome though her lectures could prove given their frequency and predictable content, it's worth considering the possibility that their cumulative effect has hastened the end of my own love affair with tobacco.
Smoking relies heavily on our ability to deny the damage that we are inflicting upon ourselves both physically and mentally. It is, there can be no doubt, a profound form of self harm; a drug abuse for which society has less tolerance now than at any time in my life. Those who complain that recent legislation to prevent its occurrence in public places in some way infringes their civil rights remain either blissfully unaware or profoundly ignorant of the ambiguity this suggests with other forms of self-harm or drug abuse. Should we stand idly by whilst teenagers mutilate themselves with razors? Do we agree that any and everyone has the right to drink, smoke, snort or mainline themselves into a premature death and early grave without some societal intervention? Smoking sucks in every way and is predicated on the insane notion that because it can be legally purchased and is a legitimate source of revenue to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there should therefore be some individual choice regarding its consumption.
Here's a little reminder of the consequences of such a delusion:-
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that there were 4.83m premature deaths from smoking in 2000 - 2.41m in developing countries and 2.4m in industrialised countries. Over three-quarters of deaths among smokers worldwide - and in developing countries, 84% of deaths - were among men.
Cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of death, killing 1.69m people, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (970,000) and lung cancer (850,000).
But surely the tide has now turned with smokers in the west now feeling increasingly marginalised, victimised even, by the pressure to quit which now includes graphic images of the morbid consequences, printed on the packaging. Don't you believe it! The same researchers found that "Mortality as a result of smoking will rise substantially unless effective interventions and policies that curb and reduce smoking among men and prevent increases among women in these [developing] countries are implemented. Partly it's because they live in a growing population , so more people are smoking. But it also stems back to the actions of the tobacco companies, they are aggressively marketing their products to developing countries."
There's no doubt that where tobacco is cheap, so is life. Rehabilitation however is at hand - at least in 'developed' nations such as the UK - and in my next blog I will concern myself with the assistance available to the tobacco addict and move the discourse beyond the theoretical into the practical application and, it is to be hoped, toward recovery!
Thursday, 25 September 2008
I Quit Quitting
Of course I've quit several times. There are many ways to give up this vice, cold-turkey being the most popular and least effective. The facts about nicotine addiction and the toxic effects of smoking whilst well known and widely publicised have over the years made little if any difference to my personal smoking addiction. Prior to government health warnings it was already established beyond all doubt that smoking was linked with bronchitis, emphysema, heart-disease and lung cancer. Despite their prodigious efforts to prove otherwise the tobacco industry's risible attempts to dissuade the public of their culpability owed more to resisting multi-billion dollar class-actions than any real belief in the beneficial effects of filling one's lungs with toxic waste.
Fashionable as it may have proven smoking is one of the most ridiculously dangerous things one can inflict upon one's organism but resisting it is hard and stopping once addicted, seemingly impossible. Indeed the industry intended to support the addicts' remission has grown exponentially and I have certainly explored quite a few of the variants that made Allen Carr a millionaire but which failed to save him from a premature and unpleasant demise.
I recall vividly my encounter with the backstreet hypnotherapist, a man in his late 60's whose preferred company was a small whippet dog which wore a tartan body warmer and lay snuffling at his feet whilst he intoned his mantra intended to stop my cigarette smoking. The cure, though undoubtedly a partial success was predicated on the backsliders charter that other tobacco products were not forbidden and so my cigar and pipe-smoking days began until logic dictated that I was in fact doing more harm to both my lungs and bank balance. I quit quitting soon after this realisation.
My aunt's suggestion that "They should put fags up to ten bob a packet. That'll stop you!" came and passed without demur on my part. I continued to explore the cornucopia of cigarettes and tobacco unashamed of my addiction. My father, who had furnished almost the entire house with Embassy coupons (and would no doubt have smoked his way through the contents of an edge-of-town warehouse full had the scheme not ended), continued to inspire the possibility of immortality as his consumption remained untouched by acute angina and the doctor's predictions of imminent heart failure.
My body, house and car reeked from the stench of stale smoke and ash but a stressful worklife seemed to demand my devotion to smoking continue. I moved from Benson & Hedges to Peter Stuyvesant via Rothmans of Pall Mall, alighting eventually upon Marlborough country where even the death of the Marlborough Cowboy through lung cancer and the appointment of the grim-reaper like figurine of Margaret Thatcher as Phillip Morris' Vice-President of Marketing for China left no impression whatsoever on either my health or conscience. My race toward destiny was not to be so easily arrested.
Fashionable as it may have proven smoking is one of the most ridiculously dangerous things one can inflict upon one's organism but resisting it is hard and stopping once addicted, seemingly impossible. Indeed the industry intended to support the addicts' remission has grown exponentially and I have certainly explored quite a few of the variants that made Allen Carr a millionaire but which failed to save him from a premature and unpleasant demise.
