Tips on Stopping Smoking

I can understand why the congestion and the risks of contracting lung cancer didn't help me to quit. I could cope with the former and block my mind to the latter. As you are already aware, my method is not to frighten you into quitting, but the complete opposite - to make you realize just how more enjoyable your life will be when you have escaped.

However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my body, this would have helped me to quit. Now I'm not referring to the shock technique of showing a smoker the color of a smoker's lungs. It was obvious to me from my nicotine-stained teeth and fingers that my lungs weren't a pretty sight. Provided they kept functioning, they were less embarrassment than my teeth and fingers - at least nobody could see my lungs.

What I am referring to is the progressive gunging- up of our arteries and veins and the gradual starving of every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with poisons and carbon monoxide (not just from car exhausts but also from smoking).

Like the majority of motorists, I don't like the thought of dirty oil or a dirty filter in my car engine. Could you imagine buying a brand-new Rolls Royce and never changing the oil or the oil filter? That's what we effectively do to our bodies when we become smokers.

Many doctors are now relating all sorts of diseases to smoking, including diabetes, cervical cancer and breast cancer. This is no surprise to me. The tobacco industry has labored the fact that the medical profession has never scientifically proved that smoking is the direct cause of lung cancer.

The statistical evidence is so overwhelming as not to need proof. No one ever scientifically proved to me exactly why, when I bang my thumb with a hammer, it hurts. I soon got the message.

I must emphasize that I am not a doctor, but just like the hammer and the thumb, it soon became obvious to me that my congestion, my permanent cough, my frequent asthma and bronchial attacks were directly related to my smoking. However, I truly believe that the greatest hazard that smoking causes to our health is the gradual and progressive deterioration of our immune system caused by this gunging-up process.

All plants and animals on this planet are subjected to a lifetime of attack from germs, viruses, parasites, etc. The most powerful defense we have against disease is our immune system. We all suffer infections and diseases throughout our lives. I believe we all suffer from some form of cancer during our lives. However, I do not believe that the human body was designed to be diseased, and if you are strong and healthy, your immune system will fight and defeat these attacks. How can your immune system work effectively when you are starving every muscle and organ of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with carbon monoxide and poisons? It's not so much that smoking causes these other diseases, it works rather like AIDS, it gradually destroys your immune system.

Several of the adverse effects that smoking had on my health, some of which I had been suffering from for years, did not become apparent to me until many years after I had stopped smoking.

While I was busy despising those idiots and cranks who would rather lose their legs than quit smoking, it didn't even occur to me that I was already suffering from arteriosclerosis myself. My almost permanently grey complexion I attributed to my natural coloring or to lack of exercise. It never occurred to me that it was really due to the blocking up of my capillaries. I had varicose veins in my thirties, which have miraculously disappeared since I stopped smoking. I reached the stage about five years before I stopped when every night 1 would have this weird sensation in my legs. It wasn't a sharp pain or like pins and needles, just a sort of restless feeling. I would get Joyce to massage my legs every night. It didn't occur to me until at least a year after I had stopped that I no longer needed the massage.

About two years before I quit, I would occasionally get violent pains in my chest, which I feared must be lung cancer but now assume to have been angina. I haven't had a single attack since I quit.

When I was a child I would bleed profusely from cuts. This frightened me. No one explained to me that bleeding was in fact a natural and essential healing process and that the blood would clot when its healing purpose was completed. I suspected that I was a hemophiliac and feared that I might bleed to death. Later in life I would sustain quite deep cuts yet hardly bleed at all. This browny-red gunge would ooze from the cut.

The color worried me. I knew that blood was meant to be bright red and I assumed that I had some sort of blood disease. However I was pleased about the consistency, which meant that 1 no longer bled profusely. Not until after I had stopped smoking did I learn that smoking coagulated the blood and that the brownish color was due to lack of oxygen. I was ignorant of the effect at the time, but in hindsight, it was this effect that smoking was having on my health that most fills me with horror.

When I think of my poor heart trying to pump that gunge around restricted blood vessels, day in and day out, without missing a single beat, I find it a miracle that I didn't suffer a stroke or a heart attack. It made me realize, not how fragile our bodies are, but how strong and ingenious that incredible machine is!

I had liver spots on my hands in my forties. In case you don't know, liver spots are those brown or white spots that very old people have on their face and hands, I tried to ignore them, assuming that they were due to early senility caused by the hectic lifestyle that I had led. It was five years after I had quit that a smoker at the Raynes Park clinic remarked that when he had stopped previously, his liver spots disappeared. I had forgotten about mine, and to my amazement, they too had disappeared.

As long as I can remember, I had spots flashing in front of my eyes if ever I stood up too quickly, particularly if I were in a bath. I would feel dizzy, as if I were about to black out. I never related this to smoking. In fact I was convinced that it was quite normal and that everyone else had a similar reaction. Not until only five years ago, when an ex-smoker told me that he no longer had that sensation did it occur to me that I no longer had it either.

You might conclude that I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. I believe that I was when I was a smoker. One of the great evils about smoking is that it fools us into believing that nicotine gives us courage, when in fact it gradually and imperceptibly dissipates it. I was shocked when I heard my father say that he had no wish to live to be fifty. Little did I realize that twenty years la ter I would have exactly the same lack of joie de vivre. You might conclude that this chapter has been one of necessary, or unnecessary, doom and gloom. I promise you it is the complete opposite. I used to fear death when I was a child. I used to believe that smoking removed that fear. Perhaps it did. If so, it replaced it with something infinitely worse: A FEAR OF LIVING I

Now my fear of dying has returned. It does not bother me. I realize that it only exists because I now enjoy life so much. I don't brood over my fear of dying any more than I did when I was a child.

I'm far too busy living my life to the full. The odds are against my living to a hundred, but I'll try to.
I'll also try to enjoy every precious moment!