The guy in the picture sums up the experience better than any sales pitch. Long gone are images of Mr Handsome lighting a cigarette an inhaling contentedly set in a scenic location. While menthol cigarettes depicted as cool, refreshing beside cascading waterfalls or dewy meadow.
Smoking has been proven to age skin, wreck internal havoc and shorten life expectancy. So having established in our minds that smoking is a toxic occupation and not a joy it comes back to why so many people, including me, indulge such a detrimental habit?
Addiction is part of it, of course, as has been scientifically proven a thousand times over. Nicotine and all his jolly friends conspire to keep us hooked. No doubt sometimes this is enough to keep someone coming back for more.
They are the people who overuse clichés such as ‘my grandfather lived to be ninety and smoked forty a day’ or ‘what’s the point in stopping I could go out and be run over by a bus tomorrow,’ or ‘I know someone who ate well and was a fitness fanatic and they got cancer,’ and so on. We’ve all heard them.
Addiction is I believe only part of it. It’s an addiction, for sure, if the decision is made and victory is won they then become a smoker who doesn’t smoke. Once an addict always an addict and the nicotine receptors in the brain will remain receptive and hungry for each of their remaining years on spent on planet earth.
For some, however, the need to smoke enters more complex psychological realms. This area therefore needs to be addressed before any hope of quitting becomes realistic. Without facing our demons and learning how to manage them, not necessarily conquer, we are jump on a ‘quit train’ going nowhere.
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