Getting help with the mental part of addiction

Getting help with the mental part of addiction

Smokers have more tools than ever to help quit smoking for good – there’s a wide range
of counseling services, self-help materials, nicotine replacement therapies, and medicines
available.
Some people are able to quit on their own, without the help of others or the use of
medicines. But for many smokers, it can be hard to break the social and emotional ties to
smoking while getting over nicotine withdrawal symptoms at the same time. Fortunately,
there are many sources of support out there.
Telephone-based help to stop smoking
All 50 states and the District of Columbia offer some type of free, telephone-based
program that links callers with trained counselors. These specialists help plan a quit
method that fits each person’s unique smoking pattern. People who use telephone
counseling have twice the success rate in quitting smoking as those who don’t get this
type of help. Help from a counselor can keep quitters from making many common
mistakes.
Telephone counseling is also easier to use than some other support programs. It doesn’t
require driving, transportation, or child care, and it’s available nights and weekends.
Counselors may suggest a combination of methods including medicines, local classes,
self-help brochures, and/or a network of family and friends.
Call us to get help finding a phone counseling program in your area.
Quit-smoking programs and support groups
Members of support groups for quitters can be helpful, too. One long-standing peer help
program is Nicotine Anonymous®
, an open support group that offers a way to find others
who are quitting tobacco and living smoke-free. It also offers a long-term approach to
quitting. (See the “To learn more” section for contact information.) But this is only one of
many types of support programs.
Some workplaces, hospitals, and wellness centers have stop-smoking programs, groups,
or classes. They may be led by professionals and focus on information and education, or
they may be run by volunteers. Some programs may be set up like classes, while others
focus on sharing by members of the group. Some groups are set up for just a few weeks,
and others go on indefinitely. There are lots of options, and different types of groups
work better for different people. Find one that works for you.
For people who can’t go to support group meetings, there are online support systems as
well as phone-based support (discussed above). Check with your employer, health
insurance company, or local hospital to find a support group that fit your needs. Or call
your American Cancer Society at 1-800-227-2345.
What to look for in a stop-smoking program
Stop-smoking programs are designed to help smokers recognize and cope with problems
that come up while quitting. This helps the ex-smoker avoid many of the common pitfalls
of quitting. The programs should also provide support and encouragement in staying quit.
Studies have shown that the best programs include either one-on-one or group
counseling. There’s a strong link between how often and how long counseling lasts (its
intensity) and the success rate – overall, the more intense the program, the greater the
chance of success.
Intensity may be increased by having more or longer sessions or by increasing the
number of weeks over which the sessions are given. So when looking for a program, try
to find one that has the following:
• Each session lasts at least 15 to 30 minutes
• There are at least 4 sessions
• The program lasts at least 2 weeks (longer is usually better)
Make sure the leader of the group is trained in smoking cessation.
Some communities have a Nicotine Anonymous (NicA) group that holds regular
meetings. This group applies the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) to the
addiction of smoking. This includes attending meetings and following the program.
People new to NicA may choose a sponsor to help them through the steps and help when
they are tempted to smoke. The NicA meetings are free, but donations are collected to
help cover expenses. NicA also has phone meetings and web meetings, and offers online
support.
Often your American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, or local health
department will sponsor quit smoking classes, too. Call us for more information.
Not all programs are honest, so be careful. Think twice about any programs that:
• Promise instant, easy success with little to no effort on your part
• Use shots (injections) or pills, especially “secret” ingredients
• Advertise 100% success rate with no ill effects
• Charge a very high fee (check with the Better Business Bureau if you have doubts)
• Will not give you references and phone numbers of people who have used the
program
Support of family and friends
Many former smokers say a support network of family and friends was very important
during their quit attempt. Other people who may offer support and encouragement are
your co-workers and your family doctor. Tell your friends about your plans to quit. Try to
spend time with non-smokers and ex-smokers who support your efforts to quit. Talk with
them about what you need – for instance, patience as you go through cravings, taking
your late-night or early-morning phone calls, and plans for doing things in smoke-free
settings. Find out what you can count on each friend or family member to do. You can
also suggest that they read our document Helping a Smoker Quit: Do’s and Don’ts.

Why quit smoking now?

Why quit smoking now?

