Great American Smokeout Today
If you awoke today, conveniently forgot that Thursday was 27th Great American Smokeout and have already put more nicotine back into your body, don't allow yet another denial rationalization to deprive you from tasting freedom. Whether you start your journey at lunch, dinner, bedtime or before that next puff, the Smokeout is an all day invitation to take one small step towards home.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(PRWEB) November 20 2003 -- "One day, one
moment, one simple decision was all it took to change my life forever" says
Marty, a London ex-smoker of three years. A member of the internet's oldest cold
turkey quitting forum - WhyQuit - Marty is just one of thousands of online
ex-smokers waiting to reach-out and help at scores of online peer support
forums.
Alyson, an eighteen month ex-smoker from Brooklyn, asks smokers
to reflect upon whether "you smoke because you want to or because you have to?"
"Try not smoking for a day to find out," suggests Alyson. If you are one of
those who "have" to smoke, what is nicotine addiction and how did you become
dependent upon it?
Nicotine is the tobacco plant's natural protection
from insects. Drop for drop it's more lethal than strychnine and three times
deadlier than arsenic. Yet, amazingly, by chance, this insecticide's chemical
structure is so similar to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine that once inside
the brain it fits a host of chemical locks permitting it control of more than
200 neurochemicals.
According to WhyQuit, within eight seconds of that
first-ever inhaled puff, nicotine arrived at the brain's reward pathways where
it generated a flood of dopamine resulting in an immediate "aaahhh" satisfaction
sensation. It would cause most first-time inhalers to soon return for more.
Nicotine also fit the adrenaline locks releasing a host of flight or flight
neurochemicals and select serotonin locks impacting mood.
A toxic
poison, the brain's defenses fought back but in doing so it had no choice but to
also alter sensitivity to acetylcholine, the body's conductor of an entire
orchestra of neurochemicals.
In some neuro-circuits the brain diminished
the number of receptors available to receive nicotine, in others it diminished
the number of available transporters and in still other regions it grew millions
of extra neurons, almost as if trying to protect itself by more widely
disbursing the insecticide.
There was only one problem. All the physical
changes engineered a new tailored neurochemical sense of normal, built entirely
upon the presence of nicotine. Now, any attempt to quit using it would come with
a risk of hurtful anxieties and powerful mood shifts. An addiction was born.
The brain's protective adjustments insured that any attempt to stop
would leave the quitter temporarily desensitized. Their dopamine reward system
would briefly offer-up few rewards, their nervous system would grow anxious over
the status quo being altered, and mood circuitry might briefly find it difficult
to climb beyond depression.
"Successful nicotine dependency recovery is
developing the patience to allow the mind the time needed to readjust to
functioning normally, and the recovering addict time to both readjust to their
brain's adjustments and to again comfortably engaging all aspects of life
without wanting to smoke nicotine," says John R. Polito, WhyQuit's founder.
"The body's nicotine reserves decline by about half every two hours,"
says Polito. "It's not only the basic chemical half-life clock which determines
mandatory nicotine feeding times, when quitting it's also the clock that
determines how long it takes before the brain begins bathing in nicotine free
blood-serum, the moment that real healing begins."
According to WhyQuit
it can take up to 72 hours for the blood-serum to become nicotine-free and 90%
of nicotine's metabolites to exit the body via the quitter's urine. It's then
that the anxieties associated with readjustment normally peak in intensity and
begin to gradually decline.
"But just one powerful puff of nicotine and
the quitter faces another 72 hours of detox anxieties," says Polito. "It's why
the one puff survival rate is almost zero."
"Most people succeed by coming to grips with the idea that to stay
smoke-free they cannot take a puff on a cigarette," says Spitzer, a 26-year
Chicago clinics director and WhyQuit's director of education. "Try to find one
person who once had quit but are now smokers again who didn't take a puff.
Finding one such person is going to take you the rest of your
life."
"Contrary to the bill of goods being sold to smokers, most
quitters are still quitting cold turkey and more importantly the vast majority
of successful quitters also quit by going cold turkey," says
Spitzer.
According to the American Cancer Society's Cancer Facts &
Figures 2003 report, 81% of current quitters and 91.2% of former successful
quitters quit entirely on their own without any resort to any quitting
aids.
"Save your hard earned money," says Spitzer, "quitting should cost
you nothing."
Is time distortion a normal recovery symptom? Do
subconscious crave episodes last less than three minutes? Does the number of
episodes peak at an average of six on day three? Does nicotine really double the
rate at which caffeine is metabolized? Can difficulty concentrating during
recovery often be easily corrected?
These are a few of the hundreds of
nicotine dependency recovery issues explored in detail at WhyQuit and other
cessation education forums across the internet. But what's the bottom line when
it comes to successful recovery?
According to Spitzer, "our members and
the vast majority of long-term ex-smokers have learned what they need to do to
successfully stay smoke-free which is simply knowing to never take another
puff!"
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/11/prweb89783.htm