As promised, there's lots more to say about having cigarettes control one's life. This will be the advanced course on smoking........
In 1982, in my first of two efforts to quit, I thought I had it all figured out. My mother had just had a stroke and was told to quit smoking immediately. I told her I'd quit with her.
I then got a part time job at a smoking cessation clinic. This is a story only those with strong stomachs can handle, by the way! The program was based on "aversion therapy". This meant making everything about smoking so disgusting that no one could stand to continue it!
Clients were forced to sit in a tiny, mirrored box stall which had a foot of old cigarette butts on the floor. They were told to chain smoke their favorite smokes but NOT inhale the smoke. This accomplished two things: one, it burned the inside of their mouths to the point of blistering (normally inhaled smoke shoots past the tender mucous membranes and ONLY burns one's lungs); and, two, the taste buds are fully engaged if one doesn't inhale. Now then, the REAL taste of cigarettes is akin to licking the bottom of a filthy ash tray (again, inhaling prevents the TRUE taste from coming through).
While the client was puffing away and trying not to throw up, she had to gaze at her mirrored image and smell her cramped surroundings. Each time she took a puff, I would zap her with electric shock device, all the while making comments about how attractive she looked in this pathetic state.
I'm still amazed that people paid $500 for five consecutive hours of such abuse, but it did seem to work!
The lesson in all of this is: there is no other drug people use so frequently and this is why it's so
difficult to quit. Think about it. There are around 10 "hits" of nicotine on each smoke. If you smoke
2 packs a day, you're hitting up on your drug of choice 200 times
daily! Worse, every inhale is paired up with whatever you're doing at
the time, so practically every waking moment is associated with the
little burst of brain pleasure from nicotine.
Back to my story, though.........I endured going through this treatment in order to be qualified to then turn around and subject clients to it. For three months, I happily zapped away while making cryptic comments to these poor suckers, then one day there was a lull in activity. By now, I'd figured out that my mother was cheating and had returned to her addiction. I'd also gained 15 pounds. I was entirely agitated, grumpy and unhappy.
I slipped into the smelly booth and grabbed one of the butts from the ever-deepening supply on the floor. I lit it. Then I grabbed another one and another one (they only had a couple of puffs left on them).
Behind the clinic, safely in my car, I slunk way down in my seat and lit a cigarette from the first pack I'd bought in several months. Three years later, I would quit again....this time for good.
I guess if you're five minutes shy of truly being ready to quit, or you do it for the "wrong" reasons, it just won't work? There will be one final course on smoking in the near future and it will be deadly serious...........
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