HOW TO HELP A FRIEND TO TOTALLY SAY NO TO SMOKING

By: Perry Belcher

“Can you really help someone to quit smoking?” Do you feel so skeptical in approaching a friend or someone who is close to you about this matter? Don’t’ be. You can actually be a big help to your friend.

Quitting would never be that easy rather it is hard to influence someone to stop smoking. You need a lot of courage because people smoke because of different reasons. It can be emotional, sociological and psychological.

WHY YOU WANT TO HELP YOUR FRIEND?

For whatever reasons, one thing is very clear: YOUR GENUINE CONCERN FOR YOUR FRIEND and this will be a very good start to reach your goal.

WHY A SMOKER FINDS IT HARD TO QUIT?

Cigarette has so many addictive ingredients. Cigarette smoking has been the most popular method of taking nicotine since the beginning of the 20th century. In 1989, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report that concluded that cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, such as cigars, pipe tobacco, and chewing tobacco, are addictive and that nicotine is the drug in tobacco that causes addiction.

WHAT IS NICOTINE?

Nicotine is a naturally occurring liquid alkaloid. An alkaloid is an organic compound made out of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sometimes oxygen. These chemicals have potent effects on the human body. For example, many people regularly enjoy the stimulating effects of another alkaloid, caffeine as they quaff a cup or two of coffee in the morning.

Nicotine normally makes up about 5 percent of a tobacco plant, by weight. Cigarettes contain 8 to 20 milligrams (mg) of nicotine (depending on the brand), but only approximately 1 mg is actually absorbed by your body when you smoke a cigarette.

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF NICOTINE TO YOUR BODY?

Nicotine changes how your brain and your body function. The net results are somewhat of a paradox: Nicotine can both invigorate and relax a smoker, depending on how much and how often they smoke. This biphasic effect is not uncommon.

Some of the effects

þ Initially causes a rapid release of adrenaline, the "fight-or-flight" hormone

þ Causes hyperglycemic effect, main reason why a person who smokes usually don’t feel hunger

þ May also increase your basal metabolic rate slightly. Mostly smokers are losing weight does not offer the same benefit of losing weight through exercises.

þ Release of glutamate, nicotine affects you neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. When you use nicotine, glutamate may create a memory loop of the good feelings you get and further drive the desire to use nicotine

þ Increasing risk of getting health illnesses

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT NICOTINE ADDICTION

Nicotine meets both the psychological and physiological measures of addiction:

· Psychological - People who are addicted to something will use it compulsively, without regard for its negative effects on their health or their life. A good example would be someone who continues to smoke, even as they use oxygen tank to breathe because of the damage smoking has done to their lungs.

· Physiological - Neuroscientists call anything that turns on the reward pathway in the brain addictive. Because stimulating this neural circuitry makes you feel so good, you will continue to do it again and again to get those feelings back.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SMOKERS ABRUPTLY STOP USING NICOTINE?

While you're using nicotine-containing products, your body adapts the way it works to compensate for the effects of the nicotine. For example, neurons in your brain might increase or decrease the number of receptors or the amount of different neurotransmitters affected by the presence of nicotine. When you no longer have nicotine in your body, these physiological adaptations for nicotine remain. The net result is that your body can't function the same way in the absence of the drug as it did before, at least in the short term.

People trying to quit nicotine experience this as:

· Irritability

· Anxiety

· Depression

· Craving for nicotine

Over a period of about a month, these symptoms and the physiological changes subside. But for many smokers, even a day without nicotine is excruciating.

SO HOW CAN YOU HELP A FRIEND?

From the above discussion, you have seen the negative effects of cigarette smoking. You have to admit to yourself that your friend may be actually addicted to this. You would think that convincing to stop would be difficult but of course, you are there to guide. You may try the following steps:

þ Don’t convince – influence instead. First, you may try giving gifts like candies that helps on cessation of smoking.

þ Make awareness.

þ Make a conversation that may indirectly discuss on negative effects of smoking cigarette.

þ Be a companion for a while. Remember if a person has decided to quit, he or she should be in a group who don’t smokes or else, the urge to smoke will come back

þ Make sure that your other friends or colleagues know about the plan.

þ By informing them, they would anticipate the changes (attitude) that your friend will undergo like irritability and other situations related to quitting.

Remember, overcoming addiction is hard. If your friend would be able to succeed in quitting; you may ask him or her to give testimonials to those who are still smoking and share the techniques that were used to COMPLETELY SAY NO TO CIGARETTE SMOKING.