No matter how old you are or how long you’ve smoked, quitting can help you live longer
and be healthier. People who stop smoking before age 50 cut their risk of dying in the
next 15 years in half compared with those who keep smoking. Ex-smokers enjoy a higher
quality of life – they have fewer illnesses like colds and the flu, lower rates of bronchitis
and pneumonia, and feel healthier than people who still smoke.
For decades the Surgeon General has reported the health risks linked to smoking. In
1990, the Surgeon General concluded:
• Quitting smoking has major and immediate health benefits for men and women of all
ages. These benefits apply to people who already have smoking-related diseases and
those who don’t.
• Ex-smokers live longer than people who keep smoking.
• Quitting smoking lowers the risk of lung cancer, other cancers, heart attack, stroke,
and chronic lung disease.
• Women who stop smoking before pregnancy or during the first 3 to 4 months of
pregnancy reduce their risk of having a low birth-weight baby to that of women who
never smoked.
• The health benefits of quitting smoking are far greater than any risks from the small
weight gain (usually less than 10 pounds) or any emotional or psychological problems
that may follow quitting.
When smokers quit – what are the benefits over time?
20 minutes after quitting
Your heart rate and blood pressure drop.
(Effect of smoking on arterial stiffness and pulse pressure amplification, Mahmud
A, Feely J. Hypertension. 2003:41:183)
12 hours after quitting
The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)
2 weeks to 3 months after quitting
Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.
(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp.193, 194,196, 285, 323)
1 to 9 months after quitting
Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move
mucus out of the lungs) start to regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability
to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.
(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 285-287, 304)
1 year after quitting
The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker’s.
(US Surgeon General’s Report, 2010, p. 359)
5 years after quitting
Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder are cut in half. Cervical
cancer risk falls to that of a non-smoker. Stroke risk can fall to that of a non-smoker after
2-5 years.
(A Report of the Surgeon General: How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease - The
Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease Fact Sheet, 2010;
and Tobacco Control: Reversal of Risk After Quitting Smoking. IARC Handbooks
of Cancer Prevention, Vol. 11. 2007, p 341)
10 years after quitting
The risk of dying from lung cancer is about half that of a person who is still smoking.
The risk of cancer of the larynx (voice box) and pancreas decreases.
(A Report of the Surgeon General: How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease - The
Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease Fact Sheet, 2010;
and US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. vi, 155, 165)
15 years after quitting
The risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker’s.
(Tobacco Control: Reversal of Risk After Quitting Smoking. IARC Handbooks of
Cancer Prevention, Vol. 11. 2007. p 11)
These are just a few of the benefits of quitting smoking for good. Quitting smoking
lowers the risk of diabetes, lets blood vessels work better, and helps the heart and lungs.
Quitting while you are younger will reduce your health risks more, but quitting at any age
can give back years of life that would be lost by continuing to smoke.
What are the immediate rewards of quitting smoking?
Kicking the tobacco habit offers some benefits that you’ll notice right away and some
that will develop over time. These rewards improve most peoples’ day-to-day lives a
great deal:
• Breath smells better
• Stained teeth get whiter
• Bad smell in clothes and hair go away
• Yellow fingers and fingernails disappear
• Food tastes better
• Sense of smell returns to normal
• Everyday activities (such as climbing stairs or light housework) no longer leave them
out of breath
• They can be in smoke-free buildings without having to go outside to smoke.
Cost
The prospect of better health is a major reason for quitting, but there are other reasons,
too.
Smoking is expensive. It isn’t hard to figure out how much you spend on smoking:
multiply how much money you spend on tobacco every day by 365 (days per year). The
amount may surprise you. Now multiply that by the number of years you have been using
tobacco and that amount will probably shock you.
Multiply the cost per year by 10 (for the next 10 years) and ask yourself what you would
rather do with that much money.
And this doesn’t include other possible costs, such as higher costs for health and life
insurance, and likely health care costs due to tobacco-related problems.
Social acceptance
Smoking is less socially acceptable now than ever. This can cost you in terms of friends,
money, and convenience.
Today, almost all workplaces have some type of smoking rules. Some employers even
prefer to hire non-smokers. Studies show smoking employees cost businesses more. In
fact, one 2013 study found that for each employee who successfully quits tobacco, an
employer can expect to see an annual savings of about $5,800. Employees who smoke
tend to be out sick more. Employees who are ill more often than others can raise an
employer’s need for costly short-term replacement workers. They can increase insurance
costs for other employees and for the employer, who often pays part of the workers’
insurance premiums. Regular smoking breaks mean time away from work. Smokers in a
building also can increase the maintenance costs of keeping odors down, since residue
from cigarette smoke gets into to carpets, drapes, and other fabrics.
Smoking is banned in most public elementary and secondary school buildings and, in
many states, it’s banned on school campuses. It’s common for colleges and universities to
have no-smoking policies for all campus buildings, including residential housing. And
many are moving toward smoke-free campuses, even in outdoor areas.
Landlords may choose not to rent to smokers since maintenance costs and insurance rates
may go up when smokers live in buildings. Resale values are lower on buildings, homes,
and cars that smell like old smoke.
Friends may ask you not to smoke in their homes or cars. Public buildings, concerts, and
even sporting events are largely smoke-free. And more and more communities are
restricting smoking in all public places, including restaurants and bars. Like it or not,
finding a place to smoke can be a hassle.
Smokers may also find their prospects for dating or romantic involvement, including
marriage, are largely limited to other smokers. Cigarette smokers now make up about
18% of the adult population.
Health of others
Smoking not only harms your health but it hurts the health of those around you. Exposure
to secondhand smoke (also called environmental tobacco smoke or passive smoking)
includes exhaled smoke as well as smoke from burning cigarettes.
Studies have shown that secondhand smoke causes thousands of deaths each year from
lung cancer in healthy non-smokers. Over the past 50 years, this amounts to more than
2.5 million deaths from secondhand smoke.
If a mother smokes, there is a higher risk of her baby developing asthma in childhood,
especially if she smoked while she was pregnant. Women who smoke during pregnancy
are more likely to have babies with cleft lip, cleft palate, and low birth weight.
Babies and children raised in a household where there is smoking have more ear
infections, colds, bronchitis, and problems with breathing than children in non-smoking
families. Secondhand smoke is linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and slow
lung growth in children. Secondhand smoke can also cause eye irritation, headaches,
nausea, and dizziness.
To learn more, please see our document called Secondhand Smoke.
Setting an example
If you have children, you probably want to set a good example for them. When asked,
nearly all smokers say they don’t want their children to smoke. But children whose
parents smoke are more likely to start smoking themselves. You can become a better role
model for them by quitting now.