I recall vividly my encounter with the backstreet hypnotherapist, a man in his late 60's whose preferred company was a small whippet dog which wore a tartan body warmer and lay snuffling at his feet whilst he intoned his mantra intended to stop my cigarette smoking. The cure, though undoubtedly a partial success was predicated on the backsliders charter that other tobacco products were not forbidden and so my cigar and pipe-smoking days began until logic dictated that I was in fact doing more harm to both my lungs and bank balance. I quit quitting soon after this realisation.
My aunt's suggestion that "They should put fags up to ten bob a packet. That'll stop you!" came and passed without demur on my part. I continued to explore the cornucopia of cigarettes and tobacco unashamed of my addiction. My father, who had furnished almost the entire house with Embassy coupons (and would no doubt have smoked his way through the contents of an edge-of-town warehouse full had the scheme not ended), continued to inspire the possibility of immortality as his consumption remained untouched by acute angina and the doctor's predictions of imminent heart failure.
My body, house and car reeked from the stench of stale smoke and ash but a stressful worklife seemed to demand my devotion to smoking continue. I moved from Benson & Hedges to Peter Stuyvesant via Rothmans of Pall Mall, alighting eventually upon Marlborough country where even the death of the Marlborough Cowboy through lung cancer and the appointment of the grim-reaper like figurine of Margaret Thatcher as Phillip Morris' Vice-President of Marketing for China left no impression whatsoever on either my health or conscience. My race toward destiny was not to be so easily arrested.
I Quit
It's hard enough coming to terms with the fact that my father smoked himself to death but watching my mother wither away from 30 years of passive smoking was exactly the incentive I needed to finally quit killing myself.
Dad's final words "It's too late for me, but not for you and your brother, ... yet!" resonated within me, but not enough for my brother and I to stop immediately. In fact we had no sooner sobbed our dismay, having just learned of his death on the operating table from a ruptured aorta, than we were lighting-up in our grief! The irony was not entirely lost on me at least, but it would take several more months of serious chugging on my roll-ups, and the near extinction of my dear old mum before I finally got around to heeding my dad's deathbed speech.
It wasn't the finality, aged 78, of my chain smoking dad, who had experienced his first heart-attack aged 52 that broke tobacco's demonic spell over me, although it helped. Nor, in truth, the sound of my mum wheezing into the telephone receiver, herself now confirmed as a victim of secondary smoking with the same diagnosis of acute angina that had slowly but inexorably confined my father to his musty armchair - in front of the tv in the dining room - for the last 28 years. I had only re-started myself in 2006 when on a visit to Granada in Spain my ex-girlfriend had pronounced the end of our relationship across the table of a crowded restaurant. In an effort to avoid the inevitable scene I left the building and whilst walking around the neighbourhood found myself overwhelmed by the Fortuna advertisements which dominated the streets and hoardings which were the backdrop to my misery.
The packaged goods - a euphemistic reference to their poisonous contents within the tobacco industry - had made an early impression on me. As a child I had like many of my generation been regularly supplied with chocolate and candy imitations of their lethal big-brothers, and this had conditioned an early desire, if not actual taste, for being seen as a 'smoker'. Cigarettes, cigars and pipes regularly arrived in my christmas stockings and it was fascinating how their actual appearance could delay the gratification of eating the carefully disguised confectionery in an absurd parody of famous film-star smokers or even our own parents whose habit was not then regarded as social, if not actual suicide.
Dad's final words "It's too late for me, but not for you and your brother, ... yet!" resonated within me, but not enough for my brother and I to stop immediately. In fact we had no sooner sobbed our dismay, having just learned of his death on the operating table from a ruptured aorta, than we were lighting-up in our grief! The irony was not entirely lost on me at least, but it would take several more months of serious chugging on my roll-ups, and the near extinction of my dear old mum before I finally got around to heeding my dad's deathbed speech.
It wasn't the finality, aged 78, of my chain smoking dad, who had experienced his first heart-attack aged 52 that broke tobacco's demonic spell over me, although it helped. Nor, in truth, the sound of my mum wheezing into the telephone receiver, herself now confirmed as a victim of secondary smoking with the same diagnosis of acute angina that had slowly but inexorably confined my father to his musty armchair - in front of the tv in the dining room - for the last 28 years. I had only re-started myself in 2006 when on a visit to Granada in Spain my ex-girlfriend had pronounced the end of our relationship across the table of a crowded restaurant. In an effort to avoid the inevitable scene I left the building and whilst walking around the neighbourhood found myself overwhelmed by the Fortuna advertisements which dominated the streets and hoardings which were the backdrop to my misery.
The packaged goods - a euphemistic reference to their poisonous contents within the tobacco industry - had made an early impression on me. As a child I had like many of my generation been regularly supplied with chocolate and candy imitations of their lethal big-brothers, and this had conditioned an early desire, if not actual taste, for being seen as a 'smoker'. Cigarettes, cigars and pipes regularly arrived in my christmas stockings and it was fascinating how their actual appearance could delay the gratification of eating the carefully disguised confectionery in an absurd parody of famous film-star smokers or even our own parents whose habit was not then regarded as social, if not actual suicide.
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