We rarely hear that someone would offer professional therapeutic help to someone or even just report their need. This is another difference between smoking and other addictions.
Smoker's dilemmas
The expectations of smoking cessation are growing, unfortunately with disregard for help and even the requirement to do it easily, quickly, radically and not overdoing difficulties.
In real terms, smoking and nicotine addiction as a disease are not treated as something that would require help to a man who broke up with cigarettes.
Nicotine disease
The fact that it may be a disease is confirmed by the fact that "Psychiatric disorders and behavioral disorders caused by smoking" is included in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Problems - under the statistical number F17. And one of the forms of these disorders was the "addiction syndrome" (statistical number F17.2) characterized by the following symptoms:
• strong desire or a sense of compulsion to take substances
• impaired control ability (eg start, end, level or use situation)
• physiological symptoms of abstinence (withdrawal)
• high tolerance (necessity of taking in a significantly increasing amount in order to achieve the effect or the desired effect)
• -targeting and limiting alternative behaviorsorious intake despite any damage (3 or more of the above symptoms need to be diagnosed).
Addiction to nicotine...
- this is a specific relationship between a cigarette and a man and his: organism, thoughts, behaviors (habits, reflexes, situations, emotions) consisting in inadequate giving positive smoking and the main role in coping (a way not to feel helpless).
The symptoms of the disease are striking, but even though they are so visible, they are classified as harmless human imperfections.
In a word, we turn this into a problem about which for a long time of smoking you can talk at social gatherings by entertaining the guests: how fun, when in the middle of the night I ran almost in pajamas to the night shop for a pack of cigarettes, when I realized that I do not have even one , and I was terrified that I would not wait for the morning (coercion), or as during the exciting work we smoked like dragons one after the other, without noticing that it was more packages, not eating, not seeing anything through the fumes of smoke but for how good it went (loss control). And the next day: slipper in the mouth, the head ached, you wanted to drink, feeling guilty about yourself and making yourself stopping smoking caused irritation, caused fear, drooling, lockjaw, the need for constant food and restlessness (withdrawal symptoms).
If we treat smoking as a disease ...
- the consequence of this approach should also be the agreement that treatment is an adequate way to deal with this phenomenon. Recognizing smoking as a habit, habit - something normal, unfortunately, induces you to quit smoking yourself, based only on your own will and strength. "If I smoke so normally then I should also normally stop". Unfortunately, it is not.
Most smokers are a little more aware of being caught in the clutches of addiction and its consequences ...
... thinking about cessation, in the first place sees the ubiquity in everyday life and the ingress of smoking in their lives. Thus, it rightly predicts the difficulty of eliminating this activity and the problems it will have to face. It scares.And even when such a decision is close to the enormity of these difficulties it overpowers, and leads to the conviction that while not burning something I would save a bad guy, maybe save something from something, maybe something would improve, but how to bear it? Those who can and would face it - just - are rightly afraid of such struggles, suffering, long days full of teeth clenching.
Studies show that only 15% of smokers successfully quit smoking without help
The others need help - often medical, psychological and friends.
ed.
Stages in managing the addiction:
• distinguishing smoking from other natural, healthy or necessary human activities and noticing its size,
• identification - getting to know your smoking by a burning and reliable object situation (symptoms, effects)
• "normalization" - recognition of smoking as a pathology leading to dangerous consequences through changes through: education, work on changing beliefs and motivation
• very good preparation for the period of weaning, relapses and help in the course mainly through: development of anti-trauma strategy and training of skills (refusing, planning, monitoring, braking - behaviors, thoughts, emotions), changing habits. Most of the failures to stop smoking result from the lack of any preparation to deal with the relapse of dependence following inevitably after some time, and thus the increase in the will to infect and the weakening of the ability to control it.
Recognition of the effects of smoking requires a lot of unpleasant work.
It is difficult to trace them in your life before the worst ones appear - diseases. This is because we can not and often do not want to see our whole life in its various manifestations. Only a reliable analysis of different areas of life made according to a certain scheme will help to see what is not seen, from which we do not realize and recognize it as normal.
Example 1 - Relations with people
- we need help in noticing that the criterion for selecting many contacts is smoking together, regardless of other co-burning characteristics (not always accepted), which contacts we give up (and damage) and - how the tensions with relatives increase due to smoking.
Example 2 -job
what activities interfere with smoking, how we work with a cigarette in our teeth, how we fight for rights and a place to smoke, and in the name of what and how much energy we put into it.
Example 3 -Time management
- how many times the cigarette is present, and what is the use of it, what it means rest and how much rested (properly understanding the word) - that is: how much strength came, whether the concentration, memory, whether we are calmer, more serene.
Example 4 -Spirituality and self-esteem
- what we have done against our dignity by burning, what principles and values we have embezzled. For example - what can we say about the value of a man reaching for a trash can after a pet with no cigarette and the possibility of buying, who cheats others about his smoking, hides himself smoking. Do we like your fragrance from your mouth. What do the contacts with the cigarette mean with those I do not accept and in other situations are unfriendly to me. Why do not I refuse them.
Example 5 -Emotional life
- what effects does the cigarette actually cause? Calms down ? Mutes? Or maybe just "zasula" and "zasmradza". It is difficult to get to such analyzes and ask yourself such questions. We also do not want to answer these questions alone and remain with their burden and emotions accompanying such work.
Leszek A. Kapler
specialist in addiction psychotherapy