How does smoking affect your health?

How does smoking affect your health?
Health concerns usually top the list of reasons people give for quitting smoking. This is a
very real concern: smoking harms nearly every organ of the body.
Half of all smokers who keep smoking will end up dying from a smoking-related illness.
In the United States alone, smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths, and more than
16 million people suffer from smoking-related diseases.
Cancer

Nearly everyone knows that smoking can cause lung cancer, but few people realize it is
also linked to a higher risk for many other kinds of cancer too, including cancer of the
mouth, nose, sinuses, lip, voice box (larynx), throat (pharynx), esophagus, bladder, liver,
kidney, pancreas, ovary, cervix, stomach, colon, rectum, and acute myeloid leukemia.
Lung diseases
Smoking greatly increases your risk of getting long-term lung diseases like emphysema
and chronic bronchitis. These diseases make it harder to breathe, and are grouped
together under the name chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD causes
chronic illness and disability, and gets worse over time – sometimes becoming fatal.
Emphysema and chronic bronchitis can be found in people as young as 40, but are
usually found later in life, when the symptoms become much worse. Long-term smokers
have the highest risk of developing severe COPD. Pneumonia and tuberculosis are also
included in the list of diseases caused or made worse by smoking.
Heart attacks, strokes, and blood vessel diseases
Smokers are twice as likely to die from heart attacks as non-smokers. Smoking is a major
risk factor for peripheral vascular disease, a narrowing of the blood vessels that carry
blood to the leg and arm muscles. Smoking also affects the walls of the vessels that carry
blood to the brain (carotid arteries), which can cause strokes. Smoking can cause
abdominal aortic aneurysm, in which the layered walls of the body’s main artery (the
aorta) weaken and separate, often causing sudden death. And men who smoke are more
likely to develop erectile dysfunction (impotence) because of blood vessel disease.
Blindness and other problems
Smoking increases the risk of macular degeneration, one of the most common causes of
blindness in older people. It promotes cataracts, which cloud the lens of the eye. It also
causes premature wrinkling of the skin, bad breath, gum disease, tooth loss, bad-smelling
clothes and hair, and yellow teeth and fingernails.
Special risks to women and babies
Women have some unique risks linked to smoking. Women over 35 who smoke and use
birth control pills have a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and blood clots in the legs. A
woman who smokes is more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy (tubal pregnancy),
which can’t be saved and can threaten the mother’s life. Smokers are also more likely to
miscarry (lose the baby) or have a lower birth-weight baby. Low birth-weight babies are
more likely to die or have learning and physical problems. And mothers who smoke
during early pregnancy are more likely to have babies with cleft lip and cleft palate.
For more on how smoking can affect women and their babies, please see Women and
Smoking.
Years of life lost due to smoking
Based on data collected in the late 1990s, the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) estimated that adult male smokers lost an average of 13.2 years of life
and female smokers lost 14.5 years of life because of smoking.
Each year, smoking causes early deaths of about 480,000 people in the United States.
And given the diseases that smoking can cause, it can steal your quality of life long
before you die. Smoking-related illness can limit your activities by making it harder to
breathe, get around, work, or play.

