Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Mon, Nov 15 2004
Great American Smokeout Coming This Week
I don't have first-hand knowledge of cigarette addiction, because I only smoked passively the first 5 or 6 years of my life until my father quit cigarettes. By that time he had smoked for many decades and, unfortunately, he was already developing emphysema, though he didn't know that when he quit. He didn't give up tobacco entirely when he stopped smoking. Instead, he became a devout user of Day's Work chewing tobacco. Whenever he was presented with a social situation in which a spitoon would have been inappropriate or inconvenient, he would roll 2 sticks of chewing gum together into a tight spiral and hold the wad of gum in his cheek. He said it helped just to have something in his mouth.
I once talked to a young man who had been to rehab for all sorts of substance abuse, and he told me that beating cigarettes had been the most difficult battle of all, and the one thing he fought long after he had left rehab. We don't really think of the material in cigarettes as mind-altering in the same sense that alcohol or LSD might be, but it sounds as though science is finding that smoking could be making changes in the body that are associated with panic attacks. If this is true, it might mean they will find new ways of helping those who want to quit be more successful. While many of us have never personally experienced a "nicotine fit", we'll still be sending out good vibes to those who smoke and who choose to participate in the Great American Smokeout this coming Thursday, November 18.
posted at: 07:41 | category: /Health and Fitness | link to this entry
I don't have first-hand knowledge of cigarette addiction, because I only smoked passively the first 5 or 6 years of my life until my father quit cigarettes. By that time he had smoked for many decades and, unfortunately, he was already developing emphysema, though he didn't know that when he quit. He didn't give up tobacco entirely when he stopped smoking. Instead, he became a devout user of Day's Work chewing tobacco. Whenever he was presented with a social situation in which a spitoon would have been inappropriate or inconvenient, he would roll 2 sticks of chewing gum together into a tight spiral and hold the wad of gum in his cheek. He said it helped just to have something in his mouth.
I once talked to a young man who had been to rehab for all sorts of substance abuse, and he told me that beating cigarettes had been the most difficult battle of all, and the one thing he fought long after he had left rehab. We don't really think of the material in cigarettes as mind-altering in the same sense that alcohol or LSD might be, but it sounds as though science is finding that smoking could be making changes in the body that are associated with panic attacks. If this is true, it might mean they will find new ways of helping those who want to quit be more successful. While many of us have never personally experienced a "nicotine fit", we'll still be sending out good vibes to those who smoke and who choose to participate in the Great American Smokeout this coming Thursday, November 18.
posted at: 07:41 | category: /Health and Fitness | link to this entry
