Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (169 page)

Smokers are at increased risk for osteoporosis, premature aging, and heart disease.

Dr. Andrew Weil points out that there are tobacco leaves carved on the pillars of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.—testimony to the entwined interests of the government and the tobacco companies. Since the handwriting is on the wall for smoking in the United States, however, tobacco growers are now targeting the almost limitless market overseas in such places as China.

How to Quit Smoking

Know that every attempt at quitting increases your chances of success next time. Give yourself credit for trying. Remember that 50 million Americans have successfully become smoke-free.

For now, when you smoke, try to become very conscious of your smoking. Go outside, breathe in deeply, and pay attention to your lungs.

Ask your lungs for permission to smoke. Check in with this part of your body and see how it feels.

When you smoke, just smoke. Try to get as much pleasure from the cigarette as possible. The idea here, as with food, is to change your consciousness around smoking. Doing so will stop the “robot” ap proach that is the basis for this habit.

When you decide to quit, keep a smoking log for a week in which you write down where you smoked, when, whom you were with, and how you felt. This will help you identify your smoking “triggers.”

Develop a list of alternative behaviors to smoking that you can have ready at your “trigger times.” These may include taking five deep breaths, going for a short walk in the fresh air, eating some strongly fla vored hard candy such as cinnamon, or drinking a glass of water.

Understand that when you stop smoking you won’t just be giving up cigarettes, you’ll also be giving up your identity as a smoker. That means that your entire social network, which is so often organized around smoking, will undergo changes. Because so many women are relational in nature, this part of smoking cessation may be the hardest part. When I look at the groups of smokers hanging around outside nonsmoking buildings these days, I see how bonded smokers, who may have nothing else in common, have become during their smoking breaks. One of my newsletter readers wrote, “The only reason I wanted to quit smoking was that I never knew where I could smoke anymore and I wanted to be considerate of others who are sensitive to smoke.”

Prepare to feel fully. All addictions numb feelings. Smoking in particular shuts down the energy of your heart and makes it difficult to feel the depth of your passion and joy—even if it does temporarily help you feel less grief, anxiety, or anger. One newsletter subscriber who successfully quit said, “I felt that smoking was numbing me in a certain way and that if feelings or parts of myself were numbed, then they were unavailable to me. I was ready to quit when I became unwilling to live any longer with missing parts or inaccessible feelings because they were numbed or smoke-screened. It took me a while to get there, but at that point it became more important to have all of me available to myself in life than to smoke.”

Don’t worry about weight gain. This is not an inevitable consequence of smoking cessation. The only reason women gain weight is that they are substituting one addiction for another. (The dictum to be thin is so great that many smokers would rather risk lung cancer and death than risk being overweight. A few very honest smokers have told me this.)

Get support. You can find a support group or smoking cessation program through almost any hospital. For referrals to local groups, you can also call the American Lung Association, 800-586-4872,
www.lungusa.org
; or the American Cancer Society, 800-227-2345,
www.cancer.org
. Smokers Anonymous, a twelve-step program, is avail able through AA (look in the Yellow Pages). Another good resource is Nicotine Anonymous (NicA), 415-750-0328,
www.nicotine-anonymous.org
. Also see the extensive information at the Foundation for a Smokefree America’s website at
www.antismoking.org
.