Why is it so hard to quit smoking?

Why is it so hard to quit smoking?

Mark Twain said, “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.” Maybe you’ve tried to quit, too. Why is quitting and staying quit hard for so many people? The answer is mainly nicotine. Nicotine Nicotine is a drug found naturally in tobacco, which is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Over time, a person becomes physically dependent on and emotionally addicted to nicotine. This physical dependence causes unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when you try to quit. The emotional and mental dependence (addiction) make it hard to stay away from nicotine after you quit. Studies have shown that to quit and stay quit, smokers must deal with both the physical and mental dependence. How nicotine gets in, where it goes, and how long it stays When you inhale smoke, nicotine is carried deep into your lungs. There it’s quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and carried, along with the carbon monoxide and other toxins, to every part of your body. In fact, nicotine inhaled in cigarette smoke reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body through a vein (intravenously or IV). Nicotine affects many parts of your body, including your heart and blood vessels, your hormones, the way your body uses food (your metabolism), and your brain. Nicotine can be found in breast milk and even in the cervical mucus of female smokers. During pregnancy, nicotine crosses the placenta and has been found in amniotic fluid and the umbilical cord blood of newborn infants. Different factors affect how long it takes the body to remove nicotine and its by-products. In most cases, regular smokers will still have nicotine and/or its by-products, such as cotinine, in their bodies for about 3 to 4 days after stopping. How nicotine hooks smokers Nicotine causes pleasant feelings and distracts the smoker from unpleasant feelings. This makes the smoker want to smoke again. Nicotine also acts as a kind of depressant by interfering with the flow of information between nerve cells. Smokers tend to smoke more cigarettes as the nervous system adapts to nicotine. This, in turn, increases the amount of nicotine in the smoker’s blood. Over time, the smoker develops a tolerance to nicotine. Tolerance means that it takes more nicotine to get the same effect that the smoker used to get from smaller amounts. This leads to an increase in smoking. At some point, the smoker reaches a certain nicotine level and then keeps smoking to keep the level of nicotine within a comfortable range. When a person finishes a cigarette, the nicotine level in the body starts to drop, going lower and lower. The pleasant feelings wear off, and the smoker notices wanting a smoke. If smoking is postponed, the smoker may start to feel irritated and edgy. Usually it doesn’t reach the point of serious withdrawal symptoms, but the smoker gets more uncomfortable over time. When the person smokes a cigarette, the unpleasant feelings fade, and the cycle continues. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms can lead quitters back to smoking When smokers try to cut back or quit, the lack of nicotine leads to withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal is both physical and mental. Physically, the body reacts to the absence of nicotine. Mentally, the smoker is faced with giving up a habit, which calls for a major change in behavior. Emotionally, the smoker may feel like they’ve lost their best friend. All of these factors must be addressed for the quitting process to work. Those who have smoked regularly for a few weeks or longer will have withdrawal symptoms if they suddenly stop using tobacco or greatly reduce the amount they smoke. Symptoms usually start within a few hours of the last cigarette and peak about 2 to 3 days later when most of the nicotine and its by-products are out of the body. Withdrawal symptoms can last for a few days to up to several weeks. They will get better every day that you stay smoke-free. Withdrawal symptoms can include any of the following: • Dizziness (which may last 1 to 2 days after quitting) • Depression • Feelings of frustration, impatience, and anger • Anxiety • Irritability • Sleep disturbances, including having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and having bad dreams or even nightmares • Trouble concentrating • Restlessness or boredom • Headaches • Tiredness • Increased appetite • Weight gain • Constipation and gas • Cough, dry mouth, sore throat, and nasal drip • Chest tightness • Slower heart rate These symptoms can make the smoker start smoking again to boost blood levels of nicotine until the symptoms go away. (For information on coping with withdrawal, see the section called “Dealing with smoking withdrawal.”) Other substances in cigarette smoke There is some evidence that other chemicals in cigarette smoke may act with nicotine to make it harder to quit smoking. The effects of smoking on monoamine oxidase (a brain chemical) is still being studied. For some people, withdrawing from smoking causes more severe mood problems, which can result in worse cravings and more trouble staying quit. Smoking affects other medicines Smoking also makes your body get rid of some drugs faster than usual. When you quit smoking, it may change the levels of these drugs. Though it’s not truly withdrawal, this change can cause problems and add to the discomfort of quitting. Ask your doctor if any medicines you take need to be checked or changed after you quit.