How to Turn into The Incredible Hulk by Hong Kong Phooey (Smoking in general)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Smoking in general
Date:	24/09/05 (533 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It may make you mellow

Disadvantages: It may kill ya

Have you ever noticed that there is help for all kinds of addictions? For starters there’s the AA for alcoholics as in Alcoholics Anonymous as opposed to the Automobile Association (although many of their respective members are the same apparently). There is a whole plethora of drug rehabilitation programs and even Weight Watchers for those who find it hard to ignore a Mars bar or even their local cream cake shop. So you’d expect there to be some help for one of the biggest addictions around i.e. smoking. For the purpose of this piece we’ll concentrate on the evils of the cigarette as opposed to the more exotic version of smoking substances such as cannabis. Well spookily there is in the form of Nicotine Anonymous which claims on its web site to be a “non-profit 12 Step Fellowship of men and women helping each other live nicotine-free lives. Nicotine Anonymous welcomes all those seeking freedom from nicotine addiction, including those using cessation programs and nicotine withdrawal aids. The primary purpose of Nicotine Anonymous is to help all those who would like to cease using tobacco and nicotine products in any form. The Fellowship offers group support and recovery using the 12 Steps as adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous to achieve abstinence from nicotine.” This was a surprise to me as I thought the population at large was reliant on a whole industry of physical crutches like patches and injections that, in general, work on the premise of providing a reducing amount of nicotine into the bloodstream. In this way, the addict is weaned off the evil weed.

Of course, this whole opening paragraph works on the assumption that people actually want to quit smoking, which would be highly presumptuous wouldn’t it? There are plenty of high profile individuals like Jeremy Clarkson for one who would argue that smoking is a tangible right in a free society although those having to imbibe the poisonous fumes might reject this argument in a haze of involuntary, passive smoking. Personally, I’m coming at this point of view of an ex-smoker as it’s now over a decade since I finally quit. They say that ex-smokers are the greatest critics of smoking and they may well be right. I will qualify that by saying that I hardly froth at the mouth and go for anyone’s throat when I see them lighting up. Furthermore, I’m not likely to hurl an ashtray out of a restaurant window if I’ve discovered it penetrating an inch into the non-smoking zone. These days of increasing smoking intolerance has seen the introduction of no smoking areas in pretty much all public places in Ireland and many pubs and restaurants in England seem to operate some restrictions on smokers suggesting that public opinion is not with the smoking community.

Most smokers start young. In my own experience, this was when I was 14 years old and keen to grow up just that bit faster. My dad smoked, my mates smoked and there was an air of inevitability when I was challenged to take a drag one evening on the way home from school. Needless to say, the ciggie tasted foul and when I was told to make sure I took a deep drag and even twirl around to make the most of any potential light-headedness, the end result was just me feeling rather sick. It’s bizarre that the first cigarettes taste like crap and yet you get through it and force your body to accept the toxic mix of chemicals and smoke. Things weren’t great in my life at that time so acceptance by my peers was important and I suspect that many an addiction starts this way. I always remember my mom eventually telling my dad that his oldest son had turned to smoking. After having thought about this for a while, his response was to give me a cigarette in the front room and from then on I became a cigarette cadger on the grandest of scales.

I smoked until I was 30 with numerous attempts to quit in between. It always came down to will power then as there wasn’t any real concerted government campaigns to curb the number of smokers or even the vast array of anti-smoking devices that there are now. Will power was a fickle thing. You are either strong-minded or you aren’t and I can grimly recall the way I felt even just a few minutes into trying to quit. In my pomp, I would smoke around 30 fags a day so withdrawal symptoms were always quick to kick in even if it was probably only psychological at first. Yessiree, I’d be crotchety, bad-tempered and on edge just minutes into crumpling my last empty packet and throwing it into the bin. Even the most mild-mannered janitor (Hong Kong Phooey?) could be turned into the Incredible Hulk when trying to stop smoking. I’m sure there have been many ripped, discarded shirts found in the wake of a potential quitters path as folks look on at his oddly green, disproportionately huge body. For anyone trying this most draconian of measures i.e. plain will power beware the smokers classic kidology of turning to cigars instead. It goes something like this: Brain thinks to itself “I know, I’ll smoke cigars instead. If I smoke less cigars then I’ll eventually cut down to the point where I can quit altogether.” Of course, the problem is you end up smoking 30 cigars a day instead of 30 cigarettes. You will get the really weird sensation of feeling hardly anything when drawing on a cigarette again after smoking cigars for a while. It’s as though you are smoking absolutely nothing as your lungs have adapted to the heavy duty alkaline smoke from cigars so it takes a while to re-adjust again if that’s what you want.

The effects of smoking are well known. Higher rates of cancer (particularly lung), heart disease and a myriad of other serious diseases lie in the slip-stream of smoking. The latest statistics from A.S.H. (Action on Smoking and Health) indicate that, in England, 364,000 patients are admitted to NHS hospitals each year due to diseases caused by smoking. This translates into 7,000 hospital admissions per week, or 1,000 day. In 1997/98, cigarette smoking caused an estimated 480,000 patients to consult their GP for heart disease, 20,000 for stroke and nearly 600,000 for COPD.

Half of all teenagers who are currently smoking will die from diseases caused by tobacco if they continue to smoke. One quarter will die after 70 years of age and one quarter before, with those dying before 70 losing on average 21 years of life. It is estimated that between 1950 and 2000 six million Britons, 60 million people world-wide, would have died from tobacco-related diseases. Needless to say, these stats are scary and put me in mind of the anti-smoking propaganda that we were made to watch at school. The imprint of the image of tar filling the alveoli sacks in someone’s lungs is one that stays with me from those non-halcyon days of schooldom although it was never enough to stop me smoking until much later on in my life.

On reflection, I’m glad I eventually quit smoking. For those trying to quit then consider the health benefits, consider the benefits to those who no longer have to smoke passively and think about the beauty of not having to shell out a fiver for a packet of 20 or whatever it is these days. For those who decide to continue smoking or are considering starting their smoking career then it’s a free society, I guess although do give us non-smokers a break and breathe the fumes in a different direction. There’s nothing worse than returning from the rub-a-dub-dub in the evening with your clothes smelling like an ashtray y’know. For those anti-capitalists that wear their balaclavas and throw eggs in Bishopsgate, London then think about the huge conglomerates making their billions from us sheep-like punters who buy their evil product. You don’t want to support the fat cats of industry who, with a certain amount of irony, puff on their cigars and drive around in their environmentally, unfriendly gas-guzzlers do you?

Whatever you decide, it’s down to you. Smoking is a strange habit when you stop and think about it. Lighting up a stick and sucking on it isn’t all *that* logical really is it? Sure, it may calm you down; sure, it may keep your weight down and sure, it may make you look cool but all of these things can be achieved differently. Try meditation/deep breathing, eating less/exercising more and buying “How To be Cool in 10 Easy Steps”. QED

Thanks for reading and have a nice weekend, y'all.

Marandina.

Summary: On overview of smoking